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Thread: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

  1. #126
    Mandolin Botherer Shelagh Moore's Avatar
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Well, if we're playing something called "traditional Irish music," then it's kinda hard to get away from being ruled by convention, isn't it?
    Absolutely not in my experience. Having grown up in the tradition and played ITM most of my life I've witnessed numerous people pushing against the boundaries. In Ireland and the rest of the British Isles (and elsewhere), traditional music (not just ITM) is constantly evolving and you only have to look at some of the innovative musicians and groups who have emerged over recent decades to see how the music has been taken forward in new directions.

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  3. #127
    Registered User James Rankine's Avatar
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Quote Originally Posted by foldedpath View Post
    Eddie, I've bent over backwards to say that this is just my opinion. I'm sorry you feel that way.

    As for anonymity, it's not that hard to figure out who I am. I've posted a link to my duo before where it's explicit. Here it is again, in case anyone wants to hear some tune samples (old ones, from four or five years ago, egad!). The applet might take a while to load the tunes:

    http://www.ptjams.com/string14/
    Thanks Mike for the link to your music. Really beautiful playing and a fantastic tone from your mandolin. I almost always agree with everything you post and having now heard your musical voice I know why.

  4. #128
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    It's a while since this thread was active.
    I have a recent video of me playing a waltz, which I thought I would offer up.
    I guess you might say that I use a sort of slow tremolo. I think it works for me, anyway.
    David A. Gordon

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  6. #129
    Mandolin Botherer Shelagh Moore's Avatar
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Hi Dagger... at least for me it works in a very expressive and tasteful way as well.

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  8. #130

    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    I say try it.
    If it sounds good to you and the others in your band then do it, if not then maybe have a chat about what might work better and do that.
    Re what is trad:
    I really like Irish trad, but am not Irish in any sense.

    I once went to a session where it was quite clear that they didn't want anyone who wasn't Irish playing their music.

    I also heard some real horror stories from other people, so it put me off even listening to Irish Music for quite a while. That is very sad!

    I personally think that it's great to celebrate and enjoy the music from various places, without getting bogged down in "You must use this instrument" or "You must be this particular race" in order to enjoy or appreciate it properly.

    I've never been back to a Irish trad only session, but I've been to sessions where quite a bit of that is played and I usually play some tunes or do some songs that most people I know consider trad in the little session I run.

    And what is "trad" will mean different things to different people. There isn't just one source who can answer such questions and have the final say on it!

    I say just try and enjoy!

    Cheers,
    Jen.

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  10. #131

    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Very nice to my ear, Dagger

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  12. #132
    Registered User Bren's Avatar
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Interesting thread. I got sidetracked watching Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, which i hadn't seen before.

    I'm a big fan of Daggers very clean and even long note style of picking on waltzes and slow tunes.

    Never really mastered it myself. I also like the classical style where they keep a tremolo going while picking out counterpoint or lower notes on other strings.

    I tend to do Italian style tremolo on long notes. After all, mandolin was designed for that. In a band or noisy environment that is. I seldom play tremolo as often when playing such tunes at home.

    When out and about, it depends what the other instruments are in a session. Maybe not play at all if i don't think mandolin will help much. That's hard if you don't get out much and are dying to play some tunes!

    Once a woman came up to me and said, in front of the banjo player, that she loved the sound of the mandolin. I said, it's a very romantic sound compared to banjo. Which was just mischief making but , really, you're looking for a voice that fits and in your own way, trying to make it sing and articulate a feeling just as much as a fiddler or Piper is.

    Anyway, i never knew tremolo was frowned on until i read it on The Session. I certainly never got that impression from my early listening where Barney McKenna used it on Dubliners recordings, or in Scottish sessions.

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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    [QUOTE=Bren;1564064]
    I'm a big fan of Daggers very clean and even long note style of picking on waltzes and slow tunes."

