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 gathered, 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 connection to Irish culture in my family. We didn't grow up listening to Irish music in the house. My dad liked Willie Nelson and Ray Charles; my mom liked Kenny Rogers and Tom Jones. As a teen I listened to Bob Dylan, The Byrds and Janis Joplin. During my twenties I listened to a lot of Phish, Ween, and John Prine. 

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 after that experience I didn't necessarily choose tenor banjo with the knowledge that it is heard in Irish music, or even with the goal of playing Irish music. I chose it for other reasons like my being left-handed, that you use a plectrum and not your fingers, the scale length between mandolin and guitar, the logic of the 5ths tuning, its relative obscurity, and the Americana nature of the banjo.

It was only after getting a tenor banjo that I adapted to the idea of using it to flat-pick Irish instrumental tunes. First I thought I might just casually strum and sing campfire folk songs (a ukulele might have been better for this) but that was not enjoyable for me at all. I understand the theory behind chords, but I have never been able to hear a chord change in my life whereas I do have an ear for melody, so I eventually settled on playing the only type of music I was capable of: the melody line.

Welsh singer Tom Jones playing fiddle

Fortunately Irish music is all melody, all the time. That's why it suits me. I wouldn't even call what I do playing Irish traditional music. I think of it as playing unison melody music. When at a session I play a basic version of the tune in unison with the other melody instruments. It just so happens that Irish trad is the style in which this type of playing occurs. I'd be OK with bringing in melodies from jazz, klezmer and calypso and treating those the same way but those tune types don't usually get played in a pan-Celtic session!

Thanks to people like Barney McKenna, Mick Moloney, Angelina Carberry and Enda Scahill, the tenor banjo is within the accepted instruments of Irish traditional music. But it's not one of the core instruments. It is definitely considered cooler to be playing violin, flute or concertina. Those refined instruments are held in higher regard than the homespun and irksome banjo. You are going to be subject to mostly good-natured ridicule if you bring a banjo to the session.

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.

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