Use Audio, Not Written Music, to Remember How a Tune Goes

If you're like me, when you're first learning a new Irish session tune you try to memorize it both aurally and visually. Listening to how it sounds and looking at the written music helps create a picture of the tune in the mind. After those first few days of learning a tune this way, the next step is to try remembering it by listening rather than looking. Usually, an audio snippet is enough. Or at least it'll get you most of the way there.

This approach also works for tunes learned a while back. Over the course of a couple of years, a musician can become familiar with a lot of tunes, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can always remember how they sound off the top of their head. Not all of them make it into long-term memory. Dick Gossip's, Dunmore Lasses, Devanney's Goat... these all start running together after a while. The same tunes  can be re-learned over and over again by listening to jog the memory. Sometimes, hearing just the first few notes is enough to get things going, and the rest of the tune comes back.

Just like how a car or an instrument needs a tune-up every so often, tunes themselves need an occasional tune-up as well. A musician might feel perfectly comfortable playing Banish Misfortune or Blarney Pilgrim at a session, but if it's been a while since the written notes were reviewed, there's a good chance the tune has drifted into "fudge it" territory. This might be called the folk process, or more likely, it's a matter of lazily glazing over sections by defaulting to rote fingerings that work OK but aren't exactly how the tune is supposed to sound.

There's also the flipside. Learning a tune solely from a recording rather than looking at the notes can lead to an interesting result. A musician might get the gist of how it sounds and start playing something closely resembling it. It may not be until playing it with others that the realization sets in: the version being played is only about 80% correct. The other 20% has been misheard or simply made up along the way.

It might sound perfectly good when played alone, but that doesn't mean it's how the actual notes are written in the music. By finally looking at the written music and reviewing those measures, the musician can correct the mistakes and get the tune back on track.

So perhaps the lesson is to both do and don't look at the dots. Anyway. Good luck!

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I Played My First Contra Dance!

This past Saturday I played in my first contra dance as part of an open band. The core group that was miked consisted of two fiddles, a piano, and electric bass. I was among about ten other pick-up musicians on stage who weren't plugged in but were still taking part in the playing. The stakes weren't that high but it was a lot of fun. I have some tidbits and obersvations below.

Here's my description of what contra dancing is: it's kind of like square dancing and céilí dancing. I'm not a dancer myself so I don't know the specifics. The tunes are either played as reels or as jigs at pretty fast tempos, and are drawn from Irish, Scottish, and English traditions, as well as from Québécois, American old-time, New England, and more. Many of the tunes in the contra dance repertoire were composed in the last 50 years and were written specifically with this in mind. If you're looking for sheet music tunebooks, the three volumes of The Portland Collection are the place to start. It doesn't stop there though; being a living tradition, new tunes are always being introduced.

-It was Halloween so all the dancers had on crazy costumes. From what I could see it was non-stop smiles!

-Being Halloween, instrumental versions of This Is Halloween (from Nightmare Before Christmas), The Addams Family theme, Ghostbusters, Funeral March of a Marionette, and other spooky tunes were worked into the medleys.

-Participants got the music list about two weeks prior. I knew about a dozen of them already, including personal favorites such as Road to Boston, Over the Waterfall, Out on the Ocean, and Maison de Glace which made me excited about being able to take part. I was able to practice some of the other 30+ tunes on the list but mostly just winged it in the moment.

-Some of the ones I didn't know beforehand that I'd like to learn include Bottom of the Punchbowl, Round the Horn, Money in Both Pockets, and Mouse in the Kitchen.

-The speeds weren't that bad. Maybe it was being in the moment, maybe it was having the sheet music in front of me, but for the most part I was able to keep up. It was only on the really note-filled reels that the 110bpm became a struggle.

-Each dance goes on for about ten to twelve minutes by my estimate, so I can see why they do a medley of three tunes so that you're not stuck playing one thing over and over the entire time. The lead fiddler as well as the caller did a great job notifying us of when the tunes were going to be changing. Super smooth transitions. Hup!

-The piano player in the band was great! Very consistent timing and lively, energetic playing. I love the style of piano used in contra dance music.