    Thanks Brendan
    David A. Gordon

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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bren View Post
    Anyway, i never knew tremolo was frowned on until i read it on The Session. I certainly never got that impression from my early listening where Barney McKenna used it on Dubliners recordings, or in Scottish sessions.
    Neither did I. Nor, for that matter, did I know you had to use DUD DUD for jigs. I'd been playing mandolin for at least 20 years before that.
    David A. Gordon

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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Sorry double post
    David A. Gordon

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    Registered User foldedpath's Avatar
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bren View Post
    Anyway, i never knew tremolo was frowned on until i read it on The Session. I certainly never got that impression from my early listening where Barney McKenna used it on Dubliners recordings, or in Scottish sessions.
    On that latter point, I don't think it matters what people think about it in the context of Irish or Scottish pub sessions, because the majority of tunes will be at dance tempos where tremolo would be redundant (or impossible) anyway.

    You might get the occasional retreat march, or something slow like "Hector the Hero," or "Da Slockit Light" where a mandolin player might try tremolo to stretch out the notes. But those are usually few and far between among all the jigs and reels. So you'll get different individual opinions, but I doubt that much of a consensus has ever built up about it in the context of session playing. There just aren't that many opportunities for it.

    Other than that, for either stage performance or playing alone at home, it's just personal taste as to whether it works on the slow tunes, including the true slow airs with rubato tempo. Personally I don't think it works in the latter case because it's impossible (in my head anyway) to avoid hearing it like Italian or Classical music instead of distinctively Irish or Scottish. But that's just me. It's one reason I picked up the flute as an additional instrument. The other reason being a wider range of ornamentation and dynamics, but the sustain sure is nice.

    By the way, I like Dagger's playing of the waltz in that clip above. However, steady meter following the tempo isn't quite the same as Italian/Classical tremolo. The music I was mainly referring to was the un-metered type like slow airs with irregular timing like Pórt Na BPúcaí. Or Scottish piobaireachd (formal bagpipe music) if you really want a challenge! In a tune like that, you'd be playing tremolo "off the beat" because there is no beat. It's why they're traditionally done on sustaining instruments. Or at least plucked instruments with tons of sustain, like the wire harp.

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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Quote Originally Posted by foldedpath View Post
    On that latter point, I don't think it matters what people think about it in the context of Irish or Scottish pub sessions, because the majority of tunes will be at dance tempos where tremolo would be redundant (or impossible) anyway.
    Yes, perhaps the majority of tunes will be. But we do slow tunes in the pub sometimes, and sometimes the place will indeed quieten down for them. And then how you play is important.
    David A. Gordon

  18. #138

    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bren View Post
    ...got sidetracked watching Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, which i hadn't seen before..
    Be sure and check out the rest of the doc - great John Lee Hooker segment.

    But I'm always moved by that rendition of "One Irish Rover."

    ...Anyway, i never knew tremolo was frowned on until i read it on The Session...
    For my part, I haven't noticed (nor promulgated) such ecumenism - I'm just playing my airs and pibrochs at home - not expecting anyone to pipe down for it!

  19. #139
    Registered User Bren's Avatar
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    But we do slow tunes in the pub sometimes, and sometimes the place will indeed quieten down for them.
    Sometimes. Often they won't, so a good strong tremolo helps establish a melody line that everyone else can hear. I like to play waltzes in sessions ...forgive me.


    I'm always moved by that rendition of "One Irish Rover."
    You kind of forget that singular artists like those two, that don't talk to the media (or their audiences) much, do actually meet up and play together at times. Nice to see that Dylan was familiar with Morrison's song. The work they create stands so apart that one doesn't always think of them mixing like that.
    Bren

  20. #140
    Registered User foldedpath's Avatar
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bren View Post
    Sometimes. Often they won't, so a good strong tremolo helps establish a melody line that everyone else can hear. I like to play waltzes in sessions ...forgive me.
    Waltzes in sessions are great. I like playing the "Far Away" tune, which is often referred to as an Irish Waltz, whatever that is, and often comes up in local sessions. Here's a sample of me playing it:

    http://ptjams.com/string14/audio/str...e_far_away.mp3

    "Hector the Hero" is usually played in 3/4 waltz time, at least in the local sessions. What Dagger is playing on that waltz video isn't tremolo. Or maybe we understand the term differently. I think some of us are talking past each other here.

