Learn It Fast to Play It Fast

A friend's newsletter this week led me to the Fast Practice Technique as taught by trombonist Jason Sulliman. The basic idea is that you should be learning new pieces at the actual tempo you will need to perform them at rather than slowing them down while learning. So if you play Irish music, this means learning a reel or jig at session speed to begin with. You might not get all the notes this way, but you can get it to survival mode and by doing so you accustom your brain from the get-go to the actual speed that is required of you. Not the speed that will eventually be needed, but the speed that is needed now. This bypasses some of the note for note, step by step learning that goes on when you slow the piece down and learn it that way.

The problem with learning a piece at a slowed down tempo is your brain can't process the information the same way when played at the faster speed. I've experienced this myself at sessions. Something I was playing at home at a much slower tempo completely breaks down when trying to keep pace at a session. It's kind of like going to the batting cage and practicing hitting off of pitching machine throwing at 60 mph. You might develop a perfect swing but when you finally face a pitcher throwing 90 mph you're not going to be able to hit it.

After getting the gist of the tune by learning it at tempo, with the fast at-speed version being your place of reference, you can slow it down later on to fine-tune and refine any notes you were misunderstanding or glazing over. You do this after learning it at speed, not before. What I'm not sure of is how much you have to worry about bad habits and tension creeping into your playing of the piece. Does that stick around or is it ironed out as your interpretation of the tune grows and evolves?

Recently I have been toying with the phrases "happy enchilada" and "whet your appetite". A happy enchilada is a tune where you know the general structure, you feel like you have most of the notes, and you can play it at-speed along with others as long as someone else is leading. You hear happy enchilada where the actual notes say half an inch of water. Close enough to survive in a session.

Then in the practice room you whet your appetite for the happy enchilada by going over the tune from a theory point of view, studying the actual notes of the piece compared to what you were playing, correcting notes you had wrong, and so on. Note that it's not "wet your appetite". It's "whet your appetite". Whet means to sharpen. So when you whet your appetite for a happy enchilada you're simply sharpening your understanding of a tune that you can already kind of play at speed. Here's to many more happy enchiladas!

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You Don't Have To Be Irish To Play Irish Music

From what I have noticed, as long as you're playing an instrument suitable to Irish music, and as long as you are playing it with some semblance of understanding, it doesn't matter how flimsy your connection to being Irish might be. 

I have no known history of Irish culture in my family. No relatives claimed Irish roots. We didn't grow up listening to Irish music in the house. I probably didn't even hear Irish trad until I was 30 years old on my first visit to Ireland and saw Yvonne Casey, Eoin O'Neill and Quentin Cooper play in McDermott's Pub Doolin. 

When I finally did start playing a musical instrument a couple years later it wasn't necessarily with the intent of playing Irish music. However, when I discovered that there's this type of music where you get to play all-melody all-the-time I was sold. No chord changes, no singing, no waiting for your turn to solo. Just play the melody 100% of the time in unison with other melody instruments. I thought, "I can do this". I try to keep thoughts of being completely inauthentic to the back of my mind.

To the original point. If you learn the etiquette and are making an effort to learn the tunes and get them up to speed, then you'll be fine. Don't wait around until you are good enough. I didn't. If I was waiting until I was good enough I'd still be waiting.

Welsh singer Tom Jones playing fiddle

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Happy Enchilada Tunes

We all have our Happy Enchilada tunes. By that I mean tunes where you mis-hear some of the notes so that your fingers play something that isn't quite right. Happy Enchilada comes from the John Prine song That's The Way The World Goes 'Round. The actual lyrics are "that's the way that world goes 'round, you're up one day, the next you're down, it's a half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown, that's the way that the world goes 'round". But instead of "half an inch of water" you hear "happy enchilada". I also call these Brass Miracle tunes, after the Prince song Raspberry Beret. She wore a (brass miracle ring), the kind you find in a second hand store.

You might sing along with these songs for years until you finally get to see the written lyrics and realize you had part of it wrong. It's the same with tunes we are trying to learn by ear. Try as you might, someone still trying to develop play-by-ear abilities is going to have many Happy Enchiladas in their version of the tune. A minimal amount of Happy Enchiladas is OK. A large amount of Happy Enchiladas is also OK. The latter just means that you've unintentionally "composed" your own tune. It may be best to play these so-called original compositions in the comfort of your own home!

You can also play something that sounds correct, but represents a misunderstanding of the theory behind it. Like if you're someone who says "for all intensive purposes" instead of the actual saying "for all intents and purposes". It may be hard to aurally pick up the differences but there their. Is this a mute point?

The point being that the occasional misheard phrase is within an acceptable +/- range when trying to play something by ear. Sometimes this is to your benefit. For tunes like Dinky's, Dusty Windowsills, or Gravel Walks you might be better off relying on your ear rather than consulting the notation, because if you look at the notation you might see more notes than your ear was hearing that actually makes it harder to play from a technical standpoint.

