"May I join the Irish music session?"

[Bertram Henze]

Here in San Diego I was invited to play in a session and the leaders told us that no sheet music was allowed. I'm not kidding.

Funny, though. Never experienced something like that. We usually judge by the result, not by the method. I'd not attend a session featuring a drill instructor sergeant - it just doesn't go with the basic character of that music and indicates that those "leaders" haven't understood it either.

[michaelpthompson]

I've been in sessions where sheet music is not allowed. Unbeknownst to some people, they have good reasons for the prohibition.

Traditionally, this music was passed on from player to player. You listened to a tune, worked on playing along, finally you could say you "know" it. Sheet music is an attempt to shortcut that process. It has advantages and disadvantages. First and foremost, it cannot completely transmit the nuances of traditional tunes. Traditional players often use unique ornamentation timing. Many times this even varies from session to session, each having its own customary ways of playing different tunes.

Many people believe that sheet music gets in the way of enjoying the music. This is not classical, where a composer came up with certain notes and phrases and wrote them down in standardized ways for performance by people trained in those ways. This music came up from the common people, a shared aural tradition, passed along in pubs and kitchens as part of community life. It was never constrained by notes on a page until somebody attempted to transcribe it. Sheet music is an artificial innovation in this tradition, a later addition, not original.

There are many reasons why session leaders don't allow sheet music. "it just doesn't go with the basic character of that music." It's forced and artificial, like putting a bird in a jar and wondering why it doesn't soar like it used to.

Don't get me wrong, I play in sessions where sheet music is the rule, rather than the exception. We have a great time. But there are always discussions like, "Use this book, not that one, the versions are different." or "Those of you who know this tune, be aware that the B part comes first in this version." It gives us the ability to share music that we have in common without growing up together with it in the same small community. But it has its limitations, and not everyone is comfortable with that.

I once started a session with some friends. We actually drew up rules on a written sheet, to protect the integrity of our music. There's a thread on thesession.org that was referred to earlier by foldedpath. Some of the posters there described experiences of traveling a couple of hundred miles, or making significant time commitment to attend an Irish traditional session. Imagine going to all that effort only to find your session taken over by people playing Beatles songs or Stairway to Heaven. Session rules may seem restrictive, but like that drill sergeant, we have them for many good reasons. If you don't understand that, perhaps you haven't understood this music either.

[Gelsenbury]

Don't get me wrong, I play in sessions where sheet music is the rule, rather than the exception. We have a great time. But there are always discussions like, "Use this book, not that one, the versions are different." or "Those of you who know this tune, be aware that the B part comes first in this version."

That particular phenomenon happens without sheet music too. Through whichever medium you might have learnt the tune, you have only learnt to play it one particular way. Adjustments or re-learning are required when you get together with other people who play it differently.

As a beginner, I find sheet music helpful because it helps me practise tunes on my own. Memorising picking patterns doesn't come naturally enough for me yet to be successful at ploys such as going to a session, learning a tune by ear, and then having it sufficiently established in my mind to practise at home. I need some form of written record, and "dots" suit me better than tab or abc. As I become more experienced, I'm sure I'll be able to play more by ear and from memory.

But that doesn't mean that I'll take the sheet music to the session with me. To play with fluency, I must memorise the tune and be able to play it without looking at paper or a screen. It's just that I memorise it from printed music.

PS: Am I missing something culturally specific here? Where does this glut of threads started by colourful cartoon characters with monotonous voices and vaguely amusing conversations come from? ?(

[Randi Gormley]

We use sheet music for our beginner session, but not for anything else. What we've found is that some people who rely on the sheet music rely on its configurations and have even begun arguing with more advanced players that they're doing the tune wrong because the sheet music requires a dotted eighth or something or a specific ornament or a specific note and the more advance player isn't doing it exactly as written. So that's another downside of having sheet music at a session. OK for learning, but it's (as has been said many times in better ways) more an indication than a cut-in-stone requirement. I use sheet music for learning (helps me figure out where to start, for one thing) but I'd never take music to a session. I play what I know and listen when I don't know and have a great time just enjoying the music. I'm also pretty non-competitive, which may be one reason why I don't find the rules rub me the wrong way.

[Loretta Callahan]

I spent about 15 years going to Irish sessions before I even considered picking up the mandolin; silly me. I just love listening at sessions. I'm sure all sessions have their own style, and I did see some folks referring to a song list, or occasionally glancing at music, but generally folks seemed to just start tunes, or follow a leader.