-We played for over 3 hours with just a small ten minute break in between. Each 90 minutes of playing concluded with a waltz, which I assume is per tradition. When we resumed playing after the ten minute break, we started with a polka (Walls of St. Malo!), which must also be customary.

-I had the sheet music - which I had converted to mandolin tab - for every piece of music on the list, organized into sets of three. So I had that as backup for anything I didn't know at all, which was a lot of them! However, for the ones that I did know I tried not to look at the music and watch the dancers instead.

-When you're focused on reading the music in front of you, you're not really listening, per se. You don't hear as much. I noticed this because for the tunes that I did know well, where I could relax a little bit and just play from long-term memory, it was a night and day difference...I could hear everything that was going on. 

-The very first tune of the night was June Apple. Somehow I printed the wrong sheet music for a completely different version of June Apple. I noticed this as soon as the music started playing so I had to fake it by trying to play by ear. It was a good way to start!

-I would definitely do it again!

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10/15/26 30th Anniversary for No Doy, Shack-man and Billy Breathes

It was 30 years ago today that two of my favorite albums were released (No Doy by moe. and Shack-man by Medeski, Martin and Wood). It was also the release date of what many people consider to be Phish's best studio album (Billy Breathes). 

I distinctly remember getting moe.'s No Doy CD on 10/15/96 at Digits on West Broad Street in Richmond. But I also remember getting both Billy Breathes and Shack-man a few miles down the street at Peaches. Could this all have been the same day? Maybe Peaches didn't have No Doy in stock so I had to go to Digits to get it. I would also been loyal to Digits, having been given a copy of moe.'s 45-minue Meat promo single there the day before.

By October of 1996 I had already seen .moe at least twice (once at Twisters in RVA and once at Wilmer's Park in Brandywine, MD), and MMW at least once at Trax in Charlottesville. And of course I had already seen Phish several times by then, so I would have been eagerly anticipating all three of these releases. 1996 would have also still been a prime CD buying era for me, when I spent a significant portion of any disposable income on CD's.

Thirty years later, each of these albums have held up. Not only do I consider No Doy to be moe.'s best studio album, I also rank it as the best jamband studio album of the nineties. In my opinion, nothing better represents the 90's jamband sound - from a studio perspective at least - than No Doy.

I also consider Shack-man to be Medeski, Martin and Wood's best studio album. It was famously recorded inside a solar-powered shack in Hawaii. The limitations of that setting worked to their advantage, giving the music an intimate, fly-on-the-wall type of vibe.

All Phish studio albums are flawed in some way, and Billy Breathes is no different. The track Talk is a dud, and the Swept Away > Steep segment at the end never did much for me. However, as I mentioned above many people consider it to be Phish's best studio album (for its production values), but I can think of two or three others that I would put above it. That said, it is one that you could put on a nice sound system for the sonic appreciation of your audiofile friends.

That's all. I just wanted to do a quick write up to commemorate the 30th anniversary of these three albums!

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My Nine Albums #my9albums

There's a thing going around called #my9albums where you select your nine most formative albums. Here are my nine.

Reckoning by Grateful Dead - Without this album, none of these others would have been as easy to come by. It’s the nucleus from which everything else springs.

Barren County by New Grass Revival - Before Leftover Salmon, before String Cheese Incident, before Yonder Mountain String Band, there was New Grass Revival. This album likely also led me to Norman Blake, Tony Rice, John Hartford, Red Clay Ramblers, and Hot Rize. And it also made me a fan of Flying Fish records.

John Prine by John Prine - Although I don’t listen to as much singer-songwriter music as I used to, there’s definitely a wide, wide cosmic portal that was opened just by listening to this CD on repeat, which has shaped my musical identity. I may not have gotten to Gillan Welch, Steve Earle, Nanci Griffith, or Cowboy Junkies without stopping here first.

Junta by Phish - What can I say? Thanks to my good friend Mike Goff, this was the first Phish album that I heard, before any live recordings. It was out of left field but it hooked me and almost 35 years later, and 70 shows later, has never let go! The four members of Phish set a standard of excellence by which all other music falls short. I’ve spent more time listening to Phish than any other artist or band. Just last night I watched their 3.5 hour+ live webcast from Huntsville, Alabama! Without Phish I may not have discovered Ween or My Morning Jacket. Who knows?

