My Takeaways After Reading DAILY RITUALS by Mason Currey

I've been reading the 2013 book Daily Rituals by Mason Currey. In the form of mini profiles, the author details the creative habits of writers, artists, composers, and other makers from the past couple hundred years or more. Everyone from Stephen King to Maya Angelou to Beethoven to Frank Lloyd Wright to Georgia O'Keeffe. The author scoured biographies, interviews, magazine articles, obituaries, and other sources to find descriptions of these daily routines. Not everyone was like this of course, but I did notice some common themes showing up again and again.

These artists and creative types...

-Are very routine oriented. They have very consistent and not very glamorous work habits.

-They don't wait for inspiration or the muse to strike. They show up every day and put in the work, honing their craft. Many have personal goals such as 2,000 words a day or three hours of dedicated focus.

-Most keep a strict schedule that varies very little from day to day, even going so far as to eat basically the same meals every day.

-They keep their plate clear so that there are not a lot of other interests or obligations competing for their time. They avoid things that would prevent them maintaining these daily patterns.

-They are often insomniacs or have trouble sleeping and use pills or other drugs to turn their mind off or on. Frequently they are also alcoholics or heavy drinkers. Sound familiar?

-They are totally dedicated to their art. It comes before everything else. Some are even guilt-ridden if they take a day "off".

-Even those who worked a 9 to 5 job on the side found time to be productive, perhaps with a concentrated three hours in the early morning before going to work, or from 8pm to 11pm after being at their day job.

-The repetition itself seems to be the important thing. It creates a pathway for one's mental energies to flow. 

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When I moved to the West Coast two years ago it totally disrupted my daily schedule - in a positive way for music practice and in a negative way for fitness and exercise. When I was living on the East Coast I didn't start work until 9am, and during the years of 2020 to 2024 I would exercise and strength train for about an hour every morning. I wasn't playing much music during this time but I got in the best shape of my life and lost over 40 pounds. 

Now that I am on the West Coast, my "9 to 5" is 6am to 2pm so now I get out of bed and immediately start working my day job. I don't set aside much time for banjo playing during the work day, but having afternoons off means that I've been able to keep a fairly consistent weekday practice schedule which allows me to put in an hour or two of dedicated music practice each afternoon. My practice consists mostly of learning and re-learning tunes while continuing to develop my ear. I don't work on technique or ornamentation all that much, except in the context of a tune. Because I go to a couple sessions each week, I can always think of tunes to better learn, re-learn, or review.

My West Coast Saturdays are actually pretty similar to how my East Coast Saturdays were. I try to keep weekend mornings entirely clear. My favorite way to start a Saturday is get up early and start working on music. I might play or practice anywhere from 7am to noon, with only a few breaks in between. It depends on whether I have any music sessions or jams that day. If I have a session or a jam to go to later that Saturday, I might limit my playing and practice time during the lead up so that I don't overdo it before going to the jam.

Sundays are pretty similar but I often play in a Sunday afternoon Irish session, so my Sunday mornings usually consist of a light practice session where I run through tunes I might want to play if called upon to lead or suggest a tune that day. I'm a list maker so I usually make a list of tunes before going to the session.

I think tune learning practice can be a form of creativity. Especially if you approach it with the routine of listening to an existing tune then creating a tune of your own that sounds like the existing tune. Rinse and repeat. You might start off with a version of the tune that doesn't share many notes with the source recording. Over time perhaps you can eventually match the source recording note for note. Or perhaps you simply trust your ear even though the notes you're playing may not be exactly as the tune is written. Once you have close to a 100% match, then you can veer off again, knowing that at any time you could go back to the original if/when you want to. I think it's as simple as that.

First Time Attending the Waterfront Blues Festival in Portland, OR

This is my third summer living in the Portland, OR area, but yesterday was the first time I had been to the annual Waterfront Blues Festival, which is held each summer around July 4th in South Hawthorne Waterfront Park along the Willamette River. 

The festival got onto my calendar this year because the famous (famous to me) Ethiopian musician Hailu Mergia was going to be there on the 3rd day of the 3-day festival, but I procrastinated on buying tickets. Despite a strong Thursday lineup that included Rose City Band, Garcia Birthday Band, True Loves, and Cymande(!), we hadn't planned on going all three days, just Saturday, July 4th. Another reason for hesitancy was because my wife had major knee surgery four months ago and she wasn't sure until recently whether she'd be ready for all the walking and standing that comes with a music festival, but she was! When I found out earlier this week that Hailu Mergia wasn't going to be able to make it my initial reaction was "oh no!", but we decided to check it out anyway. 

I didn't know what to expect other than to expect it to be crowed, which it both was and wasn't. The festival entrance is a short walk from the Yamhill District MAX light rail stop so we took the train down. Very easy to get to. Not knowing what the food options or lines would be like, we didn't want to show up hungry so we stopped into Paddy's, a great Irish pub just across the street from the MAX stop, and got a late lunch and watched the first half of the France vs. Paraguay World Cup match before going in. Our plan was to just go to the festival from about 3pm to 8pm and be back home before the fireworks and we pretty much stuck to that plan.

There are three stages total and the way they have it set up is pretty cool. The two stages in the primary part of the festival grounds are angled at opposite ends of the same riverfront area, and it's timed so that when the music on one stage ends the band on the opposite stage begins almost immediately. If you position your chairs a certain way you can see both stages and have an idyllic view of the river. There's also a big video screen set up between these two stages. To get to the 3rd stage you simply walk under the Hawthorne bridge and there it is. The whole festival area is relatively condensed and they definitely make great use of the available space.

We saw full sets by Brittany Davis, Jujuba, and Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, and most of the performances by Ural Thomas and the Pain and Jenny Don't and the Spurs. Due to overlapping stage times we completely missed The Seratones and Orquestra Pacifico Tropical but you can't be in two places at once. Even though it has the word Blues in the festival title, the music that we saw ranged from jazz to African to soul to Grateful Dead meets Motown to honky-tonk country. It was quite diverse. The Waterfront Blues Festival reminded me of the Richmond Folk Festival in Richmond, VA that I used to attend every year.

The weather was absolutely perfect and the overall vibe was very easy going, respectful and relaxed. You can bring in empty reusable water bottles or factory sealed water bottles. You're supposed to bring low-profile lawn chairs but after knee surgery Laura said that ain't happening, so we just brought a couple cheap-oh Dick's Sporting Goods folding chairs and that worked out fine. We were able to position our chairs near the Stay and Sway stage then walk over to the other two stages as needed. No hassles whatsoever. It got more crowded as the day went on but it was easy to get drinks and there wasn't even a line for the porta potties until right when we were leaving. I love a good city center music festival and next year I might plan for all three days. 

A lot of people come down to the Portland waterfront to watch the 4th of July fireworks, so the volume of people was increasing rapidly as we made our way out in the opposite direction of the foot traffic. We don't really care about fireworks, and it was time to get home to our dog, plus we've seen Tank and the Bangas before so I didn't feel compelled to stick around after dark. We got home just as the sun was setting. It was a perfect day.

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The Note D in Irish Traditional Music (jigs, reels, hornpipes, and such)

After a very unscientific observation I've determined that the note D is the most common note in Irish traditional music. I have a sort of half-baked idea built around this note that I'm hoping to flesh out by writing a post about it. Here goes.

First off, you have to know the pattern of the major scale: 1•2•34•5•6•71•2•34•5•6•71 and so on. For brevity, lets think of the major scale as this: 1•2•34•5•6•71.