I did, however, go to lots of kanikapilas, which is kind of like an Irish session Hawaiian style, but with singing and playing. There was one where these scary ladies would come out and make everyone sit in an assigned seat. One lady grabbed my 1930 Gibson uke and started bitching about my E string and tuner. She was lucky it wasn't a session because I was quite sober; no pints consumed! So I kindly took my uke and left .... never to return. Had it been a session, she might have been wearing a pint or two on her head. I mean really, what kind of person grabs someone's instrument without asking.

[michaelpthompson]

I went once with a friend to a beginner's session in Northampton, Mass., where they used tab and notation. Everybody did. As a beginner I kind of liked it, because even though I don't read, I could see the chord changes and keep track of where we were. Eventually my friend stopped going, because they relied on, no needed, the paper in front of them and never seemed to internalize the tunes. These days I prefer to woodshed at home with slow-down software and learn by ear. But then I seem to play everything at half speed! ;-)

I used to have a copy of the Fiddler's Fake Book, from which many of the tunes in our "Celtic Jam" were taken. I loaned it to my daughter and it was lost. I didn't replace it for this very reason. I found I needed to wean myself off dependence on written music. I was not really interacting with the tunes, I was just following the chord charts.

I'm still not there, but I've progressed a lot in being able to hear the chord changes and such. Now that I play mandolin in addition to guitar, I'm going to work more on melody, but losing the sheet music was a step in the right direction. It's a good for getting started, and for learning tunes outside the actual session, but can really become a crutch during the session.

[Bertram Henze]

Imagine going to all that effort only to find your session taken over by people playing Beatles songs or Stairway to Heaven.

That can happen without sheet music as well - it's all part of the unpredictability of a session (after all, it says "open session" - there's no controlling what people think "open" means and turn up to play their stuff). There will always be the odd outlandish song or tune now and then, but in my experience I have never seen a "takeover" - Irish music always prevailed in our sessions because it has an inherent attractive power, conveyed by good players, that never required an extra protection.
But then I am in the largest densely populated industrial area of Germany (and indeed of Europe), attracting enough genuine Irish people to staff the core of most sessions, together with many of the semi-pros of Germany's ITM scene. YMMV.

I am not using sheet music in a session either - that's just for my woodshedding phase 1 for every tune. But if a newbie turns up with enough courage to play but not that confident yet to play by ear, we make him welcome and hope that in time he will become proficient enough to spread his wings.

Oh - and there are rules, of course. They are not written down or enforced in verbal form - music protects itself musically. Like in the OP's video, suggesting a solo bodhran performance and "being the soul of the session". I guess it was meant to be sarcastic, but that's exactly what happens: the freak plays awkwardly alone, the others sitting it out and talking, going to the restrooms, going for a smoke, whatever - and it works; the freak may turn up a second time and maybe a third, but is never seen again after that. I have seen it so many times.

[Bertram Henze]

One lady grabbed my 1930 Gibson uke and started bitching about my E string and tuner. She was lucky it wasn't a session because I was quite sober; no pints consumed! So I kindly took my uke and left .... never to return. Had it been a session, she might have been wearing a pint or two on her head.

I can picture that soooo clearly!

[Gelsenbury]

What we've found is that some people who rely on the sheet music rely on its configurations and have even begun arguing with more advanced players that they're doing the tune wrong because the sheet music requires a dotted eighth or something or a specific ornament or a specific note and the more advance player isn't doing it exactly as written.

I'm sure that everyone who actually thinks about the nature of folk music will agree that sticking slavishly with the printed version is emphatically not the idea. But I don't accept that as an argument against sheet music per se. As someone else (I think it was Michael) has pointed out, printed folk came a long way after the aural tradition. But come it did, and there's a reason for that. It's a crutch, or perhaps a better metaphor: the supporting wheels on the bikes of beginners.

[Bertram Henze]

It's a crutch, or perhaps a better metaphor: the supporting wheels on the bikes of beginners.

I was thinking the same, or maybe of this:



Anyway, if people try to hold sheet music up as proof that anybody is playing the tune "wrong", that's silly, of course. It might be patiently explained to them that this is like a repetition of Saxons conquering Celtic Britain with their written contracts and procedures (which were completely foreign to the 100% aural, illiterate Celtic culture) and thus founding a centuries-old hostility.
People should be allowed to use a crutch if they must, though, as long as they are not beating you with it...