Most of the time I do think it's beneficial to look at the notation, albeit after you've had a little bit of time to digest the sound of the tune. You don't want to be blatantly playing notes that exclaim "she wore a brass miracle ring" when you could be playing "she wore a raspberry beret". And you don't want to be playing notes that express "wet your appetite" when it should be expressing "whet your appetite". That's why a minimal amount of theory knowledge can come into play. 

You might be able to say the sentence "the small dog chased a red bull", but if you have no theory training you won't pick up the nouns (dog, ball), the verb (chased), and the adjectives (small, red). Secondly, you won't be able to interpret this in your own style by saying "the little pup hunted a crimson sphere". 

Melodica for Irish airs, O'Carolan tunes, and other slow pieces

As sometimes happens with me, about a week ago out of the blue I decided that I should get a melodica for playing some of the slower session tunes in the Irish session repertoire. Here's why:

• The F to C span (low to high) of a 32 key melodica fully covers the range of almost any Irish session tune I can think of. Your lowest note F is one whole step lower than the lowest note G that gets played in tunes such as The Castle and Farwell to Ireland, and your highest note C is one half step higher than needed, since very few tunes have a note higher than B.
• Although the melodica is not a traditional instrument, it is a wind instrument and wind instruments are definitely part of Irish trad music (flute, pipes, whistle, concertina, et cetera). So by playing a melodica, you are kind of taking part in that wind instrument tradition. Wind instruments tend to be very expressive and melodica is no exception.
• One of the instruments that is played in Irish traditional music is the piano accordion (Jimmy Keane, Alan Kelly, Karen Tweed, and more). A melodica has this same piano style layout, so the right hand fingerings used for Irish piano accordion can be applied to the right hand when playing melodica. If it can be done on one, it can be done on the other.
• The melodica has a similar sound to a harmonica, concertina, and accordion. Although it might look different than those, the sound itself is in line with other instruments that are commonly heard taking on Irish melodies.
• The melodica is a cost efficient instrument choice. A good starter melodica, such as the Yamaha P-32D 32-key Pianica, will only set you back about $70 brand new.
• Melodicas are unplugged and completely acoustic. No power cables, speakers or wires are needed. It is powered by your breath and the action of pressing the keys. 
• My primary instrument is the banjo which has a staccato sound that doesn't really suit itself to certain O'Carolan tunes and other slow pieces. The melodica, with its ability to legato, is arguably more able to interpret these slower airs than the banjo is.
• Finally, the benefits of playing a second instrument. In Irish trad, the tune is king regardless of the instrument used to bring it to life. If you are primarily a strings player, like I am, it can be extremely beneficial to try and re-learn a tune on another instrument, especially one that is played in a completely different way. It's really good for the ear because instead of just routinely putting your fingers on the frets where you think they should go, you really have to listen to find those notes on a keyboard layout. This can even help you identify notes that you were mishearing when playing the tune on your primary instrument.

Here's a picture of the melodica I got:

Yamaha 32-key Pianica

Some of the pieces that I think would work good on melodica include:

The Wren

Blind Mary

Inisheer

Island of Woods

Shebeg Shemore

The Parting Glass

Midnight on the Water

South Wind

Fanny Power

Josefine's Waltz

The Tennessee Waltz

Ashokan Farewell

Crested Hens

Ash Grove

Most of these are played at the sessions I go to. Since I don't have much of a piano keyboard background, I am going to take a couple lessons from a local music teacher just to make sure that I get off to the right start with regard to fingering and technique. More to come!

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The One Thing I Wish I Had Done More of When I Started Playing Tenor Banjo

It's been over 19 years since I first got a tenor banjo. There are lots of things I wish knew starting out, including don't worry about when you will get "good", don't be afraid to change strings, don't let the fact that there are great musicians intimidate or de-motivate you, don't waste so much money on other instruments (banjo is where it's at), don't go on so many tangents and side trips, stay focused on things that help you reach your goal, know what your goal is, understand that music is more than just what you see as performance and entertainment on a stage, that there is a whole DIY hobbyist music community of peers, and more.

However, the one thing that I wish I had allowed myself to do more of is struggle. When I started playing tenor banjo at age 32 I quickly learned how to read mandolin tab fluently and sheet music on a basic level so I never tried to learn anything by ear. It felt like a seemingly insurmountable hurdle to have to learn entirely by ear with no notation or tab. But what I could have done is give myself like 30 minutes to try and learn or transcribe a tune by ear, then compare what I was playing to the actual notes on the page to see how far off I was. That 30 minutes would have been a struggle but if I had done this over and over and over again the unpleasantness of the struggle would have eventually subsided into a routine delivering positive outcomes. 

