Irish jig books?

[henry2010]

I was doing a search on good beginner books to learn jigs and i came across this Enda Scahill. I know he teaches with the banjo can i use it for the mandolin?

[mikeyes]

Enda is a pretty good mandolin player in addition to being a genius on the tenor banjo, in fact has been an All Ireland mandolin player several times. His method works well with the mandolin and is a very good starting point. At some level you will realize that the mandolin is not a little banjo and will be able to expand your technique, but as a basic technique his banjo book is great for mandolin playing too.

He teaches the DUD DUD (down up down use of the plectrum = DUD) method of jig playing which works with his philosophy of "plucking" in general. You will, no doubt, read several arguments over which is the best way to play jigs, but most of the banjo players I have interviewed go with DUD DUD and then admit that they stray from this pattern when it makes musical sense. But they all say that it is best to learn the DUD DUD pattern first.

My advice is to get his book. I say this for two reasons: 1) it is a very good tutor especially if you don't have a teacher and 2) eventually, after a while of not being heard in a session, you will want a tenor banjo. Welcome to the dark side.

Mike Keyes
www.mikekeyes.com

[Mandoviol]

If you can read music, you should get your hands on a copy of O'Neill's Music of Ireland. That has a couple hundred jig tunes in it to learn. There's also some of the books by the Kitchen Musician (i.e. The Kitchen Musician's Occasional Jig). I'd give those a look if you're looking for tunes.

[Jill McAuley]

Like Mike said, Enda's book is a great resource, highly recommended. For a mandolin specific book you could check out the Mel Bay book: School of Mandolin - Irish Mandolin, by Joe Carr and Mike Gregory. Another good resource is Mike Gregory's column on Irish playing at www.mandolinsessions.com.

Cheers,
Jill

[Tim2723]

Assuming you're after collections of music (for new tunes) and not basic tutorials (to learn techniques), don't be afraid to look at fiddle and whistle books. They will work perfectly if you read standard notation. The notes is the notes.

[danb]

ventually, after a while of not being heard in a session, you will want a tenor banjo. Welcome to the dark side.

Or a snakehead, or a ball-breaker F5 :-)

[henry2010]

no i am a newbee never played any instrument before. I like the sound of the irish jigs the best so I need a book that brings me right to the very basic's for Irish jigging.

[John Flynn]

Enda is a pretty good mandolin player in addition to being a genius on the tenor banjo, in fact has been an All Ireland mandolin player several times. His method works well with the mandolin and is a very good starting point. At some level you will realize that the mandolin is not a little banjo and will be able to expand your technique, but as a basic technique his banjo book is great for mandolin playing too.

He teaches the DUD DUD (down up down use of the plectrum = DUD) method of jig playing which works with his philosophy of "plucking" in general. You will, no doubt, read several arguments over which is the best way to play jigs, but most of the banjo players I have interviewed go with DUD DUD and then admit that they stray from this pattern when it makes musical sense. But they all say that it is best to learn the DUD DUD pattern first.

My advice is to get his book. I say this for two reasons: 1) it is a very good tutor especially if you don't have a teacher and 2) eventually, after a while of not being heard in a session, you will want a tenor banjo. Welcome to the dark side.

Mike Keyes
www.mikekeyes.com
Mike: I'm looking at Enda Scahill's book right now, on p. 54, his section on jigs, and he says,

"The usual question about plucking jigs is whether to pluck Down Up Down, Down Up Down, or Down Up Down, Up Down Up.

My answer to this is to apply a number of the rules for reel playing (see below) and after that it really doesn't matter too much. Down Up Down, Down Up Down with achieve a strong rhythmical effect; Down Up Down, Up Down Up a more lyrical effect.

The rules that apply to jigs are as follows:

The first note of the bar should be a Down

Trebles and Triplets should be Down Up Down"

So he seems to be offering a bit of an option in the book, which I like. His rules around trebles and triplets are not optional, though, they are alway DUD and the note following is always a Down also. He says there are no exceptions to those rules.