[foldedpath]

I'm sure that everyone who actually thinks about the nature of folk music will agree that sticking slavishly with the printed version is emphatically not the idea. But I don't accept that as an argument against sheet music per se. As someone else (I think it was Michael) has pointed out, printed folk came a long way after the aural tradition. But come it did, and there's a reason for that. It's a crutch, or perhaps a better metaphor: the supporting wheels on the bikes of beginners.

I like Bertram's description of the dots as "woodshedding phase 1." I'm not a good reader, but my fiddler S.O. can sight-read well enough to play a new tune cold; not up to session tempo, but fast enough to get a general feel for the thing. That's great for quickly trying out alternate settings of a tune, or wading through a tune book to see what's interesting. I which I could do that. I can read the rhythm notation, but I'm molasses-slow at puzzling out the dots.

After that first phase though, we dig through our library of recordings or go online for YouTube versions from good trad players. The tunes we pick up together may start as sheet music, but actually getting the tunes in our heads is more learning by ear (and sometimes practicing with slowed-down recordings).

Another potential problem with sheet music is chord notation, for those who play backup instead of melody. Some tunes have fairly predictable chord progressions, but many others can be harmonized in different ways, or might require a more ambiguous approach with dropped thirds (so-called "modal" chords). A tune can take on a different flavor depending on whether the melody players are shifting between C#'s and C naturals in different phrases. A good backer has to respond to that in real time, and not by reading chords off a sheet.

The cardinal rule for backers is "Do No Harm"... i.e., don't distract the melody players. Sheet music chords can be a problem in that respect. So, use it if you need a jump-start for figuring out what mode a tune is in, but abandon it as soon as you can, in favor or a more improvised approach. This is why many sessions don't like having more than one guitar player or other main chordal backer. Two players won't be improvising the backup the same way, so having just one backer avoids harmonic and rhythmic train wrecks that could distract the melody players.

[Loretta Callahan]

Ah, this is making sense to me. There's a tradition to respect and keep. Of course a tune transcribed by one person, in one era, is going to be different from the same tune written down by another ... at another time.

There's a "transmission" involved if the tradition is to be maintained and respected. The music isn't "dead". It's alive and reflects both the tradition and the changes that affect its "language". I may not be saying it very well, but the more I learn about this music, the more I want to listen to it ... and attempt to really "hear" it. Maybe that's why I listened 15 years before I even considered playing along.

It reminds me of the storytelling and oral history traditions that still exist among my indigenous friends. Folks don't go around running off at the mouth telling stories ~ without permission, unless they like trouble.

You cannot play most Irish TRAD tunes "note for note the way it was written" because originally, it was not written. TRAD music was customarily passed along aurally. You learned it by listening, then playing along, and finally, leading out. Each session tends to develop its own ways of playing the tunes because it's not a written tradition.

[Nick Triesch]

I'm sorry folks but when a group like the London Symphony Orchestra or any famous orchestra for that matter plays...it does not sound forced. They are just really good at it. Why would anyone want to play a celtic tune just about note for note how it was played for 300 years? I have been to a session and it was just like that. The folks would be really still and not do anything extra. At all! Really strange. No fun. No noodling. Just note for note celtic tunes. Don't you think it's fun to play a song like The "Ashgrove" and play around with it? A session is like watching public television for 3 hours in a row! At 3 AM! Or going to a sports bar and not having chicken wings or beer. Nick

[Jill McAuley]

I'm sorry folks but when a group like the London Symphony Orchestra or any famous orchestra for that matter plays...it does not sound forced. They are just really good at it. Why would anyone want to play a celtic tune just about note for note how it was played for 300 years? I have been to a session and it was just like that. The folks would be really still and not do anything extra. At all! Really strange. No fun. No noodling. Just note for note celtic tunes. Don't you think it's fun to play a song like The "Ashgrove" and play around with it? A session is like watching public television for 3 hours in a row! At 3 AM! Or going to a sports bar and not having chicken wings or beer. Nick

Ok Nick, you don't like Irish traditional music, we get it - I'm a bit puzzled however, about why you feel the need to try to get other folks to chime in and agree with you that irish music is "boring, dumb etc etc...." It's obviously not your cup of tea, and that's fine, but you are posting in the "Celtic, UK etc etc" section, meaning I'd reckon a fair amount of us who browse here enjoy irish/celtic music, so you'll possibly not get much mileage dissing irish/celtic music in this particular part of the forum.