It was not until 2017, 11 years after I picked up the instrument, that I started to do something resembling this. In 2017 I became frustrated with almost everything I had been doing related to music. Instead of giving up entirely, I decided to create my own repertoire completely from scratch without any regard to genre, style, tradition, tune type, and so on. I accomplished this by listening to a wide variety of different sounds and then trying to write my own melody based on what I was hearing. I stopped playing anything I had ever played before.

Because of the freedom I gave myself this wasn't actually a struggle. Let's say that I was listening to a track like De La Montaña Venimos by Maso Rivera. What I would do is listen to this piece and then write my own melody inspired by it. I titled it "From the Hills I Go". From the Hills I Go became my tune and part of my personal repertoire. Emphasis on feeling as though it were my own. I never once saw sheet music and my goal was not to try and copy the existing melody. If I heard it a certain way I went with that. Then it would be on to something else. Maybe a track from a 1970's KPM library music LP, or a Jean Luc Ponty tune or a field recording from the Seychelles islands. Within months I had over a dozen of these little melodies to call my own and within a year I had "composed" over 50 of them. It was a fun and all consuming creative project and I can't believe I kept the momentum and focus in place for several years leading all the way into the pandemic.

The funny thing is, one day I actually paid a music transcriber on Fiverr to transcribe De La Montaña Venimos for me. I had my own tune that I was playing which was inspired by this melody but I didn't know how close it was to the actual melody. Lo and behold, I had almost transcribed the head melody to the tune note for note. My tune, the one that I supposedly wrote and felt ownership with and called From the Hills I Go, was essentially a plagiarized copy of De La Montaña Venimos. That was both good news and bad news. The bad news that I couldn't really claim it as my own. The good news was that it proved that you could learn something without needing sheet music! I didn't check the other 150+ tunes that I "composed" during this strange period of my life, but I'm guessing that many more closely mirrored the melody from which they were stolen from.

When I moved to Oregon last year and decided to get involved in the Irish trad community here I used this newly gained confidence to approach struggle with a positive mindset. Wish Irish jigs, reels, polkas, hornpipes, slides, slip jigs, and so on there are almost always going to be tunebook lead sheet transcriptions of the basic tune, but thanks to YouTube and other sources there are also always going to be audio versions to listen to. I treat the audio as my primary source and the notation as supplemental. I try to limit how often I allow myself to look at the sheet music. Resisting the urge to look at the music when you are stumped and letting your mind work through the issue does pay off in the long run. A tune is not static anyway. Your day to day interpretation of it is allowed to vary. One day your version may have a lot of "wrong" notes. Then as you learn the tune better, the wrong notes fade away only to be replaced by other notes that you hear in their place.

When I start a post like this I never quite know where it's going to end up. I think I'd rather go work on some tunes now than try to write anything else.

Poulsbo and Leavenworth - Exploring Washington's Euro-Themed Towns

We did a close to home "European" vacation this past week, visiting both of Washington state's European style towns: Poulsbo and Leavenworth. Here's a comparison of the two.

Poulsbo sits on the water at Liberty Bay about 18 nautical miles from Seattle. The downtown area offers many water views from its shops and restaurants. Poulsbo's maritime history relied on commercial fishing and seafood processing, plus logging with transport by water. Today, the town attracts recreational boating, sport fishing, kayaking, rowing, and day trippers from Seattle.

Poulsbo's Liberty Bay at night

Originally a bustling logging and sawmill town, Leavenworth is surrounded by mountains in every direction with some peaks reaching over 8000 feet in elevation. The town has cold, snowy winters and warm, dry summers. The surrounding area offers many outdoor activities including snowshoeing, mountain biking, and hiking.

Poulsbo has an authentic claim on its "Little Norway" nickname since it was actually founded by Norwegian immigrants in the 1880's. These Scandinavian settlers were drawn to the area's resemblance to Norway's landscape. Norwegian was the primary language spoken in Poulsbo until World War II. The town leans into this Scandinavian history and cultural identity with folk art, murals, and flags, an annual Viking Fest, and other Nordic aesthetics and traditions.

On the other hand, Leavenworth's German history only dates back to the 1960's when town leaders came up with the idea to turn the declining logging town into a Bavarian-themed tourist village. Existing buildings were remodeled in a German style and henceforth any new construction within the town limits has had to conform to these Bavarian design aesthetics. The marketing strategy was a success and Leavenworth was transformed into a major tourist attraction in an otherwise remote part of Washington state.

Downtown Leavenworth in a smoky haze

Poulsbo's most iconic shop/restaurant has to be Sluys Bakery. Located on Front Street in the heart of Poulsbo, Sluys is open everyday from 5am to 6pm. Sluys sells baked goods and traditional Norwegian pastries, including the Viking Cup, a cinnamon bun filled with cream cheese frosting. That's what I got.