OK, so the D-major scale looks like this: D•E•F#G•A•B•C#D. In other words, in the D-major scale D is the 1st note of the major scale. However, it is also common in Irish music for D to be the 5th note of the major scale. That looks like this: 5•6•71•2•34•5 or D•E•F#G•A•BC•D (one sharp key signature, also known as D-Mixolydian). Note that the only difference between these two is whether the C note is a C-natural or a C-sharp. D whistles can also play in this key.

A little less common, but D can also show up as the 4th note of the major scale: 4•5•6•71•2•34 or D•E•F#•G#A•B•C#D (three sharps key signature, better known as A-Major). D whistles might have to skip any G# notes in the tune. I've also seen D function as the 2nd note of the major scale: 2•34•5•6•71•2 or D•EF•G•A•BC•D (all white keys on the piano, this is called D-Dorian). Whistle players use a special whistle for tunes in this D-Dorian mode.

I can think of one more place where D might pop up and that is as the 6th note of the major scale: 6•71•2•34•5•6 or D•EF•G•ABb•C•D (key signature has one flat, maybe G-Dorian or D-Aeolian). This one is quite rare though and whistle player might just sit this one out entirely.

You're not going to have a D-natural note in the key of E-major (E•F#•G#A•B•C#•D#E) or the key of B-major (B•C#•D#E•F#•G#•A#B) for example, but those keys aren't really part of Irish trad in my experience. With me so far? I'm not even sure that I am! 

When D is the first note of the major scale, let's call that D-1. 4th note of the major scale = D-4. 5th note of the major scale = D-5. 2nd note of the major scale = D-2. And 6th note of the major scale = D-6.

Now let's add a slash to indicate the tonal center, because in Irish music the tonal center isn't always D. It can also be E, G, A or B. Maybe even F! 

• D-1/D = D is first note of major scale and it's also the tonal center (ex: Lady Anne Montgomery)
• D-1/E = D is first note of major scale and E is the tonal center (ex: Morrison's Jig)
• D-1/A = D is first note of major scale and A is the tonal center (ex: High Reel)
• D-1/B = D is first note of major scale and B is the tonal center (ex: Musical Priest)
• D-5/D = D is fifth note of major scale and it's also the tonal center (ex: Banish Misfortune)
• D-5/G = D is fifth note of major scale and G is the tonal center (ex: Far From Home)
• D-5/A = D is fifth note of major scale and A is the tonal center (ex: Lilting Banshee)
• D-5/E = D is fifth note of major scale and E is the tonal center (ex: Rights of Man)
• D-4/A = D is fourth note of major scale and A is the tonal center (ex: Boys of Malin)
• D-2/D = D is second note of major scale and it's also the tonal center (ex: Julia Delaney's)
• D-6/D = D is sixth note of the major scale and it's also the tonal center (ex: The Sailor's Wife)
• D-6/G = D is sixth note of major scale and G is the tonal center (ex: The Golden Castle, Splendid Isolation)

I think that covers most of the scenarios except for maybe some Liz Carroll tunes!

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How Ben Franklin Improved His Writing (Putting Tunes Into Your Own "Words")

I recently went to Powell's and found used copies of the following self improvement and learning books:

-Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Rodiger III, and Mark A McDaniel

-Peak: Secrets from The New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool

-Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

-Mindset - The New Psychology of Success: How We Can Fulfill Our Potential by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.

I'll probably be sharing any tips or points that I extrapolate from these books, starting with something I read in Peak.

When he was a young man, Benjamin Franklin came up with a way to improve his writing. He was a fan of the British magazine The Spectator so he devised a way to teach himself how to write as well as the articles in that magazine.

Franklin's idea was to attempt to reproduce the sentences from an article he had read after he had forgotten the exact wording. He wrote down brief descriptions of each sentence - just enough to help him recall what the sentence was about. After several days of not looking at the articles, he would then try to reproduce the article from memory based on the hints he had given himself. He wasn't trying to recreate it word-for-word, but come up with his own reproduction in the style of the original. Then he compared the original article to his own sentences and made corrections and improvements as needed.  

This sounds like an excellent way to learn fiddle tunes! How would you go about this? Maybe just try listening to the tune for a few days. Then, without listening to it again, try to recreate it on your instrument. Make up your own tune that, phrase by phrase, sounds as close to the original as you can remember. Play your version for a day or two then go back and listen to the source recording and make refinements as needed. Over time you'll develop your own take of the tune! This is probably similar to how it used to be done in the days before recordings.

Bonus points: Franklin expanded upon his exercise in an effort to improve his vocabulary. After recreating the articles in prose he started re-writing them as poems conforming to a certain meter/rhythm and rhyme scheme. This forced him to search for words that he might not have normally used. What would be the musical equivalent of this? Maybe taking something that is in 4/4 time and converting it to a jig or waltz? Or maybe it's taking something that is pentatonic and making it diatonic? Or maybe it's trying to write a harmony line to go with the melody? I'm not sure! 

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Sheet Music is the Answer (Key)

When you're doing a crossword puzzle do you start by looking at the answer key, or do you wait until you've solved as much of the puzzle as possible before looking at the answers? If you're like most people you probably wait to look at the answer key. Solving the puzzle is the whole point, right?!

So why do we treat music differently? Let's say that you're trying to learn a new jig or reel and you have both the audio recording and the sheet music handy. Why not approach this the same way that you would a crossword? The audio recording is the puzzle and the sheet music is the answer key. Try to solve the problem (how does this tune go?) before being shown the solution (the notes on the page).

Take some time to just listen to the recording and find the notes on your instrument. If you're not in any rush, maybe give it a day or two of listening and playing before you cheat and look at the answer key (AKA the sheet music). It doesn't really even matter if you misheard parts of the piece and were playing it "wrong". 

When you try to come up with the answer yourself - what notes are these - rather than having it presented to you it will lead to better learning and longer retention. Maybe there were some measures in there that completely baffled you. When you finally do look at the sheet music and get the answers to the puzzle, chances are you'll later be able to recall how to play those measures because of this struggle rather than by trying to have memorized it through sight reading.

Disclaimer: I had the idea for this crossword puzzle analogy before looking at Peter Brown's book Make It Stick, but reading his chapter titled "Embrace Difficulties" helped me find the words to put this into writing.

To continue this puzzle comparison further and refence something else that I learned in Make It Stick, if someone says to you "wow you're really good at solving puzzles", then you might be inclined to pick easy puzzles going forward so that you can maintain this image of being really good at puzzles. Whereas, if someone says to you "wow, you must work really hard at solving puzzles", by saying you work hard that will motivate you to want to continue to work hard by choosing more and more difficult puzzles.

Now apply this to music. Do you have a natural ability hear pitches and play by ear? Probably not. But are you willing to work hard at solving the puzzle of playing by ear? Hopefully yes is the answer to that! I definitely still like to have the answer key, but I'm willing to follow the advice of this post and delay my looking at it.  

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Learning Music as an ISTJ Personality Type

I’ve done the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) multiple times over the years and each time it comes back ISTJ. Here’s a description I got from Psychology Junkie:

I = Introversion. ISTJs focus inwards before responding to the outside world. They gain energy from alone time when they can reflect on their own thoughts.
S = Sensation. ISTJs prefer taking in information that is tangible, realistic, and concrete. They would usually rather focus on what exists than hypothesize about abstract possibilities.
T = Thinking. ISTJs step outside of a situation in order to see it as objectively and logically as possible.
J = Judgment. ISTJs like having things settled, having decisions made, and having a sense of control or structure to their life. They are typically work-before-play people.

