Counter Mellody

[Mutiny]

I've been wanting to learn some more about counter mellodys lately and wondered if anyone has some advice on figuring out what to play and how to play it.
Transcribing tunes up a third kinda works but dosnt exactly have the effect that I hear when listening to bands like planxty.
Thanks.
-Ben

[POB]

Ben,

Speaking from an Irish music standpoint, I think you'll find a lot of players would shrug their shoulders and tell you they just do it, if you asked them what it is they do in terms of counter melody. I'd be one of them, I suppose, but let's see if I can make some attempt at a better answer...

If you're trying to go for a Planxty-type sound, probably a good thing to realise is that the harmonies they used a lot of the time didn't necessarily correspond to standard western harmonies. They would have been influenced heavily by the regulators and drones on the pipes, and the quirky harmionies thay produced, or at least implied. For example, you get things like tunes that sound like they're in an A minor mode having D mixolydian based counter melodies.

You mentioned going in parallel thirds. There's nothing wrong with that, but often, in the style of accompaniment to which you're aspiring, the third is much less important than the fifth, for example. If you don't tie yourself to the third, you can give yourself a lot more freedom in your counter melody. I don't mean just in terms of leaving ambuguity between minor and major.

As an exercise/experiment, you could try selecting some Am tune and then trying to come up with counter melodies with lots of D mixolydian runs, deliberately staying away from parallel thirds. Try using the D under the melody (lower in pitch) instead of over it. That kind of emulates the drone thing that seems to provide a starting point for this kind of style. I'd suggest an Am tune that sounds like it doesn't have a very defined "standard" chord sequence - avoid "The Star of Munster", for example. You could try "The Laurel Tree" or "The Green Groves of Erin" (which the Bothy Band recorded with a stonking big D drone). This may help "unlock" the sound you're seeking.

When you listen to Planxty, don't forget that you often have Lunny and Irvine both playing intricate counter melody, so it can be pretty hard to pin down what's going on. You could try a software solution like the Amazing Slow Downer to slow things down to the point where you can hear better what they're doing, and emulate that.

Sorry for the really vague, hand-wavey answer - it's a hard thing to describe. Maybe someone else on here could point you at some useful tabs or other online resources?

[otterly2k]

Padraig,
what a great answer...
You gave some concrete strategies, but also acknowledge that a lot of counter melody (and harmony) for that matter is intuitive, not intellectual, and probably most of the folks who do it well just HEAR it inside, and their playing is an expression of that.

So I'd just add to your response that I believe that it is possible to develop that sense and ability... through a LOT of listening to the players whose sounds inspire you, and to as broad a range of others as you can...and also to learn to listen to the sounds WITHIN...to be willing to experiment and play with it until you like what you hear. Parallel thirds is the place a lot of people start when they try to harmonize... mostly because it is so prevalent in western harmonies...we hear it so much that it comes to mind easily. But it is a very limited strategy. The more you listen to other kinds of sounds, the more you can "think outside the box". IMHO

There IS no "exactly what to play and when to play it"... if there was, this would be a science and not an art.
KE

[jmcgann]

I'd suggest listening and getting to know the melody first and foremost- and then, get an idea of "the chords" (what the melody suggests for chordal possibilities). Then, deconstruct the chords so that you can play patterns on two or three strings (maybe crosspicking, maybe alternate picked) that incorporate both chord tones and scale/mode non-chordal tones and drone notes. You can get great effects by using open string drones with movement up and down a third string, depending on the key/modality you are in. My book gets into this a good bit:

http://www.johnmcgann.com/om.html

[Mutiny]

Thanks for the sugestions.
I've got your book and really like it. Your version of cooleys reel and the old copper plate are two of my favorite tunes to play...

[OdnamNool]

a science and not an art.
KE

same thing... Science is art... Art is science...

Check out the counterpoint master... ole J.S...

[mandolman]

a great link here => http://www.chinatogalway.com/Bouzouk...ermelodies.htm

[POB]

Check out the counterpoint master... ole J.S...

Who?

[OdnamNool]

Bach.

[POB]

Don't think he played in Planxty (although there were a lot of lineup changes).

[OdnamNool]

What's Planxty? (Pardon my ignorance...)

[POB]

Hugely influential Irish band, first formed in the seventies, doing some reunion gigs in a month's time. They put mandolins and bouzoukis on the map as regards Irish traditional music. Their impact on modern tradtional Irish music was immense, although many traditionalists would not necessarily see this as a good thing.

Not quite the musical colossus that JSB was, but worthy of honour nonetheless...

They honed an approach to accompanying Irish traditional music and song that was heavily based on two interweaving countermelody lines, usually played on bouzouki and mandolin, behind the voice and/or the uilleann pipes. This approach was based on a distinctly non-"western art music" approach to harmony, so JSB's genius for countermelody, though indisputably worthy of study, might not necessarily lead the original poster in this thread in the direction in which he wants to go.

