Travelling!

Life has been busy lately. Chris Langan, Midwest Fleadh, repeated trips to good ol' D-town...

Wednesday (Marking being firmly out of my first quarter century) I fly to Dublin, Ireland with Miss Perkins for a too-short vacation. Dublin, Castlecomer, Kilrush, Scattery Island, and Galway will be visited.

Whoo!

Irish music type

"I'm not a fiddle type, I'm an irish music type, I just play the fiddle. It's weird how big of a difference it is. If someone said "You can only play irish music on ___ instrument from now on" I'd be perfectly happy." - B. P. Gidley

That's from a chat after the aforementioned celtic jam and referring to the teaching of some fiddle types today by Master Gidley. It's a good point and great way of putting it.

I'm an irish music type. I just play the uilleann pipes.

March? How did that happen?

Some updates:

I do not have regulators yet. I do however have an amazing and lovely new B chanter. It's real shiny! Seven (7) keys, plus the stop key. Eventually it will have moose antler as mounts, but for now is stuck with holly wood. The old B chanter went off to its new home in Utah. Happy travels, applebee!

I should be getting my D regulators this week. I'm not holding my breath, because I want them to be perfect, and I've discovered not bugging or pressuring your pipemakers is the way to get that!

The B set will be starting production soon, I think. The ebony pieces are around, but may end up being replaced with slightly smaller ebony pieces.

Alison and I are going to Ireland June 24th until July 6th. I guess it's a birthday present for me, sort of! We don't have any particularly set plans, so if you want us to come visit we will.

I think somehow I've achieved "respected musician" status around here. Either that or just "doesn't show up often so it's great to see him when he does" status. I went to a Celtic Jam Session yesterday afternoon, and it was everything that name applies. Several guitars, several bodhrans, and a couple people playing sheet music. No really irish music except what I was playing, although many irish tunes were played. Lots of Cape Breton, east-coast and old timey stuff though. It's very interesting to hear the Foxhunter's Reel played in a very east-coast way. Different tune altogether that way! And in A, so there is that.

Ok enough rambling.

First Tune

I'm getting regulators in January for my concert pitch set. I need recommendations for the first tune I should play on my set with my new regulators?

Realistically, I won't be able to play them well (or at all) right away, so the first tune should be something pretty slow that I can sort of hit the regs at random in... And it should be a tune I know.

More importantly, I'm getting my B set in March(ish). I will have January, February, and March to practise regs. There's a good chance that my March I'll have some ability. So, what should be my first tune on the flat set?

Go on, give me suggestions!

Irish music, redux...

We are at a stage where actually what is current in traditional music is depleted in terms of its musical richness, I would feel. We have defined things and thus other possibilities cease to exist.
--- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh - http://thejmi.com/article/661

That article is a must read for traditional musicians. There are some amazing points he makes. But a word of warning! Before you read the article, you really must know that Caoimhin has not glossed over his learning of the language, so to speak. Listen to him play, then listen to Patrick Kelly, Denis Murphy, Padraig O'Keefe, Paddy Cronin, and all the other old fiddlers that he's studied in incredibly minute detail.

I say this because otherwise you may read the article and think he is talking about something like Davy Spillane's Moving Hearts, "Lord of the Dance" or Solas. He is definitely not. You must understand that Caoimhin knows well the difference between what is part of the tradition and what is not. Enough warning.

I just reread this article because JMI has opened its archive to all and sundry. I just reread it after reading an article by Hammy Hamilton where he presents research done showing that irish traditional music (folk music of ireland, etc, from now on just irish music) isn't really as popular as might be believed. All of this has got me thinking (again) about irish music, and my own version of it, and wondering about things yet again.

Those of you (is anyone reading this?) who know me well probably know that the last year has been both great and horrible for my music. Both incredibly uplifting and very depressing. Unfortunately, this past weekend was another blow to my faith in irish musicians (read: people that play irish music). All this adds up to some deep ponderings.

