Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
This report from the BBC made me laugh out loud. I think everyone who has gone through years of education and examinations can remember the stress of walking into an exam, with the only slightly irrational fear that they will be unable to produce a single answer. How much more convenient it would be to live in a society that has so much fear and confusion surrounding musical copyright law, that the exam board just prints the answers on the back of the question sheet.
I do pity the poor students who glossed over the copyright statement, not realiseing that the answers were there for all to see.
posted at: 14:28 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
It being almost Paddy's Day, RTE felt they should put some traditional music on the telly, and came up with a performance by The High Kings in Dublin. Their repertoire is eclectic, mixing some of the best known pieces previously recorded by the Dubliners, the Cheiftans, Makem and Clancy, the Furey Brothers and Davey Arthur, and Riverdance - though this is no real surprise given the musicians involved. The vocalists include Martin Furey and Martin Clancy - with Darren Holden and Brian Dunphy (both having contributed to Riverdance in the past) and the backing band includes Nollaig Casey, who has long been a favourite traditional fiddle player of mine, with Martin O'Connor (accordian) and Robbie Harris, a superbly talented percussionist.
Some rich four-part harmonies are evident, with exquisite violin from Nollaig and rich modal guitar accompaniment from Dave Keery and Ewan Cowley though I can't help hearing Riverdance's formulaic modulations, chordal suspensions and rhythmic syncopations. Still, I can't really complain given the style of chord substitution and syncopated rhythmic variations I use in my own playing. I can't help thinking that the creators of Celtic Woman have done nothing more than come up with the Irish traditional equivalent of Boyzone/Take That/Insert-Boy-Band-Here. While it's great to see jobs being created for musicians, I can't help but worry that more damage than good is being done, as Irish Traditional Music gets stereotyped further into the 'everything-sounds-like-Riverdance' camp.
I must admit, I liked the marching of the playing pipers through the venue for their rendition of 'The Parting Glass' - reminds me of my time with the Irish Youth Choir performing Clare's Dragoons, when we had a playing War-Piper march up to the stage to join the choir and orchestra. I should also state that I like Riverdance and that I have the greatest of respect for Bill Whelan - but perhaps these artists could be a little more careful to distinguish themselves a little from the rich history of Traditional Irish Music, perhaps by referring to themselves as 'Neo-Traditional' musicians (as I refer to my style of playing) or something similar. Or perhaps I should be blaming the media rather than the musicians - I don't know... I'm very sure that there's a lot more to traditional Irish music than the distinctive sound of 'Riverdance' though.
posted at: 14:22 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
Every now and again, I forget quite how much I Ienjoy listening to music - and every now and again, I get a reminder. On the way into work for a change at 7am this morning, I plugged in my MP3 player, which had lain dormant in my bag for too long. Thirty minutes later I had listened to a chunk of Gordon by the Barenaked Ladies, Futures by Jimmy Eat World and a couple of tracks from Minstrel Party by Ensemble Craft, a CD largely created by a good friend of mine, Nik Harrison. So much great music - it certainly softened the blow of having to get up in the wee small hours...
Music is hugely important to me, and I've been making a concious decision to play more of it - but sometimes I forget quite how much enjoyment I get out of listening to other people's music. I've been listening to the Steve Tilston box set recently, and it's the first time I've heard his version of Slipjigs and Reels, a song I've recorded in the past, though from the version by North Cregg rather than the original Steve Tilston one.
Perhaps me rediscovering my MP3 player is akin to someone else discovering a long lost CD, wiping the dust off, and having a listen after a long absence. Only instead of one artist's work I rediscovered many - and instead of 74 minutes, I found lots more. While writing this article and listening to Futures I contemplates making a musicology joke encompassing songwriting about junk bonds, stocks and shares... but that just seems crass now :-)
posted at: 16:11 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
I've started heading along to a slow session in the Seamus Ennis Centre, in Naul. The idea is that I play tin-whistle there, instead of guitar, thus forcing me to learn and practice the melody instrument.
The idea of a 'slow session' is that tunes are played at a slower and rather more stately pace, often repeating the secions more often as well, such that musicians get a chance to learn and practice, rather than perform. Since I tend to learn music by ear anyway, this suits me perfectly - and any notes that I can't manage to decipher after three runs through a tune can be researched on thesession.org, a tremendously useful resource for Irish traditional sheet music.
I've taken the liberty of installing lilypond on the new laptop as well, so I've no excuse not to get back in the habit of writing up my own arrangements of traditional pieces as well.
posted at: 00:34 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
Tonight we decided to go to a session in the wilds of Wicklow. A taxi was duly booked to take us there, but was unavailable to bring us home again at 12:30am. Neither were any other taxis - useful++ (inappropriately...)