I can see why an ISTJ might be drawn to playing traditional music. ISTJs seek security in the tried and true and what music is more tried and true than traditional music? It’s a form of creative expression that merges an ISTJ's appreciation for structure with artistic output. It rewards discipline and attention to detail.

Traditional music sessions are not really performances. You can kind of blend in. You don’t have to be in the limelight like a lead vocalist or soloist would be. The music itself as well as the session environment adheres to established forms and conventions, providing a sense of familiarity and comfort and a place where you get to put the knowledge and skills you’ve learned to good use. These are all things that would appeal to an ISTJ type of person.

ISTJs are independent learners and traditional music is something you can easily work on on your own, especially if you are melody player since the monophonic nature of the music makes the tune “complete” even when only one instrument is playing the melody. When it comes to practicing, our ability to focus and maintain concentration for long periods of time comes in handy. An ISTJ has the time and dedication to do a deep dive while researching and studying a topic. ISTJs will put their “all” into it.

There’s also the theory and math-like aspect to music. A typical traditional musician may not get into the theory side of it, but I bet an ISTJ could explain what Dorian or Mixolydian are, for example. In terms of creativity, tune writing is not always a big part of the individual experience of learning traditional music, but an ISTJ can use the established framework of traditional music to be adaptively creative and write original tunes that conform to the conventions of the style.

OK. That might explain it. As an aside, I was entirely focused on writing this piece and could not stop until I got it done. Now that it's done I can move on to the next project!

My Favorite Double Stops in Mandolin and Irish Tenor Banjo GDAE Tuning

Disclaimer: I'm no music teacher, just a hobbyist musician. However, I like to "fill out" a tune with double stops and there is one double stop interval that I like the sound of the best. First off, a double stop is like a mini two-note chord. When you're playing a melody you can create a double stop by playing a harmonizing note on the string lower than the one with the melody note. Playing both notes simultaneously helps fill out the sound.

To explain the double stop that I like the most, I'll give an example in GDAE mandolin/Irish tenor banjo tuning. Here it is: Whenever you're playing an F# note on the 2nd fret of the E string, you can also play an open A on the A string. You can't really go wrong with these two notes together. This combination of notes - F# and A - is most likely going to function as a D-major chord because a D-major chord has the notes D-F#-A in it. But since you're only playing two notes, this combination of F# and A could also ambiguously work as an F#minor type of chord. Worst case scenario is if the person actually laying down the chords to the melody is playing a B-minor chord (B-D-F#) at the moment you play that F# + A double stop. To my ears this hasn't really conflicted with the harmony because what you're suggesting with the notes F# and A resembles a B-minor7 chord which is just a jazzier version of a B-minor chord. It'll work there too.

What I'm saying is you don't really even need to know what the chords are to the tune to play this double stop since it's entirely based on the melody. I've never really been able to hear chord changes per se and I have zero opinion on what the chords to a tune should be. I have never been able to just strum chords to a song and know where to change from one chord to another. I'm just a melody player. But by using this system I am still almost always able to add a harmonizing note to any melody note in the tune without even having to think about it.

That same shape or concept works when you are playing a 3rd fret G note or a 5th fret A note. When you're playing a 3rd fret G note on the E-string, add a 2nd fret B note on the A string. When you're playing a 5th fret A note on the E string, add either a 3rd fret C or a 4th fret C# on the A string. I say "either" because most Irish tunes use the notes D, E, F#, G, and A, but they can use either a C-natural or a C-sharp note or both, depending. So you kind of have to have studied the tune or experimented to decide whether you like harmonizing that A note with a C natural (to give it a minor-ish sound) or a C# (to give it a major-ish sound). If the tune is Sliabh Russell then A + C is going to sound better/correct, but if the tune is High Reel then A + C# is going to sound better.

By now you may have noticed a pattern. All you're really doing is taking the note that would be a 3rd up from the melody note you are playing (in the context of the scale or mode you're in) and then playing a lower version of that note. In other words, the note D is a 3rd up from B, so if your melody note is on B then play a lower open D as your harmonizing note. Following that same logic, F# is a 3rd up from D, so if your melody note is on the 5th fret of the A-string (a D note) then play a harmonizing note on the 4th fret of the D-string (an F# note). Note: there's a slight chance that the F could be an F-natural if you're playing a D-dorian tune such as Sgt. Early's Dream or Maids of Mitchelstown.

Chords are made up of stacked notes in thirds, so this interval is completely within that theory. There's a reason that it works almost every time. Below I will insert a picture of this concept in tablature format. 

One thing I haven't mentioned is what about when your melody note is on an open string? In that case, something I hear banjo players such as Theresa O'Grady doing all the time is playing a harmonizing note on fret 2 of the lower string. So if a melody phrase is ending on the open D of the D-string, a good harmony note to add is fret 2 of the G-string which is an A note. And if your melody note is on the open A of the A-string, then a good harmony note that will work more times than not is fret 2 of the D-string which is an E note. 

Give this a go!

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How Long Have You Been Playing?

I hear the question "how long have you been playing" asked a lot. It's asked at an Irish session and might be directed toward a fiddler, flautist, or accordion player. Quite often the answer is surprising. A fantastic fiddler (who is probably in her late 50's or early 60's) might say "about ten years", or the flautist or accordion player - who are very good mind you - might say "3 or 4 years". 

In each case the person has likely been playing music a lot longer than that. It might have been on a different instrument and/or might not have been Irish traditional session tunes, but it probably dates back to when they took piano lessons as a child, or played trumpet in a middle school band, or studied classical violin, or played some instrument in church growing up, or guitar in their teenage bedroom, or bass in a reggae band as a young adult.

What about an Australian actor playing a Chicago cop who learns a Chicago accent for the TV series but then speaks in their normal Australian voice while doing the press for that show? Both the Australian voice that comes to him naturally and the Chicago accent that he learned for the role are the products of mimicry, but in only one case is he speaking with his own voice.

All musicians are practicing some form of mimicry, and I guess it's possible to mimic a style and still speak in your own voice. That may be the answer to "how long have you been playing".

The Wheel is Turning and You Must Hold On

I'm trying to get back into the beginner's mind and remember what it was like to be first learning a musical instrument as an adult. One concept that is kind of hard to get at first, or hard to understand the importance of, is what I am calling "The Wheel is Turning". What I mean by that is if you're actually playing a tune or song you have to play it all the way through without stopping, in time with whatever bpm you have set for yourself. In other words, staying in time with "the wheel". 

Picture a merry-go-round and you're on the horse riding around on it. If you get off of the horse, the merry-go-round keeps turning. That merry-go-round is the melody that you are trying to play. Once the merry-go round starts moving you have to keep moving with it. You can't stop just because you made a mistake or forgot how the tune goes. You have to keep going.

Of course when you are first learning the tune it's OK to isolate certain sections and practice those on repeat until you have it down. What I'm talking about is when you actually sit down to play the tune in its entirety, you should have this wheel concept in mind. The best way to do that is play along with a timing device like a metronome or drumbeat. I find drum beats to be more fun because they are more musical, just make sure you know where the "one" is and/or the down beat of each measure to make sure that you are keeping in time with it.

AI made this image

Practicing this way will improve your sense of time so that when you do play with other musicians you don't lose your place as easily. If you're playing Silver Spear or Swallowtail Jig with a group of other musicians, you don't want the group to have to start/stop/re-start due to your or any other person's glitches along the way. You want the group mind to take over and play the tune in rhythm so that if someone were dancing or clapping along they wouldn't miss a step or lose the beat.