I love listening to the old players. The recordings of Denis Murphy, Julia Clifford and Paddy Cronin have been on my mind much in the last year. Tommy Reck, Seamus Ennis, Willie Clancy, these three have never been too far from my ears. There are loads of other old players that I love listening to. Why do I love them?? A lot of recordings are hard to listen to, because of the recording quality. As one local flute player said about Paddy Fahey "that’s one nasty fiddle recording! LOL". Yet I can't stop lisening to it! And I want to be able to explain what is so great about these recordings, why I love listening, why I don't hear the "nasty" quality.

When I listen to the playing of Willie Clancy, what I hear and what really excites me are all the things he didn’t do, but you hear them. You hear everything he could have done, the cloud of possibility. Whereas when you hear most people playing traditional music today, you only hear the one thing they did do.
--- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh - http://thejmi.com/article/661

Caoimhin's quote above is an important part of it. I usually end up telling people that the tuning "system" or sensibility was very different to the old players, but that doesn't usually seem to get the full import across. It's not just the tuning, although that's definitely part of it. It's this sense of possibility that definitely seems to be missing, or deliberately avoided. Lots of modern music seems to be very limited or proscribed. An example of this is the Kane Sisters and Paddy Fahey. Don't take this as negative, because I've listened loads to the Kane Sisters, and I find their music very nice and enjoyable. But, Paddy Fahey is something else entirely. His way of playing tunes is so different from theirs, even though they got a lot of tunes from him. Lots of "in-between" notes, lots of playing in a way that presents these possibilities, without defining what the music is. Without saying "this tune is in this key and this one only". Willie Clancy's piping is the example Caoimhin used in the article, and I wouldn't dare to disagree with him, since he's right. When I listen to Willie, I get so excited, and it moves me in a wonderful way. There's such joy and sadness and emotion, but overall an incredible sense of wildness in his playing.

Why don't I feel this way with most modern players? Primarily "session players" too, I guess. Is it just Sturgeon's Law at work? Are we just blessed (or cursed) with only recordings of the best older players? Did all the comparable musicians of the ones that don't excite me from ages past get lost by the wayside? There are very few old recordings that don't excite me at least a little, and there were tons of musicians recorded! More than you'd think from online forums. But maybe Sturgeon's Law was in effect, and if so, I'm not sure whether I should be happy because there are some modern players that I find as exciting, or sad because it seems like proportionally there are so much fewer than there were in the early 1900s!

At any rate, none of this helps with how I will explain the beauty to people that don't get it. I would like to be able to explain this beauty very much, because I feel like people around here are very out of touch with it. Maybe I am out of touch though?

It seems that people around here do not search out good irish music. It seems like the musicians for the most part are content to play very limited music and don't explore these old players, don't study irish music in any serious detail. I am in a weird limbo right now. I'm not content to play the same old tunes in the same old way, but I also don't feel like I'm able to do justice to the music or play like I hear in my head. I feel limited in most sessions, but I also feel like I'm limiting, too. I am definitely not happy participating in open "celtic" sessions, where Quebecois, Scottish, Breton, and Old Time get equal footing, but that's more a matter of a preference of which style I want to play, and an understanding that since I have so far to go with Irish music, there's no doubt I'd be butchering the rest.

On the other hand I'm lucky to be able to play semi-regularly with several very wonderful people and fantastic musicans, and sometimes we get to make very amazing music together.

So I guess this brings up another question: Where do I go from here and how do I get there?

Kerry Fiddling

In my recent obsession with polkas, I'd almost forgot how much I love slides.



But this helps me remember. Amazing!

I need a new car

I'm down to the Toyota Corolla and the Mazda3 Sport. Both 2009.

Which should I get?

Band name

Brandon, Karli and I have formed a band. We are playing at the mill race festival in Cambridge under the temporary name of "Farewell to Erin".

However, we are trying to come up with a better, permanent name for our little merry band.

The top two picks are:

Soup of Good Drink

and

Down in the Park

However some other suggestions are:
One Bottle More
Money in Both Pockets (or alternatively Money in Both Pockets (but not in mine))
I Have No Money
Ride a Mile
The Crooked Road

We need your opinions.

If you have suggestions that are better than these, please let me know!