We walked home - with a guitar. Seb's knowledge of the local geography was optimistic. Fortunately, some other locals who had a more realistic view of directions were quick to tell us to turn around and retrace our steps as we were heading in the wrong direction. Seb's boundless curiosity led him to ask the helpful local where we had, in fact, been heading. "Wexford!" came the one word reply. Suffice it to say, Wexford - lovely as it is - was not on our travel itinerary for the evening.
We got home. We got wet. We got no tea. We found some inflatable beds. We got some sleeping bags. We were happy.
A good night was had by all.
posted at: 01:41 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
Thanks to the many people who turned up for the Saturday session - lots of new faces and instruments, which is always nice to see. I'm working on the website and will bring my camera at some point to grab some more up to date photos of the people turning up and playing.
I didn't get a chance to talk with Peter (the ever helpful landlord) but I will see about moving to a larger room as our numbers seem to have outgrown the snug. Also, I have some conflicting views on whether the pub is closed next week, or not. A member of bar staff pointed out that as far as she knew, she was working all next week and that the person who helpfully informed us may have, in fact, been drunk. I'll e-mail people with information soon, but I'm currently assuming that the session is going to go ahead as normal.
For those of you who dont know what I'm talking about: Sinéad and I run a traditional Irish music session in a local pub every Saturday afternoon. Things will all become clear when I publish the website ;-)
posted at: 23:49 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
I've been to many gigs where the sound technician's primary goal seems to be to render the entire audience deaf - in fact, young people today seem to measure how good a gig was by the numbmer of days they lose their hearing for. This gig was no exception, though after about 8 or 9 tracks the sound tech. did manage to achieve a rather satisfactory balance (everything was equally too loud) which I rather enjoyed through my -16dB ear protection.
This is the first gig I've attended where the lighting technician appears to have taken on the challenge of blinding the entire crowd - and doing a fair to middling job of achieving success! I've been dealing with lighting for years now, though I still consider myself to be an amateur- but along the way I've picked up a few 'rules' that were completely ignored tonight.
The work I put into the template for Lilypond has clearly paid off. I was able
to put this together in about 20 minutes - it's another of the tunes I've been
learning on the whistle and is one of my favourite polkas, especially played
really fast.
I've written it out in G, which is the key I've heard it most usually played
in, though I play it in D on the whistle as well, which allows it to be used in
some other polka sets.
I've been playing with Lilypond over the past few days and have just finished writing up my first piece of lilypond music. I've been looking for a better, more powerful method of notating traditional music than Finale Notepad and abc. Further experimentation with abc2ly (a convertor that translates abc format to lilypond syntax) has been quite disappointing. It doesn't appear to respect key signatures and often generates lilypond output that can't be processed by the lilypond interpreter. I'll look at this in more detail in the near future, time permitting.
I've written up my first whistle piece for the year, Shoe The Donkey, using Lilypond. I'll add more pieces over the coming days and weeks.
It's fun to make musical scores with LilyPond. Given that I'm working through traditional music tunes at the moment, the abc2ly utility is hugely useful. Nice.
posted at: 02:23 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
Through the power of uninstalling the driver for the M-Audio Firewire 410, I appear to have hade my Edirol FA-101 work again. The OS X MIDI subsystem now no longer appears to crash for no reason - this is good. While I've been generally impressed with the quality of the Firewire 410 hardware, I have been stunned at how damaging its driver is. It literally crashes the entire CoreAudio MIDI subsystem. Impressively bad! You might want to fix that one M-Audio.
Róisín just arrived home from School so there's lots of background noise, including the TV - but this was just a test to see if I could record a couple of tracks and overdub with the FA-101 - It's all looking good to go (at last.)
Stan and I plan to do some recording tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes.
P.S. For the record (and in case it's not blatantly obvious) I am not a mandolin player.
Today we had a big Irish Trad session at the Cock & Bottle, a newly reopened pub just outside Bradford City Centre. Thanks to Sinéad for all the organising, to Peter, the Landlord for allowing us the use of his tap-room - and a huge thanks to all the many musicians who came along to lend their support to a new session by playing on a Saturday afternoon.
For anyone in the Bradford area next weekend, there will be another afternoon session on Saturday, 4th March from (nominally) 12:00 midday until about 6:00pm. Entry is free, all ages are welcome and any traditional Irish players and singers are encouraged to come along and perform.