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Ten Music Practice Ideas

The mood struck me today to see if I could jot down ten music practice ideas in under five minutes. Many of these come from books, podcasts, or videos I've consumed lately, but these are in my own words. Here's what I came up with:

-Play something you know in a different key than you know it in. If you know Lilting Banshee in A-Dorian, play it in G-Dorian. Or if you know Calliope house in D, try it in E. Or if you know Kilnamona Barndance in D or G, then play it in F like Martin Hayes does.

-"Sing" a measure or phrase, then play the next phrase. Alternate this all the way through the tune. Sing, lilt, hum, or sound out. You can even silently imagine the sound of the phrase in your head, then play the next phrase on your instrument. Then do the reverse. The next time through play the parts you sang or imagined the previous time, and sing or imagine the parts that you played.

-Do the opposite. If the tune is normally fast, then play it very slow. If a tune is normally slow, then play it super fast. Play a reel with a very swung, bouncy, dotted feel, and play a hornpipe as ramrod straight as possible.

-Quiet/Loud. Play measures 1 through 4 as quietly as possible, then measures 5 through 8 as loudly as possible. Then play measures 1 through 4 loudly and measures 5 through 8 quietly. Then play from quiet to loud, gradually building to a crescendo. Then play from loud to quiet gradually back down from the crescendo.

-Try playing a tune with the em-PHAH-sis in a different place than you normally play it. If you normally emphasize beats 1 and 3, then emphasize beats 2 and 4. Something like that.

-Simplify/Complicate. Try to simplify a tune as much as possible by removing notes. What is the least amount of notes you can play and have it still sound like St. Anne's Reel or Temperance Reel? Then go back to the original arrangement of the tune and add more notes, like everywhere there's a quarter note insert a triplet. 

-Deconstruct and rebuild a tune. Similar to the exercise above, but in this case you remove every up stroke in the tune and just leave the quarter note down strokes. Then replace the notes you removed with different notes to come up with an alternate version of the tune.

-Approximate a tune on the spot. Find a tune on Jonathan Lay's Trailjams.org site that you don't know that well or at all and listen to it three times through. As soon as the music stops playing, start playing your own improvised version of the tune by making it up on the spot. Try and play it at the same speed with the same number of measures, same number of parts, and so on. 

-Play a tune increasingly fast until it becomes way too fast, then keep going. Use a metronome that can gradually speed up, like the one on Strum Machine, and set it to increase by 5 BPM each time you repeat the tune. Where will you top out at? 120BPM?!!!

-Economy of motion, micro movements, as light as possible. Try and play the tune with as little movement as possible. Keep your fingers as close to the frets as possible, keep your picking hand moving as little as possible, hold the pick as lightly as possible, get all tension out of your body. Just try and play with the absolute best economy of motion you can possibly do.

-Smile, facial expression. Take a video of yourself playing. Are you smiling and engaging with an imaginary group of fellow musicians in a light-hearted and friendly manner, or are you making a frowning and/or "I'm trying too hard/concentrating too hard" type of face? Relax your facial muscles and intentionally smile while you play.

-Play the melodic rhythm of a tune by clapping it out with your hands. Or get some drum sticks and a drum pad and play it that way. What I mean is play the sound of the melody with rhythm only. This will help you get the feel of the rhythm into your body.

-Play a tune you know on a different instrument. If you know it on mandolin, try hammering out the melody on piano. This will get your ear working.

-Play ornaments and embellishments EVERYWHERE. Whatever type of ornament or grace note you might be working on...take a tune you like and try and put this embellishment into the tune in as many places as you possibly can. Way more than you would ever actually do when playing the tune normally. This will help you pick and choose when the time comes.

-25 minute transcription exercise. Set a timer on your phone for 25 minutes. Grab your instrument plus a pencil and paper and find a tune on Jonathan Lay's Trailjams.org site that you aren't that familiar with. Don't look at the notation until the timer goes off. For the first twenty-five minutes just listen and try to play along. Write down the names of the notes you are playing in whatever means you know how to transcribe or write out music. At the end of the 25 minutes check your work. The notation on trailjams.org exactly matches the audio so it's a great way to compare your aural skills to the written notes. This will really help your ear!

-One last one. If you had to play through a piece of music with your music teacher right now, which sections would you be most concerned about screwing up? That's what you need to work on. Identify those problem spots and come up with your own solutions for how to fix them!

That might be more than ten! Sorry.

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What is Irish Tenor Banjo (new version)

In celebration of 20 years playing music and 15 years writing articles on this blog, I am revisiting some old posts and trying to reevaluate them based on how I look at music now while also jogging that beginner's mind.

In 2015 I wrote a post called What is Irish Tenor Banjo. You can read that here. Nowadays I would be a lot more succinct and loose in my definition of this.

I would say that "Irish tenor banjo" is the process of using a banjo (usually a tenor banjo) to interpret the traditional jigs, reels, hornpipes, slides, slip-jigs, and polkas that are commonly played in Irish sessions. It's also a playing style that has some mechanical similarities to the melodic side of bluegrass guitar flatpicking. Norman Blake, for example, would have been a great Irish tenor banjo player. Due to the staccato nature of their chosen instrument, Irish tenor banjo players make liberal use of an embellishment known as the triplet. 

That's really all that needs to be said about it. It doesn't really need to be defined any more than that. 

There's no reason that the variety of approaches to Irish tenor banjo playing can't be as wide as the gap between say Jerry Garcia and Steve Vai. I just hope you would have the good sense to come over to the rootsy, playful, relaxed, swinging, spontaneous, and interactive side of things and favor that over technical skills, flashy technique, and overly precise arrangements.

Playing beautiful melodies is just as important as playing at blazing fast speeds.

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My Three Favorite Music Books

Forgive me if I've already posted this before as I find myself repeating the same things over and over these days. Here are my three favorite music books:

• Learn Faster, Perform Better by Molly Gebrian
• Anyone Can Play Music by Josh Turknett
• Improvise for Real by David Reed

If you have thirty minutes to practice today but don't know how to fill that time, or how to get the most out of that time, Molly Gebrian's Learn Faster, Perform Better will definitely help you with this. Her book is about the neuroscience behind practicing - how to do it in the most effective and efficient way.

If you've ever wondered how a fiddler can remember hundreds of tunes, or if you've ever wanted to play folk music the same way it's been done by traditional musicians for centuries  - by ear - then Josh Turknett's book Anyone Can Play Music will be right up your alley. As both a neurologist and a traditional musician (clawhammer banjo), Turknett's methods apply modern day science and research to old-fashioned methods of learning music that has the potential to free you from being tab dependent.

Lastly, if you are curious about chords, scales, or music theory and would like it explained in a fun, interactive, and non-academic way, then Improvise for Real may be what you need. This book by David Reed changed the way I look at the major scale and modes and freed up my musical creativity in ways that I didn't anticipate.

Those are my three favorite music books!

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Portland Collection Jam Culture

Years ago when I first discovered the Portland Collection books and recordings I never dreamed of playing in tune jams with the people involved in that project. But now that I live near Portland I get to sometimes play in jams with Sue Songer, George Penk, and Betsy Branch. I didn't get to meet Clyde Curley since he doesn't live in Portland anymore. 

