There's been some discussion of this in other posts. Unfortunately THESESSION.ORG tends to add to the confusion in allowing unmoderated updates to tunes in their database. Norman Blake says that he rarely plays a tune the same way twice and therefore each time he plays it it is a "variation" of a particular tune. Now imagine me adding my interpretation to one of those variations and say Don Greiser interpreting another variation - still "variations" of the same tune. At some point the A or the B part is going to resemble parts of a different tune and at that point BOTH original tunes are now going to become part of each other to some musicians... e.g The Frieze Britches and I buried my wife... So we have The Girl I left Behind, aka Waxies Dargle, aka An Spailpin Fanach... I was taken to task on Youtube for calling it An Spailpin Fanach when my antagonist clearly heard the Waxie's Dargle and said that he had an old manuscript of An Spailpin Fanach in Tonic Solfa and clearly the B part was different in several places... I don't doubt it, I tend to play a mixture of all three... and I usually play two slightly different B parts... Anyway to my dilemma. I remember a tune from my childhood - I think played by Sean O'Riada - called Fead An Fhiolair (The Eagle's Whistle). If you look on THESESSION.ORG it is equated to Gol na mBan san Ar - which is not the tune that I remember. On Youtube there is a Scottish rendition of The Eagles Whistle (Fead An Iolair) which is clearly Gol na mBan san Ar (btw on THESESSION it is listed as a Waltz, a Jig, and a Polka; but it's the same tune in different time.) The Comments on THESESSION credit the tune (Gol na mBan san Ar aka Fead an Fhiolair aka The Eagles Whistle) to several different artists and at least one of them (Sharon Shannon) plays my aul tune Fead An Fhiolair (Each Little Thing: kids - Fead an Fhiolair/Never Going Back), which doesn't sound anything like the ABC on THESESSION. So I'm going to learn Gol na mBan san Ar and try to put Fead an Fhiolair together by ear to demonstrate my point. Is there anyone else here who knows either tune and has some light to shed? I know the easy answer is there's really only one ITM tune and a million variations, and maybe that's all there is...NOT!
The absence of an easy answer is exactly what I like about it. It is an endless wonderful jungle of musical ideas for players to find/reinvent new tunes and for copyright legislators to get lost in - a world capable of protecting itself from any kind of police and boredom. I think a "tune" describes just something that is audible and recognizable, but not isolated. Tunes are related and entangled with each other. In our pub sessions, a frequently asked question from the audience is why we always play the same (in fact we can play 4 hours without repeating a single tune)... There is not necessarily a sharp distinction between one tune and its relative, but rather a floating superposition (I can play a tune that is 81% Silver Spire and 19% Whiskey Before Breakfast, maybe I should call it Silver Spirit ) Or maybe this is the long-sought-after question? How many different Irish tunes are there? Forty-Two
42!!!!!! Bertram, you're killing me This reminds me of Vivaldi debate; some say he wrote 425 violin concerti, and some say he wrote 1 concerto 425 times. another thing to keep in mind, if they didn't all sound alike it wouldn't be classified as a "type" of music. just sayin' mc
In this case, the punchline of a worn-out joke is probably the best answer. How do you tell one fiddle tune from another? The title.
The tune is called whatever the person who must be treated with the most respect in the room says it is.
You guys sound like my family. "We don't mind listening to you play, but why do have to play the same song over and over?"
I have a friend whose non-music-appreciating mother was staying over. She said to Donna, couldn't you play something I know. Donna replied, 'you'll soon know it!'
This is a subject I've actually given some serious thought to. Sort of like the game we would play as kids(which I don't remember the name of), the first person would whisper a phrase into a kids ear. As is went around the circle each child would whisper the same phrase into the next kids ear until the circle made its way back to the originator. Almost 100% of the time the phrase was nothing like the original. Music passed on in the oral tradition is very much the same way, even today. Say I learn a new tune and put it in heavy rotation at my regular session, then I go visit friends on the other side of the state and play the same tune. They like it and learn it by watching me play it. I have of course improvised a few parts to flow better for me by this time. They like my rendition so much it becomes a favorite at their session (Hey it could happen!) and it goes into heavy rotation there. Someone visiting from another state sits in on their session on the far side of the state and thinks it's a great tune, of course this is some time later and they've changed it up a bit to fit with a few other tunes. By the time this out of state player hears the tune it has already been modified twice, but with the same name. Then he learns it and takes it back home to his session, but he can't remember it exactly so he improvises it a bit. Sure it's changed again, but it works. Then in the biggest chance happening of all time, one of the regular players from his session moves to Fort Worth and sits in on a session I play in. We say the name of the tune next and he thinks,"Great! I play this all the time back home!" However it sounds very little like what he played back home, although ironically the tune originated at the very session he is sitting in now. Wanna make it even more extreme... add beer. I'm sure there's some chaos string theory name for this type of circumstance.