If the lines to order are any indication, Leavenworth's can't miss eatery must be München Haus, an outdoor beer garden specializing in Bavarian sausages with a wide variety of mustards and other toppings available. We ate there one evening after the line had died down. It was worth it.

Painted steps in Poulsbo

The best place in Poulsbo for a tourist to grab a drink and mix with the locals is definitely The Brass Kraken, a lively no minors allowed bar/restaurant located directly on the water at Liberty Bay. They had a great pork belly taco and a welcoming atmosphere. Leavenworth didn't seem to have a Brass Kraken equivalent, but Blewett Brewing Company is a good place to get away from the tourists and enjoy craft beers and delicious pizza. It was a breath of fresh air only one block off the main drag.

Other notable places we went to in Poulsbo included Valholl Brewing, Tizley's EuroPub, and The Loft at Latitude Forty Seven Seven. Poulsbo also has a pleasant park for walking called Fish Park, a short drive from downtown. In Leavenworth we liked Icicle Brewing, Andreas Keller Restaurant, and the dog-friendly Bushel and Bee Taproom. And we liked that Leavenworth had walking paths right in town along the picturesque Wenatchee River as part of Waterfront Park.

Enzian Falls Championship Putting Course

Poulsbo's tranquil location on Liberty Bay reminded me of other harborside small towns I have visited such as Lunenburg Nova Scotia and Akureyri Iceland. Leavenworth had more like a Deadwood meets Telluride feel, with a little bit of old country Busch Gardens mixed in.

Between the two I probably liked Poulsbo better, even though Leavenworth has more tourist amenities including Enzian Falls Championship Putting Course (like a putt-putt but with real grass that looks like a tiny version of an actual golf course!). Poulsbo is worth an overnight stay so that you can have time to explore nearby Bainbridge Island. Leavenworth, with its middle of nowhere setting and multiple lodging options, is definitely a place you'll want to rest your head. You'll be driving through the mountains and then all of a sudden there you are!

Portland Oregon is a great city for playing Irish music

Portland, OR is a great city in general, but it's an especially great city for an adult hobbyist to engage with others under the auspices of Irish traditional music. Just this past week, I participated in 4 separate sessions over 5 days. Saturday was an outdoor afternoon session at a block party in an idyllic setting within the wonderful Mt. Tabor neighborhood. Sunday evening was a recurring session at a bar/restaurant in Vancouver, WA just across the river from Portland. (My presence at this one made no difference whatsoever but it was still a learning experience). Tuesday night was a lively session that happens every week at a brewery in Tigard, which is a town a little south and west of Portland. And Wednesday was a super fun gathering at a meadery in the "wow I wish I lived here" neighborhood of Sellwood where I was able to lead on several tunes. 

To top it off, I didn't even go to the session that I usually attend each Sunday afternoon in Northwest Portland at the Hostel Cafe. And that's not all. There were other open sessions happening on Saturday and Thursday that I knew about but didn't attend. Plus there are also closed or invite only sessions most nights of the week that you can go to as a listener. I'm still meeting people that I've never even seen before when I go to these things.

For someone like me who is at best a mediocre adult learner who has been putting in lots of work to get up to speed and increase my repertoire, it's very motivating to know that there are opportunities like this in abundance. At those four sessions in the last week not only was I welcomed to participate and play but I was in the same circle as some top notch musicians. I often still think that I am the least qualified participant at the table, but I also feel privileged to even be able to take part in the unison tune playing. Sometimes while driving to a session I make an effort to clear my mind and get into a really positive headspace before walking in.

I'm sure there are lots of DIY music communities in the area: bluegrass, old-time, ukulele clubs, trad jazz, guitar groups, early music, singing sessions, choro jams, and so on. But the Irish jigs n' reel clique seems like the only one that checks all the boxes...get to play tenor banjo (check), no chords/accompaniment or solo breaks required (check), all instrumental and no singing (check). I guess old-time also qualifies but there are no jigs, slide or slip-jigs in old-time so you miss out on a diversity of rhythms. Plus tenor banjo is not the right type of banjo for that.

Despite my focus on the Irish trad repertoire, I don't think of myself as having a style or playing in a style. What I want to do is play a banjo or banjo-like instrument. Tuned in 5ths. Played using a plectrum/guitar pick. And with this instrument and that plectrum I only want to play melodies 100% of the time. I don't want to have to play chords or even think about chords, or strum or sing or anything like that. Irish music completely falls within those whims/constraints.

It's great that I have this DIY Irish music community to be a part of. The above picture of Pure Hell - Noise Addition is of no relation to the topic of this post, but someone played this LP at the Rain Drop taphouse in Beaverton and it sounded awesome so I took a picture!

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