The Portland contra jam culture is open and friendly. Each participant gets a chance to pick a tune. You can lead it yourself or have someone else lead it at a tempo comfortable for you. Occasionally there are medleys, but most of the time it's just one tune played many times through. The general rule of thumb is when you think it's been enough times, play it one or two more times! Kind of like how it's done in old-time music.

These are play by ear sessions. They don't actually use the books and instead trust in the folk process to bring the tunes to life as best as can be remembered or interpreted in the moment. The tunes are a mixture of the ones that have been taught over the years at tune teaching sessions and consist of Irish, New England, old-time, Québécois and more, including newer tunes that would have likely made it into Volume 4 if Volume 3 weren't the last book in the series.

I like the variety and it's exposing me to tunes I had either never heard before or forgot that I knew, including Fair Jenny's Jig, William Blake's Dead, All the Way to Galway, Road to Boston, Da Lounge Bar, The Flowers of Autumn, Hut on Staffin Island, Scotty O'Neil's, Shoes and Stockings, McLenon's Reel, and Wilbur's March, to name a few. 

If I may toot my own horn, the format is similar to the fiddle tunes jam I used to host on Saturday mornings in Ashland, VA. Back then I suffered from beginner's naivete which caused me to doubt whether trying to mix the Irish session and old-time jam repertoire was a good idea. You'd have people used to playing Irish music, sometimes on diatonic "D" instruments, interacting with old-time fiddlers and clawhammer banjo players who are used to tuning to a certain key. Going from a E-Dorian jig to a C-tune was tough. But we made it work and always had a good turnout.

We didn't have a piano player comping out chords on the beat like Sue Songer does, though. That piano sound is integral to the contra style and it's wonderful to be able to hear it in person. After two years in Oregon, I'm ready to add more of these Portland Collection type tunes to my repertoire!

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Bradley Overton Music Coaching for Guitar and Irish Tenor Banjo

Bradley Overton

I've been playing tenor banjo for 20 years now and for a lot of that time I've been without a dedicated music teacher. Recently I started looking for a music coach who could help me sound better, whatever that might mean. This search led me to Bradley Overton, who offers personalized 1-2-1 music coaching on guitar and Irish tenor banjo, in-person or online. Since he is in the UK and I am on the west coast of the USA it has to be online, with an 8 hour time difference!

In-person would of course have been ideal, but Bradley is the first online music teacher that I've encountered who really utilizes that platform to its full extent. During my first lesson we jumped right in and wasted no time. Brad shared his screen and ran me through a number of drills to assess where I'm at and where I could improve, utilizing Guitar Pro software to create specific exercises on the spot. This "hit the ground running" teaching style really works well for my ISTJ personality type. I was given clear feedback and assigned homework. The next lesson built upon what we have covered in the previous lesson. 

I like to play Irish tunes and other types of fiddle tunes on a tenor banjo tuned GDAEB (mine has one extra string!) and I play in intermediate to advanced sessions a couple times a week, surrounded by musicians who are often much better than I am. I didn't know what "sounding better" might mean but fortunately Brad could take a listen and know exactly what to address without any hemming and hawing or wasted time.

Brad has me thinking about all kinds of musical things I have never thought of before, which is what a great teacher should do. Since I am actively playing in sessions I can take the things I am working on and try them out in real-life situations. If you are looking for not just a music teacher, but a music coach who is an excellent communicator able to custom tailor their instruction just for you, then I strongly recommend that you check out Bradley Overton!

Musical Success

There's a meme floating around the internet this week about musical success. I have posted a screen shot of it here. I'm so thankful that I chose to start playing a musical instrument 20 years ago and that I found a style of music that I call "unison melody music" that I am capable of playing. I wish I had started a lot sooner. 

I feel like there's a modern day perception that music can only be created by exceptionally talented people and that the bar is so high that it's easier to click play on your phone or drop the needle on a vinyl LP than it is to take the time to learn the trumpet, fiddle, or accordion. Or that music lessons are for children, not adults. 

For me, the tradition part of traditional music is not about what instrument you play or what style you are emulating or where the tunes come from or how you go about learning them. It's not even always about performing or entertaining others. It's about participation and the act of creating music by doing it yourself. It's about getting together with others to play a common repertoire whether anyone is listening or not. Just being able to do this at some level, at any level...that to me is musical success. 

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Hammer-ons, Pull-offs, and Slides

Somehow I have made it 20 years into playing tenor banjo without giving much consideration to the embellishments known as hammer-ons and pull-offs. I have kind of been doing slides, but not that much. This summer I am making it my goal to learn what hammer-ons and pull-offs are [they are fret-hand ornaments that help us play a note that is not picked] and practice implementing them in the Celtic and contra dance tunes that I like to play. 

My first question is why do these embellishments? I guess the answer is that hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides, as well as triplets and double stops, are stylistic tools that can be used as variations to help spice up a tune. It is also said that hammer-ons and pull-offs can create a smoother sound called legato.

I was looking for lessons on how to do hammer-ons and pull-offs in the context of fiddle tunes and found these posts by mandolin teachers Mando Mike and David Benedict. 

Mando Mike uses the well known tune Red Haired Boy to demonstrate where these embellishments can be inserted. https://www.mandomike.com/post/red-haired-boy-with-added-ho-po

David Benedict separates hammer-ons and pull-offs into two separate lessons:

https://youtu.be/wkxLn1OELtM?si=2jGcXTh2VvUm0454

https://youtu.be/W7xQdZ2H8N0?si=SeB-kNBgZsWDm-6r

I find slides to be a bit easier to "pull off". When I say slides, in this case I don't mean the Irish tune type called a slide, which is notated in 12/8 time. I mean the type of slide technique as taught in these videos by Mando Mike and David Benedict:

https://www.mandomike.com/post/after-the-battle-of-aughrim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apF1Up02HR4

I like the way BanjoLemonade does slides on the tenor guitar in this video: https://youtube.com/shorts/qR0iKNz1l7Y?si=QCxe5V4OSWZzP8dA

And that's it!

Featured Article: How To Learn Any Instrument Using Your Voice

Yesterday I came across an article from 2016 by Benedict Marsh titled "How to Learn Any Instrument Using Your Voice". It may be one of the best music learning posts I've ever come across. You can read the full write up here: https://www.lessonface.com/content/how-learn-any-instrument-using-your-voice

Here are some highlights:

Many people fail to realize that they have already learned how to play an instrument using mimicry once in their lives: their voice.

You learned to make all of those incredible sounds called words in your mother tongue by listening to the sounds around you and copying them through a lot of trial and error. The people around you didn’t show you a picture of the inside of your mouth and say, “put your tongue here”. It wasn’t taught visually. You just mimicked. 

The difference between the students who sing what they are trying to learn and those that don’t is blatant. When someone finally starts singing the part they are trying to play, they figure it out a lot faster. Singing the part connects you to your body, and to your aural abilities in a conscious physical way. It engages you in active listening - so that you are really paying attention to what the part is. You can’t sing a part unless you have really listened to it. This helps you to internalize it. If you have internalized it, it is much easier to bring that out of your body again into the instrument you are trying to learn.

Once I have mimicked my voice, by matching the notes on the guitar, I will notice that the way I am playing it on the guitar, assuming I am a beginner, doesn’t sound quite as fluid as the original. So, then I can start to practice it by singing small chunks of (an) 8 bar phrase and trying to get my guitar to sound the way I think it should sound to most accurately represent the (musical) phrase.