Cheers,
Jill, just another boring irish trad player (yawn....)

[foldedpath]

Why would anyone want to play a celtic tune just about note for note how it was played for 300 years?

Well, let's see.. maybe because after 300 years with literally thousands of fiddle/flute/pipe tunes in the repertoire, the really GOOD tunes are the ones that rise to the top like cream, and get handed off from one generation of players to the next?

Think about that process of selection over the years. The same thing has been happening in Americana fiddle tune repertoire, it just hasn't had as long a timescale to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I have been to a session and it was just like that. The folks would be really still and not do anything extra. At all! Really strange. No fun. No noodling. Just note for note celtic tunes. Don't you think it's fun to play a song like The "Ashgrove" and play around with it?

I was lead guitar player in a Chicago-style blues band for six years. I know how to improvise. This is just different music, from a different part of the world and a different musical tradition than people like me (and I'm guessing, you) were raised in. It takes some effort -- and lots of careful listening -- to understand what it's all about. If you're not willing to make that effort, then please, don't criticize what you don't understand.

P.S. if you don't like Irish trad, you're really not gonna like an OldTime jam.

[Loretta Callahan]

Oh - and there are rules, of course. They are not written down or enforced in verbal form - music protects itself musically.

Exactly

[Bertram Henze]

I'm sorry folks but when a group like the London Symphony Orchestra or any famous orchestra for that matter plays...it does not sound forced. They are just really good at it. Why would anyone want to play a celtic tune just about note for note how it was played for 300 years?

Surprisingly, famous orchestras do have things in common with a session. Especially since orchestras often play centuries-old pieces, note for note.

The difference is that orchestras rehearse and sessions don't. Therefore a session requires more careful awareness - you just can't rely on everybody else doing his job like in an orchestra. But if the session regulars have played together often and know what to expect, near-to-orchestra quality, ease and fun actually can happen.

If you've been to one session, you've been to none. Sessions are very different, even in the same venue. And ordering chicken wings and beer is perfectly acceptable session behavior

I am adding my standard example here - and if you think they're not having fun, come out and say that...

[SincereCorgi]

Mandolin is an excellent instrument to learn tunes on at a seisun, because it can switch from melody to rhythm in a way that a fiddle, flute, or guitar can't do as well. You can play melody on the tunes whose melodies you know; you can play rhythm behind the tunes whose melodies you don't know, if you can figure out the chords "on the fly." As you hear the tunes more times, you find yourself picking up the melody.

Uh oh, Alan... apparently nobody told you that you're not allowed to play rhythm mandolin unless you've demonstrated proficiency in the melody before a jury of at least three (3) plump men in cable-knit sweaters or folk festival sweatshirts.

The sheet music hangup is mystifying for me. There's this violin guy at the session I've been going to who, well, not to be nasty, but he plays terribly and doesn't know any of the most common tunes. This situation never seems to change. The leader offered to loan him one of the tune 'bibles' of the common local arrangements and the guy responded with this more-Irish-than-thou sneer and the unforgettable comment: "Oh, thanks, no, I don't really need to go off 'the dots' anymore."

[Bertram Henze]

...a jury of at least three (3) plump men in cable-knit sweaters or folk festival sweatshirts.

for situations like that, just follow this guy's example.

There's this violin guy at the session I've been going to who, well, not to be nasty, but he plays terribly and doesn't know any of the most common tunes. This situation never seems to change. The leader offered to loan him one of the tune 'bibles' of the common local arrangements and the guy responded with this more-Irish-than-thou sneer and the unforgettable comment: "Oh, thanks, no, I don't really need to go off 'the dots' anymore."

This is more serious, not just because someone apparently lives in his own isolated perception of his own playing but because this could happen to all of us and we'd never know until we open up to other folks' criticism or - most cruel of all tortures - make a recording of ourselves and listen to it two days later

[Dagger Gordon]

It's OK to use sheet music if you want, but you are going to run into practical difficulties.

Often people don't really know what tunes are going to come next, and if someone launches into a tune which you do have the music for somewhere, I'm afraid it might be over and they are into another one before you have your music in place.

Sessions where the players play pre-arranged sets of tunes would be fair enough, I suppose, but most of the ones I would go to simply don't work that way and to be honest, people might get a bit bored having to wait for you to find your music every time.

No way round it. You need to be able to play a lot of tunes without relying on sheet music. Learning from music at home is another matter. But you should still try to develop your ear and try to learn some tunes that way if you can.