[mikeyes]

When Enda was asked the question about "rules" for jigs, he stated that he liked DUD DUD but that DUDU gave a different feel to the music that he liked in certain cases. He urged everyone to learn DUD DUD first because it was likely that a D stroke would be stronger than an U stroke and the natural feel of DUD DUD was more jig like.

He was not admant that you had to do it this way but he thought that it was a better way to learn. Mick Moloney, on the other hand, (who is also a mandolin player of note) was forceful in telling me that I had to switch to DUD DUD if I wanted the music to sound right. It took me three months of hard work to get it, but I agree that it made a big difference in the way I sounded. Now I mix the two together but try DUD DUD first when I play a jig.

DUD DUD is a strong guideline and one that I urge others to follow as they try to learn jigs. It is better to have a solid base from which to expand than to just go into the music with a hodge-podge approach that may or may not make the music sound like a jig.

[John Flynn]

Mike:

Yeah, I agree and I'm working on it the way you suggest, but I did think it interesting to read what I quoted. It is the first time I've seen a credible source not be totally dogmatic about DUD DUD. Also, It seems to me that Enda's rules on triplets would modify what I previously understood about the normal DUD DUD rule in some cases. There are examples I can see in his book where there is a quarter note, followed by an eighth note, followed by three eighth notes in a measure. So the way I previously understood general rule would say play it DU DUD, but if you turn that quarter note into a treble, then Enda is saying that first eighth note, which would have been an upstroke, now needs to be a downstroke. Previously, I would have played that DUDU DUD, but it needs to be DUDD DUD, which is harder to do, but sounds better. I had also never before seen an explanation that it is even more complicated that just DUD DUD, there nuances that go beyond that.

So in my own way, I am just supporting that it is a great book, one that seems simple, but contains deceptively complex material. I also think it applies to mandolin as well as tenor banjo and contains some important content that I've not seen in mandolin books.

[thirdstation]

You can try Comhaltas (http://comhaltas.ie/).

They publish tune books with the tunes organized into sets, by song type. They also sell CD's of sessions featuring the songs in the books so you can hear what they sound like.

There's also the John Walsh session tune book available for free from here:
http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/

In fact, there's a few books available from ceolas.org plus lots of links.

Then there's The Session (http://www.thesession.org/). You can search for tunes by type.

That should be good for a start.

[mandroid]

Read Standard notation? and there's 1000 fiddle tunes , M.M. Cole Publishers .. Reels, Jigs, Hornpipes, Clogs, and a few Strathspeys.

[EdSherry]

Peter Kennedy's Fiddler's Tune Book series has a book devoted to jigs in standard notation:

http://www.mally.com/details.asp?id=58

(NFI.)

[catmandu2]

"The usual question about plucking jigs is whether to pluck Down Up Down, Down Up Down, or Down Up Down, Up Down Up.

And other permutations! As a fiddler 90% of the time (especially this week as I practice for a "celtic" gig on Monday), there are so many choices...for me, jig nuance and bowing choices are one of the more challenging aspects of playing.

[Perry]

I have volume one of this Walton's series and really like it. Nice playing on the CD's. Standard notation only.

http://www.waltonsmusic.com/110bestirishtunescollection.html

[EdSherry]

Catmandu -- In my experience, jig bowing (on fiddle) and jig picking (on mandolin) are two different beasts. The main difference is that it is difficult and rare (though not impossible) to play two down-bows in a row, but two down-strokes in a row are common on mandolin (there is a ghost "up" movement between the third and fourth "D" strokes in DUD DUD).

In any case, nearly any Irish tune book will have LOTS of jigs for you to learn.

[catmandu2]

Catmandu -- In my experience, jig bowing (on fiddle) and jig picking (on mandolin) are two different beasts. The main difference is that it is difficult and rare (though not impossible) to play two down-bows in a row, but two down-strokes in a row are common on mandolin (there is a ghost "up" movement between the third and fourth "D" strokes in DUD DUD).


Quite. But that's the gist of what I was thinking of: to accentuate syncopation with two consecutive down bows is much more nuanced than two commensurate down strokes with pick, (etc.), IME. To delineate nuanced 6/8 syncopation with various bow strokes can be a complex practice but is, IMO, what makes 6/8 interesting. Discrete syncopation is much more easily acomplished with picks, but nuanced syncopation--the domain of the fiddle bow--is a difficult thing to replicate with a pick.