Take some time and connect to your voice. Go slow. Everyone can sing. Pick single notes on a piano or a guitar and try to find them with your voice. Let yourself “suck” and just try to match what you are hearing.

Trying to mimic the sound will change and grow your techniques! If you are playing something and it doesn’t sound like what you are trying to mimic - which you have now learned to sing - then change what you are doing until it does! Stay curious. You will discover new techniques this way; your own techniques.

Try to pick something that will challenge you but is doable for your skill level. It may be hard to navigate these waters at first, but you’ll get there.

Your ears telling you it doesn’t sound right is a good thing! It means you can hear the difference, and soon enough, with tenacity and determination, you will get it sounding the way you want it.

***

Is Tenor Banjo More Like Guitar, Mandolin or Banjo?

This post asks the question, is tenor banjo more like acoustic guitar, mandolin, or banjo? 

Mandolin

Some would say that tenor banjo is more like mandolin, primarily because of the tuning. If you already play tenor banjo tuned in 5ths, then it's easy to switch to either mandolin (or mandola) and vice versa. The similarity kind of stops there though. Mandolin has double course strings and a much shorter scale.

Guitar

The guitar is the instrument that replaced the banjo in jazz in the 1930's due improvements in design and amplification. The act of using a pick and flat-picking the way bluegrass guitar players do is quite similar to how Irish banjo players use a guitar pick to pluck melodies. Unless you tune your tenor banjo in Chicago style DGBE, then guitar is going to have a different tuning than tenor banjo. However, the scale length of a tenor banjo, especially a 19-fret/23-inch scale tenor banjo, is closer to that of a guitar than a mandolin. You're only a couple inches shy of a guitar scale length, whereas mandolin is about 9 inches shorter.

Banjo

From a playing perspective, tenor banjo actually shares very little in common with bluegrass style 5-string banjo playing or the old-time clawhammer banjo. There are similarities in construction. Both are banjos by design - a round frame with a skin or synthetic membrane stretched across it, with a neck and strings attached. And both share that lack of sustain. But the playing styles are very different.

In Summary

For decades I postponed getting an instrument and learning how to play it. One of the reasons is because I thought my options were only acoustic guitar, mandolin, or banjo, and I had excuses for why I didn't want to play each of those. Guitar felt too "boxy" and big. It had too many strings and was not comfortable to hold. Mandolin was cramped, too hard to get into tune, and I didn't like the feel of double course strings. Banjo, whether it bluegrass or clawhammer style (which were the only styles I knew of), just seemed like it would be too hard to play.

When I learned there was a banjo that you played with a guitar pick rather than your fingers or finger picks, tuned like a mandolin but with single strings an octave lower, and plucked single note melodies like a guitar flat-picker, I was sold. You take aspects of each...that unmistakable banjo sound, paired with the logic of an all 5ths tuning, and the tactile experience of plucking fiddle tunes so that you can pretend like you are Tony Rice or Norman Blake, all while playing a banjo. Not to mention that it's actually played in Irish music! Who knew?!

Trying to Sound Irish and Authentic

Fiddlers who play Irish tunes are oftentimes intentionally trying to sound Irish. Maybe you were a classically trained violinist or are coming from a bluegrass background, and now you're trying to get that other sound out of your playing and more of an Irish accent into your fiddling. 

I sometimes wonder if the same applies to Irish tenor banjo or if tenor banjo melody pluckers have more leeway? 

If you play basic versions of Irish tunes on tenor banjo, enough to get by in sessions, but you're not really adding typical banjo ornamentation like triplets, are you still playing Irish tenor banjo? 

Or let's say you do all the right things and have a 19-fret resonator tenor banjo tuned GDAE, play with a pick and make generous use of the characteristic triplets of Irish tenor banjo playing, but your repertoire focuses on American old-time, Québécois, and contra dance tunes instead of Irish trad. Are you still playing Irish tenor banjo? 

I also wonder where the line is between trying to sound authentic - as in trying to play with the ornamentation and other tropes that define "Irish" music, and trying to sound authentic - as in trying to sound like yourself even if that self happens to be an American who didn't grow up listening to Irish trad. 

Ultimately, the answer is probably to do whatever you want, as long as it sounds good to you. 

***

Creating Your Own Backing Tracks for Irish Trad Tunes

I've been looking for ways to create your own backing tracks with chords. I would be using these for the Irish tunes I'm learning. I like being able to play along with a chord-based backing track rather than just a drum beat. I found three options: Strum Machine, Musicca Chord Player, and TheMajor7. 

My criteria is:

-Must be quick and easy to use.

-Should have interesting sounds like jazz, reggae, Latin, et cetera.

-Should have 6/8 and 9/8 time signatures that could work for Irish tunes.

-Should have a count-in option.

Of the three sites I found, Strum Machine checks the most of these boxes. It is the easiest to use, it has 6/8 and 9/8 Celtic time signatures, and a count-in option. The designer of it definitely has fiddle tunes in mind. Strum Machine also has cool features such as auto speedup (allows you to set it so that it increases by a certain BPM each time through the tune), auto finish (allows you to set the backing track to automatically stop after a certain number of times through the tune), and medley (allows to string multiple tunes together into an Irish session style set). Strum Machine is the one I'll be using the most. 

The only bad thing about Strum Machine is the sound options are limited and are primarily from a bluegrass perspective. This is probably fine for most users who play bluegrass, old-time or Irish trad, but I like pairing an Irish melody with a style that is outside the norm.

I wanted to test out Strum Machine's 9/8 Celtic slip-jig rhythm and its medley setting, so I created a medley of 2x through Redican's Mother and 2x through Hardiman the Fiddler. Here's how it turned out.

Musicca Chord Player is my second favorite so far. It's definitely coming from a pop music angle though. What Chord Player has going for it is it's fairly easy to use and it has a decent variety of style options. Plus I really like how when it changes to a different section it changes up the pattern. That adds a level of fun and excitement to the music. I'm probably in the minority when it comes to this, but I've been enjoying playing Irish reels to the Chord Player's reggae style(s).

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to turn on a count-in beat, which is strange. It starts right away when you click play so you either have to start in progress or wait for it to come around again. Chord Player will also just loop forever until you stop it. I didn't see a way for you to set it to only loop three times, for example. And you can't put together medleys like you can in Strum Machine. Chord Player also doesn't have 6/8 time, but you can mimic 6/8 time by doing 3 beats per measure and then doubling the overall number of measures.

Lastly there's TheMajor7.com. Although it takes a little longer to create the backing track than the other two (unless there are shortcuts I haven't learned), TheMajor7.com is probably the best for creating jazz style backing tracks. I didn't like TheMajor7's 6/8 time whatsoever, so I won't be using it for any jigs, but I will likely use it for playing tunes in 4/4 time. 

Here's an example of the Irish reel The Old Bush first played with a reggae backing band using Musicca Chord Player, followed by a jazz backing band from TheMajor7.com.

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Twenty Years Playing Tenor Banjo

Next month, May 2026, will mark twenty years of playing tenor banjo. I went from having never played a musical instrument a day in my life to making it something I do every day. At first I was obsessed with the question of "how soon until I get good?". If I could have seen then where I am now I'm sure I would be unimpressed. I never got good. More like one-dimensionally adequate.

Fiddle tunes as well as Celtic jigs, reels, and hornpipes were pretty much there from the start because I had a couple teachers who helped steer me in that direction. For several years I also thought I should be playing songs by artists that I had spent most of my youth listening to including Ween, Phish, John Prine, Gillian Welch, The Grateful Dead, The Flaming Lips, Steve Earle, The Meat Puppets, Camper Van Beethoven, The Sadies, Neil Young, and more. 