Then there's the tunes that have travelled to a foreign land and then been imported back years later... The Bard of Armagh is a lovely old tune that wandered afar to the shores of Amerikay... Years later the prodigal tune returned as The Streets of Laredo... And a version turned up in England as The Lock Hospital - Planxty recorded it as such on Prosperous. They say music makes the world go round... but I think it's round already...
Hastyman, I think the game you mentioned is called "telephone game" in the US, another name is "Chinese whispers". Here in Germany we call it "Stille Post" (silent mail). And as for adding beer: I think that's presumed (there is a tune called "Dowd's Number Nine"). There are other Irish examples for this process. Just try to find out which is the true recipe for Irish stew... it's not a meal, it's a universe!
The game you remember was called "Post Office", at least in the Michigan area. mc
I thought the game was called "Blind Cheese Whiskers".
"Blind Cheese Whiskers". Great name for a BlueGrass band!! mc
or a Blues singer
i remember the game as "post office" as well. this thread coincides with a difficult decision i arrived at recently - made to the sounds of consternation and gnashing of teeth - i've got to get better at reading music. the tunes do sound the same to me as well - i have GREAT difficulty distinguishing one from the other. very often when i sit down to play a tune i unwittingly launch into something else. aging doesn't help ... i'm not getting better and better. here's a fiddle/mandolin iphone app idea - a voice recorder that listens to you whistle a tune and matches it to a list of possible titles with accompanying midi A/B parts replay.
Bill, starting one tune and inadvertently sliding into another is something that happens to all the session players I know as well, the more often the more tunes you know. I have the constant problem that I can hardly start Creel of Turf without going down the Road to Lisdoonvarna, so you see: age has got nothing to do with it As for that iPhone app: I doubt if the iPhone has enough storage space for matching titles and midi of only one whistled sample... The normal process of finding out would be writing the sample down in ABC and starting a discussion on thesession.org.
relying on ABC would be yet another thing to keep me from fulfilling my new year's resolution ... to read notation better. someone touted a new social networking system on facebook recently ... the telephone book - my copy of "the fiddler's fakebook" is just sitting here and it's got it all. forza!
Bill, I encourage you to keep at working on learning to read notation. Maybe because I learned to read notation when I was a kid, but then went 35 years without doing it.... when I decided to dust off my notation reading skills, it came back pretty quickly. It sure makes learning these 'simple' tunes pretty easy....
Same here. I learned notation when I was in a Pipe Band in primary school. I hadn't really used it for... umm a long time and now I'm getting back into it using the Fiddler's Fakebook. I copy ABC's from THESESSION.ORG and use ABC Navigator to translate them to Notation. It's opened a whole world of tunes...
As for I-Apps, the only one I have is I-SUK - it lists all the apps I don't have...
Hey, I just noticed when reading this last post, that the time of the post really is listed after the date (after our name)... in my browser, the line is very light grey, and the time is in white... is that how it looks to ya'll?
nope - maybe as administrator you have access to more information.
Yes, Barb, now that you mention it I can see it, too - white on light grey. On an LCD screen, it becomes visible when viewed from below. What a subtle incentive to exercise in the morning!
Not at all like that... kinda different.. if your time is in white on a white background how do you tell if it's the correct time? Bill and Bertram, I'll be in Europe tomorrow!
I see it! I see it! Do I win a prize... I had to squint while holding my laptop screen at an angle of exactly 43.657982 degrees... this has got to be worth a Fields Medal - specially since the current one is unclaimed...
Welcome back to Europe, Eddie. I have looked up the map - when you're in Ireland, I geographically live in the middle between you and Bill. Shall we meet in the Domhan Irish pub in Wuppertal, Germany?
Couldn't we get a little closer West... maybe Durty Nellie's half-way between Shannon and Limerick?
43.657982 degrees... Yes, Eddie, that is commonly called Brewster's Angle, when polarized light moves between two media and achieves perfect transmittion thru a surface without reflection. but be careful, you could damage your retina!!! mc