Telephone Free Landslide Victory by Camper Van Beethoven - Long before he opened Deep Groove records in Richmond, VA, Jay Leavitt made me a cassette copy of this album burned from vinyl. When I eventually started playing music of my own, the faux-ethnic instrumentals such as Yanqui Go Home, Mao Reminisces About His Days in Southern China, Border Ska, and Opi Rides Again would be very much in the back of my mind! And the irreverent and snarky songs would share a commonality with Richmond, VA’s Special Ed and the Shortbus who would later become a local live music favorite of mine.

Two Sevens Clash by Culture - This is another one that Jay Leavitt turned me on to. Not all reggae is good, but a few outliers such as this album stand out as exceptional. I consider it formative because it led me to Jamaican mento music as well as other music of the Caribbean islands. And it never gets old. Side A of the tape was Two Sevens Clash and Side B was Harder Than The Rest. It was just one big double album to me.

Lanquidity by Sun Ra - Henry Cook, a former co-worker of mine at Community Idea Stations, put this CD into my hands and forever altered my pathways. Henry also gave me a copy of Blue Breakbeats by Grant Green, which narrowly missed this 9 albums list. Lanquidity opened my mind as much as anything else I can think of. Sun Ra represents an eccentric, artistic freedom and a permission to follow creativity wherever it may lead.

Yvonne Casey by Yvonne Casey - This was my introduction to Irish traditional music*. Laura and I heard it playing at the Doolin Café during dinner on our first ever night in Ireland back in November 2004, bought the CD that night and then went to the CD release party the next night featuring Yvonne Casey, Eoinn O’Neil, Quentin Cooper, and many more. Even though lots of Guinness, Smithwick’s and Bulmers were drunk that night, I still distinctly remember the feeling that my life is changing RIGHT NOW. I wouldn’t start playing music until two years after this, but the ignition energy started here. *Not strictly trad, it also features some Camper Van Beethoven style instrumentals - Skatallites and Buena Vista Social Club covers - courtesy of Quentin Cooper!

Harlem Banjo! by Elmer Snowden - In 2006 I got a tenor banjo on a whim and didn’t know what to play on it. Peter Solomon, the WCVE-FM jazz host at that time, told me about Elmer Snowden, the Black 4-string banjo player who tuned his tenor banjo GDAE and made a legendary studio recording on December 9, 1960 that would become the Harlem Banjo! LP. Peter burned a vinyl to CD copy of this out of print record for me along with a George Guesnon CD. (Peter also gave me a Rufus Harley CD but thankfully that didn’t lead to bagpipes). Even though I ended up playing fiddle tunes and Irish jigs on tenor banjo instead of trad jazz, this recording proved that tenor banjo could be “cool” and now I had a buffer for all those banjo naysayers out there. Sticks and stones.

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Taking the Ferry from Port Townsend to Coupeville on Whidbey Island

My wife and I recently spent a week enjoying the Pacific Northwest, dividing our time between Astoria, Oregon and Port Townsend, Washington, using each town as a home base to explore the surrounding areas. By far, the most fun day we had was when we walked from our hotel cottage in Port Townsend to catch the 11am ferry to Whidbey Island. I just bought walk on tickets when we got there which were only $5 per person each way. We timed it just right - walking up just as the last cars were loading. It was also timed so that when we got off the ferry at the Coupeville Ferry Terminal we only had to wait about 5 minutes for the free no charge Island Transit shuttle bus to pick us up for the 20 minute route into the town of Coupeville, where the original Practical Magic movie was filmed. The ferry from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island takes about 30 to 35 minutes and pedestrians are the first ones off. I saw either a small whale, dolphin, or sea lion on the ride over.

It was early October so Coupeville was already leaning into the Halloween theme, with witchy decorations all over town. The weather was absolutely perfect. A crisp, clear, and warmish early fall day. After a brief look around at the picture perfect Front Street, we went into Toby's Tavern for lunch and a beer or two. Toby's is the kind of place that you could settle in to, but we managed to escape after only about 90 minutes, LOL! We took more pictures and walked around a bit more. We had some time to kill before taking the shuttle > ferry back, so we got a glass of wine from Vail Wine Shop and Tasting Room and savored the incredible outdoor view from the little porch behind the building.