[Nick Triesch]

Jill! I really like Irish traditional music! I play lots of it. But when I play it, I change it up a bit for fun. Just like on any song I play. In fact, my favorite way of playing is just adding small bits to recorded music or in a jam setting. The less is more thing. I love celtic music. I guess just the pub kind. Also, the reason I posted here is because it was on the front of the cafe looking at me one day last week. I did not seek it out. The folks at the session were just really rude with a ton of rules and it was just not cool to me. I have been playing for 30 years! And to have a leader tell me that I can't add notes or read tab? When we got to the session for the first visit, there was this nice lady who just started to set up with a music stand and the leader quickly told her in front of everyone that it was not allowed so she must put it away. That is really not playing for fun. I'll just keep playing fun celtic songs in the mountain with my friends. Nick

[zoukboy]

Why would anyone want to play a celtic tune just about note for note how it was played for 300 years?

Because the part you are hearing, the notes, is not the most important component of that music. Obviously you are not hearing what *is* important. Nothing wrong with that, but trumpeting your own ignorance on this public forum might be something you'd want to think twice about.

[michaelpthompson]

I really like Irish traditional music! I play lots of it. But when I play it, I change it up a bit for fun. Just like on any song I play.

You just really don't get it Nick. You may have played something for thirty years, but it's not Irish Traditional Music. It's called that because we respect the tradition. It's not set in stone, but we play it the traditional way. We don't make it up as we go along. For instance, in this tradition, we play a tune, we sing a song. You don't even know the vocabulary, much less the issues.

I'm sorry folks but when a group like the London Symphony Orchestra or any famous orchestra for that matter plays...it does not sound forced. They are just really good at it. Why would anyone want to play a Celtic tune just about note for note how it was played for 300 years?

You're contradicting yourself again here, and still not understanding what's going on. The LSO plays from sheet music that was written down 300 years ago, and they play it just like it was written. They don't noodle, they don't get "creative" they play what was written, in accordance with the directions of their conductor.

It ITM, we don't have that kind of tradition. We have a living, breathing tradition that's passed down from one player to another. It was created long before it was written down. Sheet music is an artificial innovation imposed on it, not the way it was created like symphony music. We don't play it note for note the way it was "written" because we don't rely on sheet music. It's a good help for getting started or learning tunes, but it can get in the way of playing at a session. Some sessions are ok with that, many are not. Just because you can't understand their reasons doesn't make them wrong.

I love to play and sing "pub" music as well. I've changed the songs even as I was singing them. I don't confuse that with session music the way you do. But even that tradition has its rules and its purists. For instance, whenever we're playing and singing in a pub, somebody requests Danny Boy. Danny Boy is not an Irish song. Some purists in the "pub" category will look down their noses at the ignorance that requests something like that. Others will sing it anyway. I get along with both because I don't judge them. I get along in sessions where they don't use sheet music, and where they do. Same reason.

[allenhopkins]

...Danny Boy is not an Irish song...

Apparently an Irish tune, though, found in tune collections from 1796 and 1855. Lyrics by English songwriter Frederick Weatherly (1910).

As for SincereCorgi's idea of a mandolin "jury," I might be a tad improvisational for the strictest of Irish seisuns, for sure, since I do like to throw in harmonies now and again, but I definitely respect the idea of playing ITM relatively "straight," not trying to "riff over the changes" with improvised melodies. It's hard to legislate taste and talent, and seisuns that adopt a really strict code of rules in an attempt to avoid any unwanted variations, are definitely going to appear a bit unfriendly to newcomers who don't have as much of a background in the genre. Undoubtedly I've committed my share of faux pas in my time. Luckily, most of the local musicians are glad to have people come in and join them, and tolerant of newbie idiosyncrasies. I've never been to a real local seisun, as opposed to one designated as "learners," where musicians were using sheet music, but I doubt anyone would be thrown out if he/she had a "cheat sheet" for a new or unfamiliar tune.

[Bren]

I must say, I've been to sessions from Kirkwall to Kalamunda, Melbourne to Moscow, New York to ... somewhere starting with N - and I can't recall seeing anyone with music stands. I don't think anyone would object in Aberdeen, you'd just have trouble keeping up (and finding space). I have seen people taking sneaky looks at the dots in their fiddle case or whatever, to remind themselves of a tune.

If I walked into a pub and saw a load of people playing from music stands, I'd probably walk out again.
Not really, I'd go to the bar.