We're hoping to get a Monday night session in the same venue up and running over the next few weeks, so drop in on a Monday evening from about 7:30pm onwards and join in. If you have any interest in live traditional Irish music, you'll be made very welcome.
posted at: 22:00 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
I've set up a schedule for keeping track of the tunes I learn throughout the year on the tin whistle. By the end of the year, I should have at least 26 tunes added to my repertoire. I've started by adding notation and a rough recording of each tune, a practice which I mean to continue. I'll also (as time permits) add playing notes, accompaniment notes and suggestions, and anything else I can think of that's appropriate. Hopefully, by this time next year it should have built up into a reasonably good teaching / research resource for some small amount of Irish music. Also, I'll be able to play at least 26 tunes on the whistle.
posted at: 12:48 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
For the record, despite my lack of postings here, I have been practicing a new piece, "Ballydesmond, No. 3" in order to keep to my quota of a new piece every two weeks. I've just not managed to find the time to write it up yet.
I tried to record it - along with a later, more practiced, version of "Shoe The Donkey" but I've been having a series of problems with the drivers for the M-Audio Firewire 410 interface I use. Without going into too much detail, it first managed to corrupt the operating system's MIDI subsystem: so CoreAudio would crash when anything tried to initialise the MIDI drivers. Installation of the latest driver, v1.5.3 corrected this but I've been completely unable to get a pop/click/drop-out free recording since. A quick google revealed that pretty much anyone trying to use the Firewire 410 under OS X has had similar problems.
I'll be switching back to my Edirol FA-101 for future recordings, I think.
posted at: 11:54 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
It's always nice to see friends continuing traditions that I've had the privilege to be involved in. When the Boat Race was up and running there used to be an Irish Traditional Session each and every Monday night. The Earl Of Beaconsfield in Cambridge has played host to the session since then and some photos have finally emerged.
Great to see the music and tradition carrying on. Perhaps I'll join you some Monday evening and try and remember some of my 'Jazz Chords'... ;-)
Keep on playing.
posted at: 19:50 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
I've managed to practice every evening since I started with "Shoe The Donkey" last week and I think I'm slowly getting to grips with the instrument. Sinéad gives out to me for putting in ornamentations and has pointed out to me (quite rightly) that I should practice the basic melody first, until I get it right. Just as a doctor makes a bad patient, I think I'm going to continue to be a bad music student. Oh well.
I'm painfully aware that it's the 12th today, which means I need to start a new tune in two days. This is one New Year's resolution I'm going to try and stick to, so I'll post some more music shortly.
posted at: 09:18 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
I let Sinéad pick my first piece to learn in the new year and she suggested one I already play regularly on piano and guitar for céilís, Shoe The Donkey. I've written up some notation (see below) without ornamentation and even managed to make a VERY rough recording of me playing it. I'll post my trials and tribulations of trying to get a glitch-free recording under Mac OS-X and an M-Audio Firewire 410 some other day.
Please forgive the quality of the recorded audio - it was recorded on an ibook in my living room and is intended purely as a reference for myself to see how much (and if) I improve during the year.
I originally started this blog in February 2005 so that I could post useful musical information and track my progress as I learn to play the tin whistle with some degree of competence. What with learning the mandolin, playing about with various recording and post-production hardware and software and spending inordinate amounts of time doing my day-job, this has clearly fallen by the wayside.
So: 2006! I resolve to learn a new tune on my whistle every 2 weeks, write up some notes and the notation for it and post here. If I get some other stuff sorted I'll even start posting recordings.
Tomorrow I shall post my first tune, "Shoe The Donkey" and I'll try to keep posting regularly after that.
posted at: 23:21 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
I've tidied it up a (very) little and have decided that I'll re-record it at some point properly. It's a very beautiful piece and I've not done justice to it. For those of you curious to take a listen, check out BrightBlueRose.ogg. Thanks to Seb for his feedback on the rough-cut mixdown last night. Lyrics and melody by Jimmy McCarthy; arrangement, piano, keyboards, vocals and mixing by myself.
Next weekend promises complete mania for me as I have an all-day theatre experience to do sound tech for - but I will record more in the near future. You have been warned ;-)
posted at: 22:27 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
After too many busy weekends I've finally found time to finish recording "Bright Blue Rose." The piano track didn't quite provide enough 'body' so I dropped in some low level warm pads on top, just to 'pad' it out a little. I'm still working the bugs out of my new recording setup, and those of you more aware of my singing will undoubtedly be able to spot that my voice hasn't yet recovered from my cold earlier this week.
For those of you that have provided me with samples of your own personal recordings and performances recently, I must apologise and ask you to wait until I've had a chance to master the track and clean up the ragged edges just a little. I'll post a link early this week, hopefully.
I have an edirol FA-101 and an M-Audio Firewire 410 to test more thoroughly, so my next project is a toss up between some Christy Moore material and a selection of Christmas pieces. Votes / suggestions to the usual e-mail address please :-)
posted at: 20:34 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