After about 30 minutes, it was time to go back because we didn't want to leave our dog alone in the hotel room for too long. The shuttle was late picking us up (or had it been early so we missed it???). It finally arrived only about 8 minutes late and we still made the same ferry back to Port Townsend that we had intended to. We saw sea lions in the water on the ferry ride back.

Let me back track a bit. We spent the first part of our trip in Astoria, OR. We had been to Astoria many times before, but it was still fun to spend a few days off in our favorite town in Oregon with its rugged river views and blue collar feel. We went to many of the breweries, including Fort George and Buoy of course. We had some good breakfasts and we also discovered a well established but new-to-us restaurant called Silver Salmon Grille that we'll be returning to on future visits. While in Astoria, we drove across the bridge into Washington state to visit Cape Disappointment and take in the expansive views and the lighthouse there.

I had never been to Port Townsend, WA before so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I thought it would be similar to Astoria but it was actually quite different. Both are small maritime cities of similar size and populations, but Port Townsend has a more artistic, well preserved, upscale thing going on. With calmer waters. While Astoria is a great no nonsense hub for craft beer and pub food, Port Townsend is more suited to cozy bistros and quiet lounges where you can enjoy small plates with a glass of wine or a cocktail and imagine yourself living there. It's a place where rich, older people go to retire. It took a minute to warm to Port Townsend's charms, but I ended up liking it a lot!

We did the touristy things in Port Townsend like walking along Water street, catching the shuttle to uptown, visiting Chetzemoka Park, Fort Warden Historical State Park, and Fort Townsend Historical State Park, and driving out to Finnriver Farm and Cidery. It was also fun to just sit with our dog outside The Old Whiskey Mill on Water Street and watch people walk by. Port Townsend had some great breakfast spots (Hudson Point Café and The Courtyard Café) as well as some good places for dinner and/or a nightcap (Mezzaluna Lounge and Alchemy Bistro and Wine Bar), plus a good old fashioned locals bar bar (Anchor).

I'm looking forward to returning to Port Townsend and spending more time on Whidbey Island!

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Rhythm and Timing vs. Ear Training vs. Technique

My musical practice is all based around repertoire - learning and re-learning the tunes that get played at the Irish sessions and contra jams that I attend. Within that overarching repertoire practice, there is room for focusing on rhythm and timing, on ear training, and on technique. 

Of those three sub-categories, I'm realizing that rhythm and timing is most important. No matter how fast or slow you play, maintaining good rhythm and timing = having good feel. Most of us have a tendency to speed up. I know that I do. To work on this, I'm really valuing the metronome in a way I never had before. I have played a lot with a click and/or a drum beat, but usually the clicks or beats are so frequent that it's really difficult to get off track. 

Recently I've been experimenting with slowing the metronome down but playing at the same speed. For example, set the metronome at 80bpm and play along with it. Once you're comfortable with that, change the metronome to 40bpm but still play at the same speed you were when the metronome was at 80. This will make it a little harder to stay in sync. Once you have that going smoothly, change the metronome to 20 bpm but still play at the same speed as before. This will be much more difficult, requiring a conscious effort and an internal sense of rhythm to stay on the beat. Most over the counter metronomes don't go that "slow", but you can find metronome apps like Time Guru that allow for 20bpm or slower.

Of course ear training or learning/remembering the tune by ear rather than sheet music is a struggle that gets easier over time. Michael Eskin describes a method of ear training that I've started to adopt. In a nutshell you listen to a slowed down section of a tune like just the A part for a period of 10 or 15 instruments. You can sing along like a "dubba dubba" muttering of the melody, but don't try to play along. Just listen. Then go do something else for a while like chores or taking a walk. When you come back, pick up your instrument and try to play as much by ear as you can recall just from memory alone. It might be nothing at first, but try for at least five minutes before giving up. Then listen to the recording again and repeat the process. This is not a quick fix but over time you can learn the tune this way.