But I didn't intend to hijack the thread toward fiddle-playing, rather, just a discussion about jigs...and the practice of playing jigs well on both fiddle and mando.

[mandocrucian]

I like tangible 'hard copy' that I can transport to any room in the house, or take outside.

While not addressing the "instructional" component about jig pick directions, etc., I like to compile my own "fakebooks" or tunebooks for a particular CD. For example, I just assembled a slim 14-page comb-bound book with all the tunes (in the same order) that are on the Paddy Carty - Traditional Irish Music LP/CD. I'll do something similar for John Doonan Flute For The Fies LP (which is burned onto the same disc), which I've also been listening to as well. Though there are numerous tunes which I've got in regular printed collections and tunebooks, just having them all quickly at hand warranted printing them out again.

With the Irish stuff, it is fairly convenient to do, especially if the CD is listed on thesession.org from which you can click on the abc/notation gif of the tunes. The gifs aren't the highest resolution, but it is quicker than copy/paste the abc into a notation program or the concertina.net Tune-O-Tron Converter (http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html) where I can print out a higher-rez PDF page. (problem is it's just one tune per page)

So I suggest, make your own tunebook(s). What are the tunes that grab your ear from the CDs in your collection? Get the notation (or the abc code) and add it to a Word file. Paste in photos of the artist. Burn a compilation CDR of all those tunes and listen to it in the car as a "material disc".

Midi files are another source. There are programs that will convert a midi file into a standard notation conductor score. And via midi, you can assemble books of material that will NOT otherwise EXIST in western musical notation. I've gota lot of stuff I've found from the web - trad. Chinese music (full ensemble) scores, Okinawan tunes, Thai Luk-thung and Mor-lam. Over there, that stuff is in some eastern form of tab or Asian system of "noatation'.

Have a volume of trad Portuguese stuff, plenty of medieval and Renaissance pieces. Look hard and long enough, there's no telling what you can find, especially at some foreign university's enthomusicolgy dept. (Of course, you can find standard notation for a lot of classical compostions that are in the public domain......I recently printed out Satie's Trois Gymnopedies - maybe I can work up those or the Gnossienes for flute/piano with my wife.)

Niles H

[henry2010]

thanks for the responses. I dont know how to read music notation. So I guess i have another book to buy

[Jill McAuley]

You don't necessarily need to be able to read notation - if you learn the names of the notes/where they are on the neck of your mandolin then you can use ABC's, which quite a lot of trad stuff is transcribed into. Also, it is possible to order Enda's book in Tab format, if you can read tab. Or you could work on figuring out tunes by ear, using a slow down software program, or slowing them down in Quicktime. Just a thought.

Cheers,
Jill

[Rob Gerety]

Personally, I think the best thing you could possibly do is to learn the music the way is has always been learned down through the ages - by ear. If you get some nice clear recordings of some jigs you like on CD or MP3 and use Amazing Slow Downer or some similar software you will do fine. It will be slow for a while, but after a while you'll be able to pick tunes up by ear really fast. A book might help to get good technique - but to learn tunes, I say do it by ear.

[Perry]

Heck I know how to read standard notation; I know to write it too with the help of Finale. I have slow downer's too. I also make CD's of stuff I want to learn and listen to it in the car. I make up little books of stuff I am working on; TAB, standard and chicken scratch. I wouldn't exclude any one for the other they are all tools.

Yes learning (and transcribing) music by ear is a valuable tool but heck if you got some sheet music available why not give yourself a head start? Even with sheet music in hand we still need to listen to someone playing it for proper feel. Sheet music can convey only so much.

I know there are lots of folks that disagree but knowing how to read music is an asset and it is really fairly easy especially as it relates to the mandolin and fiddle tunes.

[catmandu2]

A book might help to get good technique - but to learn tunes, I say do it by ear.

I think written material can assist greatly in getting the "notes" under your fingers, but for everything else, there is nothing like hearing it.