It's funny how the idea of what music playing is going to be when you first start as an adult beginner changes over time. In my case I guess I grew out of the songs that I knew and loved when I was just a music fan and listener and grew into the instrumental tunes that more suited my chosen instrument - the tenor banjo flatpicked as a melody plucker.

One of the best things I ever did was I jumped right in. I didn't know of any jams or sessions where it was OK to mix tunes like Arkansas Traveler with tunes like Road to Lisdoonvarna, so I started my own! Within the first year or two, when I was still trying to figure out things like picking patterns and reading mandolin tab, I was hosting or co-hosting Fiddler's Fakebook type jams at local coffee shops including Java Jodi's in Goochland, VA and The Station Cafe and Ashland Coffee and Tea in Ashland, VA. Something I instantly liked about the tune playing community, whether it was old-time or more Irish trad based, is how welcoming the players could be to a beginner. I also caught a whiff of the snootiness that can be wrapped up in it through some attitudes and personality types. 

Ironically, the other best thing I ever did was to completely retreat from going to any jams or sessions whatsoever. From 2017 through 2023 I stopped playing anything that I had ever played before. During this time I stayed at home and pursued a solo practice where I would listen to musicians such as Tommy Guerrero, Sun Ra, Mulatu Astatke, Dorothy Ashby, Ernest Ranglin, Orchestra Baobab, The Skatalites, Blinky and the Roadmasters, Bacao Rhythm and Steel Band, Spokes Mashiyane, Lennie Hibbert, and Augustus Pablo (things that were far, far removed from being "fiddle tunes"), and then try and make up my own little AA/BB style tunes based on the melodies I was hearing in this music. Coincidentally this is almost exactly the same type of music that my now favorite radio station - KMHD in Portland, OR - plays 24/7 but I wouldn't discover KMHD until late 2025!

This approach did wonders for my ears and it also freed me from any concerns over right vs. wrong. Since I never once had access to the sheet music for the pieces I was using as inspiration, I never knew what the right notes were, or what the key signature was, or what the time signature was, or what the chords were, or where the measure lines went, or what BPM it should be played at, or even what type of tune it was. I wasn't thinking in terms of jig, reel, slide, rag, polka, slip-jig, march, hornpipe, mazurka, et cetera. I was meeting each melody head on in a case by case basis. 

Another thing I did during this time was I experimented with playing other instruments, including glockenspiel, xylophone, marimba, and guitar tuned in all-4ths. I still played all-melody all-the-time on these other instruments but it got me out of the finger patterns associated with GDAE all-5ths mandolin style tuning like I was using on the tenor banjo. Playing the keyboard layout of tuned mallet percussion was something completely different!

When I got to Oregon in 2024 and returned to the Irish trad repertoire with the goal of memorizing tunes and playing in sessions with others, I realized that I was now over whatever mental and physical humps had set me back in the past. Through a lot of hard work, I'm able to participate and be part of a community. I now learn Irish session tunes with the same method I was using with those other musical sources that I relied on from 2017 to 2023. My motto now is "learn the way it sounds and then make it sound the way you want". I no longer dwell over "how soon until I get good?". As an amateur, hobbyist, musician I get to play my instrument(s) every day and that's good enough for me.

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A Two Octave Chromatic Marimba

In 2019 I got a 3 octave DeMorrow marimba. It was a great instrument at a fair price and I highly recommend it. These are considered student instruments because they have only 3 octaves instead of 4 or 5 and lack resonators, while offering a much better sound than a typical student level bells kit.

During this time period in my life I had retreated from going to Irish sessions or old-time jams and was staying at home making up my own little melodies. Marimba was great for this because it made me think about music in a different way. The chromatic keyboard layout with its black keys and white keys is so different from left-handed tenor banjo or mandolin tuned in 5ths or left-handed guitar tuned in 4ths.

Three octaves is considered small in size for marimba, however, it was still pretty huge when compared to a tenor banjo or mandolin. It was over four and a half feet wide! I played it for about a year and a half before selling it. I don't recall exactly why I opted to get rid of it but I'm impulsively fickle like that. It was probably because of space considerations.

I'm now considering getting a marimba again, but this time I only want it to be two octaves - 25 chromatic notes from C to C in the soprano range so that the lowest note is middle C. That should make it about three feet wide. Much easier to transport and find space for. The layout would be similar to the image below. I like the symmetry of the two / three / two / three black keys pattern.

Two octave chromatic marimba

When I moved to Oregon in 2024 I went back to learning and playing Irish tunes. My current repertoire consists almost entirely of tunes that are likely to be played at an Irish session, or what they call a Pan Celtic session. The payoff is that others are likely to know most anything I learn how to play. Since I am near Portland, there is a lot of crossover between the traditional Irish trad repertoire and the contra dance melodies as found in the Portland Collection books, which I love. 

By my estimate, at least 80% of the tunes played at an Irish session do not have a melody note lower than D. Maybe 90%. In other words, most of these tunes don't require the low G string of a violin to play them. And on the high end, only like 1% of the commonly played tunes have a note higher than B. This means that most of these tunes would fit in a two octave range from C4 to C6. 

I have a theory about why the Irish session repertoire is limited to this range. I think it's because these aren't "fiddle tunes", per se. Other instruments such as flute, D-whistle and uillean pipes have equal footing in the community, and on those instruments the lowest note is D. And on fiddle the highest note you can hit without leaving first position is the E-string B note that fiddlers play with their pinky. These tunes have evolved over the years to fit within that span.

On the rare occasion that a traditional Irish melody ventures down to a violin's G string, flute and whistle players use a technique called "folding" where they rearrange the portion that is too low for their instrument by playing in a higher octave. From what I understand, how much of it you fold up is determined on a case by case, player by player, basis. Sometimes it might just a note or two and other times entire phrases are moved to the higher octave. On occasion they may also use a harmony note like a third interval if that sounds OK. Failing that, perhaps you just sit that one out or play it on a banjo or mandolin.

A marimba would usually be 4.3 to 5 octaves. This allows marimbists such as Jenny Klukken to play low end notes and enjoy the full spectrum of sound that the marimba is designed for. In my case, I don't play with any sense of chords or harmony and I'm not playing music meant for marimba. I only play melodies. The fact that this folding technique exists for certain instruments in the Irish trad world gives me confidence that the same strategy could be applied to a two octave marimba.

I've tried some other instruments but none of them have worked. I got a melodica in October and quickly developed a lingering cough from inhaling some type of dust or bacteria from the tube that you use to blow air to make sound. F-that. I very briefly tried an English Concertina but I felt like that was going to give me wrist problems. None of these offered the same satisfaction of hitting a tuned percussion note with a mallet!

I probably won't be learning many reels on marimba. But jigs, slides, polkas, barn dances, and mazurkas are fair game, as well as slower airs and harp tunes.

To sum up, like I alluded to before, a marimba or xylophone can be a great second instrument for a string player because it takes you out of your comfort zone. Perfect for ear training and music theory - seeing and hearing things in a different way!

Incorporating Suzuki and Orff Into Your Own Music Practice

I wanted to write an article titled “Incorporating Suzuki and Orff Into Your Own Music Practice”, and hey look I did! The problem is I didn’t know anything about the Suzuki method or the Orff approach to music when I began formulating this post. So I had to do some research before I could complete the task. It might not have been worth the effort, but here it is.