[OdnamNool]

Thank you, POB. #I appreciate your patience in dealing with the likes of me... #Quite frankly, "Irish" music never did it for me... #Too... hmmm...shall I say.... mono-tonish??? #ur, uh...monotonous??? #However, I appreciate everyone's diggin' on that sorta music, and in no way am I putting it down... #In fact, as you could imagine... #I am quite unfamiliar with Irish music... #But! #I might think that the influence of JSB could be helpful in any type of music... especially someone seeking "counter-melody." #Alas, as usual... #I'm probably wrong... #At any rate... since I don't know jack #### about this topic, I hereby won't post any more... #

[POB]

... since I don't know jack #### about this topic, I hereby won't post any more...

I don't think that should stop you from posting!

Study of any form of music is always a good thing, especially if the music is indeed the work of a true genius, as in the case of Bach. However, Irish music has, since the early years of the last century, been bedevilled with well-intentioned but ill-informed efforts to make it conform to the "rules" of orthodox western music.

The essence of this issue is that traditional Irish music is almost entirely melodic in its structure and those melodies are based on a modal structure (for example, mixolydian and dorian modes are very common). See this thread for a good discussion of this topic.

Added to this is the "problem" that there are also inflectional variations such as a fiddler sometimes playing a C note in a D tune as C natural, sometimes as a C#, and sometimes as a C "supernatural" (that term courtesy of Paul de Grae, I believe, meaning it lies somewhere indeterminate between C and C#). You also have phenomena like older Donegal fiddlers who uniformly tune their E string slightly sharp, flute players from the Sligo/North Roscommon region tuning their instruments slightly sharp, the fact that uilleann pipes traditionally use just temperament instead of even temperament, and so on.

Examples of the mutually ignorant collision between (presumably) well-intentioned "educated" classical musicians and musically "illiterate" Irish musicians are manifold. One is the fact that the early attempts at transcribing many Irish tunes were ruined by the fact that the transcriber coerced modal tunes into strict major/relative minor scales. Many of the tunes in the famous O'Neill's collections suffered this fate at the hands of Chief O'Neill's chosen transcriber (also called O'Neill).

Another prime example would be some of the earliest commercial recordings of Irish musicians, immigrants to the US in the early years of the last century. They were nothing short of woeful, in my (not always) humble opinion, due to the fact that piano players, who knew nothing about the music, were hired by the recording companies to provide accompaniment.

People like Seán Ó Riada (classically trained but sensitive to the tradition) came along in the second half of the last century and made more informed attempts at arranging and harmonising Irish music. Bands like Planxty and the Bothy band carried this work forward into a more contemporary setting. The important fact about the work of these people and many other of the same and subsequent eras is that they approached the music from within. They understood the music that they were working with.

By the way, I take your points well about what you regard as the monotony of Irish music. I'm not trying to be dismissive when I say that it's basically another case of "x all sounds the same to me", where x is bluegrass, jazz, country, baroque, cajun or whatever type of music doesn't engage you sufficiently to encourage you to go learn about it. For me, Gregorian chant all sounds the same and I know that if I studied it, it wouldn't; but I just don't really have the interest to do that. Likewise, I don't expect you to study Irish music when it doesn't grab you, and I don't take umbrage at the fact that it doesn't.

That said, I hear a lot of Irish music that doesn't engage me either. There are an awful lot of people playing it, and it can't all be inspriational all the time. It's not possible that every single player can take a tune and grab one's attention with it, any more than it's possible that every schoolchild playing grade 8 piano is worthy of repeated listening on your CD player, no matter how good the composer of the music.

Sorry for the waffling. Slow day at work. Maybe I should just shut up and recommend to all the CD/DVD of Planxty's reunion gigs from earlier this year?

[otterly2k]

Not to mention the original recordings!

[POB]

Not to mention the original recordings!

Absolutely! (Except, maybe, "Words and Music"?)

The beauty of the new DVD is that you can actually look at what they're doing, and even slow it down, freeze frame and zoom in on it, so it might be a further help to Ben and others trying to get a handle on that style. Just a thought.

[jc2]

I agree that classical music and the associated musicians can be a very constipated bunch and don't have a clue about the aural tradition, BUT... when you're trying to figure out a counter melody, keeping the basic notions of voice leading in mind makes things sound better. For instance:

parallel motion- if you're going in the same direction as the melody, don't move in the same interval as the melody except for short passages like parallel third runs

contrary motion- if the melody moves up, you move down, and vice versa

If you jump an octave, change direction.

These aren't rules, cause we don't need no stinking rules, but if you have them in the back of your mind, things will weave better.

jc

[Martin Jonas]

The beauty of the new DVD is that you can actually look at what they're doing, and even slow it down, freeze frame and zoom in on it, so it might be a further help to Ben and others trying to get a handle on that style.

I found the interviews with Andy and Donal on the DVD very interesting, especially their respective desconstruction of the arrangement of "The Blacksmith". It helps in understanding where the various elements of the rhythm and the countermelody come from.

Martin