Another thing you can do is take a tune you're on the cusp of learning, like one you almost have, and play it from memory without looking at the sheet music. If you do need to listen to jog your memory, only listen to the very being as an aural insipid. Then sing it to yourself at a speed that you can easily play. If you have metronome that you can tap, tap at the speed that you are singing to set the click tempo. Maybe that happens to be 60 bpm. Then play it from memory to the click of the metronome. Play it in real time filling in any notes or measures you can't quite recall, but staying on the beat. 

Or take a tune that you know really well, note for note, and play a completely improvised version of it applying melodic variations, triplets, double stops, or other ornamentation/embellishments...as much as you can think of while still staying in time with the metronome click. Keep the actual sound of the tune in your head and know where you are at any given time with regard to the AA/BB structure, but otherwise play freely. 

Of course technique is all part of this as well. I sometimes have a hard time defining what exactly technique is, but I think it qualifies as everything from how you hold your instrument, to how you sit balanced with good posture and no tension in the body, to pick direction, to economy of motion, to dynamics (loud vs quiet, straight vs swung), to staccato versus legato, to how and when you breathe. I think it all comes down to being present and mindful of the movements you are making and how you are holding your body. 

I kind of rambled but the point of this post was to convey my belief that rhythm and timing is the most important element that needs work right now. However, within that work there is also the opportunity for ear training and being mindful of technique, all under the broader aspect of increasing repertoire and fine tuning or re-tooling the tunes you already know under the construct of this newfound internal sense of rhythm.

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Playing In Sessions May Have Had A Negative Impact On My Timing

Today is Tuesday. Over the 8 day span from this past Sunday to the Sunday before that, I played in 7 different sessions. That's a lot. Technically one of them was a tune learning session, but it was still playing music with others in a group setting. Not to mention that since I moved to Oregon two years ago I've probably logged over 500 hours of session playing, and that's likely a conservative estimate. 

All this time playing Irish tunes at pubs and cafés has been great for increasing my repertoire, exposing me to session speeds, and gaining experience playing with others. At the same time, I'm starting to think that it may have had a negative impact on my rhythm and timing. Something is off and I think it's because I've been relying too much on group tempo instead of working on developing my own internal sense of rhythm. Or it could be that all this time spent adjusting to the fluctuating speeds of a session environment has caused my own sense of time to erode. 

I also think that going to all these sessions may have forced me to play at speeds faster than I was ready to, hoping that my fingers would eventually catch up. I've often had to sacrifice playing cleanly to in order keep up with the session speed, glazing over trouble spots and being in a constant state of speed up/skip notes, speed up/skip notes, just to hang on.

I do spend a fair amount of time playing and practicing tunes at home, but I've mostly been doing this by playing along with recordings or drum machine tracks. When you're playing along with a click or backing track it's difficult to notice any rhythm or timing issues you might have because the constant beat keeps you in place like training wheels on a bicycle.

I am going to address this head on by working more diligently with a metronome - using it as a tool and not as a crux. One example is setting the metronome to click once per bar, or once every other bar, or once every 4th bar so that you're not constantly being kept in place by a click. You have to start by getting the feel of playing along with the metronome at say 80 bpm. Then set it to 20 bpm but still play as if it were 80 bpm so that the clicks only happen every other measure. Once a tune is in sync, like Lark in the Morning played at 72 bpm over an 18 bpm metronome, try transitioning to another jig like Willie Coleman's without missing a beat! (I mention this specific example because I was able to do this successfully today just before beginning to write this post). 

Another idea is to use Soundslice to create practice versions of tunes where the sound of the melody is interspersed with silent measures where you have to play on your own for a while before the music comes back on in time. Yet another idea is to set up a play along track at a low volume. Start playing along with the track, then keep playing as you walk to another part of the house where you can't quite hear the play along track anymore. Play a little while out of ear shot then walk back into the room where the backing track is playing and see if you are in sync.

And do all this while being mindful of ergonomic movement without stress, having proper posture, and maintaining a relaxed feel while playing. Tension in your shoulders and hands can cause adrenaline to spike, which makes you rush. I think my main problem is speeding up. I've ordered Bruce Arnold's The Big Metronome book, so I'm hoping that has some exercises that I can adapt as well! 

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