Suzuki and Orff are both designed for children, with an emphasis on playing by ear. So for adult learners who might be starting their first instrument in their thirties, forties, fifties or sixties, extrapolating aspects of each is going to take some adaptation.

The Suzuki method is modeled after a child’s innate ability to learn their native language, the “mother-tongue”. Believing that the easiest way to learn is by ear and that talent is not born - that musical ability can be developed in anyone.

Suzuki relies on lots of listening, repetition and imitation of a structured common repertoire. Students learn by ear at first. Sheet music is not brought in until later, similar to how as a child you learned to speak before you learned to read.

Pieces are introduced in a logically progressive order, chosen because each new piece introduces a specific skill while reinforcing an old one. Suzuki is taught with specific instrument proficiency in mind. Commonly used instruments are violin, piano, or flute.

Orff, while also ear-based, is more about creativity, improvisation, collaboration and participation. Musical creativity is encouraged as the ultimate goal with the knowledge that making music should be an inclusive, playful and fun experience. Students learn by doing, acting as co-creators in the learning process rather than passive recipients of information. It’s not about being told or shown, it’s about being actively involved in the music making - making it your own without worrying about theory.

Students engage in an ensemble setting, working together to develop their sense of timing and harmony. The basic elements of music, like form, rhythm, texture, harmony and melody aren't learned the traditional way, but through experience.

Common Orff instruments include xylophones, metallophones, and glockenspiels. Some are just pentatonic or diatonic, while some might be fully chromatic. These relatively simple instruments allow students to focus on creativity, improvisation and musicality rather than technical complexity. Instruments are seen as tools for exploration and expression, not ends in themselves.

So what can we learn from these two somewhat opposing processes?

Adults can benefit from the methodical structure inherent in Suzuki - the clear, logical progression of pieces. However, Suzuki is really just a choice of repertoire. You could just as easily use Irish trad tunes set up in a gradual progression: polkas > slides > jigs > reels > hornpipes > slip-jigs might be one way. Gradually working up in difficulty and introducing ornamentation along the way. Adding pieces based on what techniques each new piece teaches or reinforces.

The Suzuki method is well suited to single-line melody, which makes fiddle tunes and Irish traditional music a logical choice. When you play Irish traditional music, you can also find camaraderie in this common repertoire, bonding over a shared experience and knowing that music is not a competition. That is in line with the Suzuki philosophy.

Whereas the Orff approach may inspire you to see what kinds of melodies you can come up with on your own, and to have fun while learning and not be worried about making mistakes. Maybe you get into melodic variation, exploring a hundred variations of a tune. Or maybe you experiment with different ways to play a rhythm.

Or maybe you simply internalize the various rhythms by adding movement and singing to your practice, using onomatopoeia mnemonics such as “buy the band a beer” for hop jigs, “I saw three ships a sailing in” for slides, “humpty-dumpty” for hornpipes, and “pineapple apricot” for jigs.

Orff's emphasis on improvisation and participation will definitely come into play when you are at a session or a jam. A major benefit of playing with others is your sense of timing and rhythm will improve, and you can react in real time to what's going on around you rather than being locked into rote memorization or what's written on a page.

I hope that does it!

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Review - Sonor Orff Meisterklasse TAG 25 Tenor-Alto Chromatic Glockenspiel

Here's a quick review of the 25-bar Sonor Meisterklasse Chromatic Glockenspiel. I decided to get the Sonor TAG 25 tenor-alto glockenspiel (range C2-C4) instead of the SG 25 soprano model (range C3-C5) because it was lower pitched and seemed like it would have a more mellow sound. 

What I like about it:

-Fairly compact size. 20 inches wide side to side, 18 inches top to bottom (left hand side) and 9.5 inches top to bottom (right hand side). A traditional 2.5 octave G to C glockenspiel would have been more like 24 inches wide. I don't know the dimensions of the SG 25 chromatic soprano, but it's got to be even smaller.

-Removable bars per the Orff approach. I mostly play in Irish keys/modes with one or two sharps where the lowest note in a melody is often going to be no lower than D and the highest note is never going to be any higher than B. The two octave C2-C4 range fully captures these notes with one or two to spare on each end. With removable bars, I can take off the bars that don't get played at all or hardly ever such as A#/Bb, D#/Eb, F natural, the low and high C bars, and so on.

-Sits in lap. The beechwood resonator box that the bars are situated on is fully enclosed so it can be played on your lap while sitting in a chair or on the couch. It also easily sits on a table.

-Comes with two sets of mallets: a rubber head set and a wooden set. These have different sounds. Check out the sound sample video below! I play a brief melody with the rubber mallets first, followed by the same melody played with the wooden mallets.

-Cool design. It looks better than most other bells or xylophone type instruments.

What I don't like as much:

-It resonates forever!!! The notes ring out for a loooooong time so they are still ringing when you go to play the next note. This can create a cacophony of sound as one note blurs into the other. Plus any "wrong" notes are going to be ringing for a while as a reminder of your mistake, LOL! I don't know of a way to dampen this. My first instinct was to send it back due to the alarming amount of sustain.

-It kind of sounds like a doorbell chime ringing at different pitches. Now that I've heard it in person, I kind of wish it had fiberglass xylophone-like keys with a quick attack instead of these aluminum alloy bars. Maybe I'll get used to it.

-The e3 note on mine doesn't ring quite as well as the other notes around it. This is probably related to the rubber pins that hold the bars in place. The good news is that these pins are easily replaced.

These glockenspiels are available from West Music and other retailers.

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Which Irish tunes types are the easiest to learn?

Which Irish tunes types are the easiest to learn?

Well, polkas are probably the easiest to learn. They are among the simplest types of tunes with straightforward, often happy melodies. Polkas sound relatively normal to Americanized ears, along the lines of nursery rhymes or basic folk songs. Barndances with their moderate tempo, and marches with their stately, unhurried style are also fairly easy to pick up.

Jigs. What makes jigs difficult is not necessarily the notes but the rhythm. However, once you conquer the “pineapple apricot” rhythm, jigs can become fairly easy to learn. For one thing, jigs have fewer notes per measure than most other Irish tune types, which adds up to fewer notes to have to remember across 8 or 16 measures. 

Slides are also pretty easy to learn, probably because they are very whistleable. Slides can feel fast, but if you slow them down and bring out the dotted swing of the rhythm you’ll often find that slides are melodically more simple than jigs. The 12/8 time signature seems like it would be complex but it doesn't have to be.

Reels can be intimidating due to their fast tempo and blazing runs of notes. With practice, you may find that reels are the most “fiddle tune” like of the Irish tune types. For example, the bluegrass or old-time tune Liberty could definitely pass for an Irish reel. Once you become familiar with how reels are structured, including repeated patterns that show up time and time again, you can eventually hack your way through learning them.  

I find hornpipes to be among the more difficult tunes to learn. I think this is because hornpipes have some intervallic leaps unique to their structure which require stable technique to pull-off. Hornpipes also commonly feature built-in triplets that can make the standard melody more challenging to play. One other aspect of difficulty could be attributed to the more complex chordal structure found in hornpipes. 

Lastly on my list there’s slip-jigs. These "hoppy" tunes are in 9/8 time which can seem the most baffling and unfamiliar from a rhythm standpoint. The unusual timing makes it very hard to stay in sync with where the “one” is and know where to place the emphasis as phrases begin or end. Never fear. With practice and familiarity, once mysterious tunes such as The Butterfly will become ones you can play in your sleep!

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