What is this notation exactly?

[MichaelW]

Confused yet? I know I would be

By the way, a slide would be notated by a diagonal line between the A and B so we can be pretty sure this is a hammer on.... Or a typing error.

[Jess L.]

... a slide would be notated by a diagonal line between the A and B ...

In the standard notation part of the OP example for the grace note in the 2nd bar, I would expect to see the normal curved line even if it was a slide; isn't that how standard-notation grace notes are always written? FWIW, that's how I've always seen them.

... so we can be pretty sure this is a hammer on.... Or a typing error.

For the tab part of the OP example, it might also have been a limitation of the software that was used to write the score. The tab does show the curved line, but I'm not convinced that it necessarily denotes 'hammer' (even though that seems most plausible in this instance) or if the software was just automatically mimicking the standard notation on the staff above the tab.

While it's true that in tab, one expects to see more instructive symbols telling the player exactly how to achieve the notes indicated, but the software might not have allowed that:

Experimenting here with freebie score-writing app MuseScore 2, if I have a standard notation staff and a tab staff "linked" together, when I add a grace note and the standard curved line to the standard notation, that same note *and* curved line is also automatically applied to the tab. If I then try to delete the curved line *only* from the tab portion, it isn't possible; the curved line disappears from both standard notation *and* tab.

So in that particular app, it would not be possible to have a grace-note's standard curved line in the standard notation while also having a straight line (for a slide) in the tab... er well there's a *workaround*, and that would be to unlink the two staffs and manually enter each note *twice* for the entire score, nah wouldn't want to do that, too much work and more potential for errors and mismatches with the notes, especially if one were writing an entire book's worth of scores...

Of course I suppose a book publisher is less likely to be using free apps such as MuseScore, they'd probably have some high-dollar app like Finale or whatever... No clue whether such limitations are present in those other apps' tab...

(I have seen published examples of a *different* kind of software limitation, in a 1990s hymnbook, where anytime there were 4 notes together but only one of them was supposed to be tied to a subsequent note, the software would put tie marks on *all* 4 notes even when it didn't make sense.)

[MichaelW]

Yes I was referring to the tab. I would expect any of the commercially used notation software to be capable of showing a slide. I know Finale and Sibelius can. I'd say it's a pretty important distinction in a tuition book.

[danostrowski]

I mean, there is music with the book so maybe you'd be able to hear what the notation is, but it's played at speed so even when I slow it down it's hard to 100% tell the difference between a grace note hammered on vs slid, at least to me.

[foldedpath]

I mean, there is music with the book so maybe you'd be able to hear what the notation is, but it's played at speed so even when I slow it down it's hard to 100% tell the difference between a grace note hammered on vs slid, at least to me.

As far as I can tell, it's a hammer-on, not a slide in the recording. I think it's a safe assumption, because Irish trad ornaments are almost always played without moving your hand out of first position, which you can do with a hammer-on but not with a slide. It would be very difficult to play at full tempo using little slides instead of hammer-ons and pull-offs. As it is, that recording of Rights of Man on the CD is a bit relaxed for instructional purposes. It would be played a bit faster in many sessions.

A small digression here on slides as ornaments ("grace note" isn't a term usually heard in Irish trad):

You can hear things in recordings by fiddle and flute players that sometimes sound like sliding into a note, especially on the slower tunes as a means of emotional expression. It's not usually a slide the way we think of it on guitar or mandolin. Fiddlers can do this thing where they lightly touch the string and push down on it while bowing, instead of moving their finger along the fingerboard. Kevin Burke does this a lot in solo performances, also Martin Hayes. Occasionally you might hear a big swoop of a pitch change that's an actual slide of the finger, but I think it's less common than in Bluegrass or Country fiddling. Flute players, whistle players, and pipers can bend into a note with half-holing, which is a very tiny rotation of the finger to alter the pitch.

On mandolin however, we can't change pitch without moving a finger out of position. It's the "tyranny of the frets." So we just work around it with hammer-ons, pull-offs, and treble ornaments, where we can keep our fingers in their normal position. The Trad Police won't come knocking at your door if you use slides, but I don't think it's very practical when playing at full tempo.

[danostrowski]

This is going to take a while to make sound good.

[Tom Haywood]

I don't play much Irish music and haven't studied McGann's publications, but playing those two measures as written says to me that the slur in the initial triplet sets up the feel for what follows. Playing up to the A note using the ring finger for that note naturally leads to a slide from the A to the B note using the ring finger. Although written as a grace note and showing a slur, the feel seems to be that the very quick slide is what is actually on the beat, landing solidly on the main note maybe a milli-nanosecond behind the beat. Of course, it may not be written the way it is actually played.

[foldedpath]

I don't play much Irish music and haven't studied McGann's publications, but playing those two measures as written says to me that the slur in the initial triplet sets up the feel for what follows. Playing up to the A note using the ring finger for that note naturally leads to a slide from the A to the B note using the ring finger. Although written as a grace note and showing a slur, the feel seems to be that the very quick slide is what is actually on the beat, landing solidly on the main note maybe a milli-nanosecond behind the beat. Of course, it may not be written the way it is actually played.

Nope, it's not a slide.

It's a hammer-on. You can't play a tune like this at a typical session tempo by sliding into the note. You can do it with hammer-ons and pull-offs because your fingers don't leave their normal position, so you can still maintain tempo. If you have the CD this transcript is based on, it's easy to hear that's what McGann is doing here.

[Tom Haywood]

Demonstrating that only reading the music as written may take me down the wrong path or create unnecessary obstacles? There is more I need to know, as pointed out, such as the genre, the writer's conventions, and even local customs for how to play it for a certain sound. All those Beatles music books I bought in the 1960s had the same problem.