    Do you know what a slow air is? What the term "rubato" means? Here's a sample below (and I think I linked this tune earlier).




    Do you think this is a good candidate for Italian-style mandolin tremolo?

    I hear this kind of thing in local sessions, usually started by a fiddler or piper. Everyone else sits out, and then joins in when the next tune in the set is a march or dance tune. And there is a lot of crossover (IMO) between this and the slower tunes that are played in sessions.

    Past a certain point in slow tunes and non-metered playing, I give up trying to follow on a plucked instrument with short sustain like mandolin and just listen, enjoying someone else playing the tune. Your mileage may vary, and I know that every session is different.

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  22. #141

    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Beautiful. I love the pipes.

    Ya there are some instruments that you just want to hear 'em and that's it.

    So, can someone say? I'd read it was the wire strung first before the pipes - considering all of the Isles - and the music then went the pipes in a fashion that began with the harp? I may have that reversed but i dont think so. I'm familiar with the history since about 1600, but prior?

  23. #142
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    [QUOTE=foldedpath; What Dagger is playing on that waltz video isn't tremolo. Or maybe we understand the term differently. I think some of us are talking past each other here.[/QUOTE]

    It's certainly not tremolo in the Italian sense, but at the same time it's not just single notes either.
    As I say, it seems to me to be a sort of 'slow tremolo'. But it may not be tremolo at all, depending how you understand the term.

    For what it's worth, I've always played a bit like that. Actually some of my early playing was influenced by the clarsach, and on my Highland Mandolin album (1988) I had a version of Archibald MacDonald of Keppoch with Katie Harrigan on harp, which I thought sounded nice.
    David A. Gordon

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  25. #143
    Mandolin Botherer Shelagh Moore's Avatar
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Anyway, i never knew tremolo was frowned on until i read it on The Session.
    Some of us pre-date that self-appointed arbiter of all that is correct in ITM/traditional music.

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  27. #144
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Richard Moore View Post
    Some of us pre-date that self-appointed arbiter of all that is correct in ITM/traditional music.
    As does the music itself It may just be me,but some of those guys that hang out on the session forum seem to take themselves a wee bit serious sometimes.
    FWiW I remember my great-grandfather using a bit of tremolo now and then while playing tenor banjo. It was the 60's and I was a "wee biter" sitting on the kitchen floor trying to play along on a Monkey Ward mandolin that was strung up with only four strings. Hey, I was 4 and they wanted to play was well as tune my instrument. I remember that I couldn't get any kind of tremolo going at all so my great-grandfather showed me how a couple of triplets (like you're playing a jig) could fit rhythmically into a melody with my grandfathers' fiddle line and "keep the note going". The rhythm was the thing for him, it was important to make sense with the rest of the tune, you didn't just bang away as fast as you could.
    Now this was tunes played with family by Scots with brogues so thick you could walk on it, so may not be strict I-trad. If anyone ever said "OOO I love Irish music" he would lay it on thick with "we're Scots, we play Scottish tunes by definition" and all that kind of stuff. LOL once I did hear him say that the difference between Scottish and Irish tunes were the Scots could sing when they weren't drinking.

    anyway, I guess my point is that a guy that learned to play trad music in Scotland pre WW1 used a bit of tremolo so we can add that to the mix. I can't say when or why he started using it other than "you can keep the note going".


    ed for spelling

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  29. #145

    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    As you say - a bit of tremolo - different likely than the drenching "Italian-style' approach. For me, an effective tremolo (in a trad air, e.g.) is - rather than the unremitting barrage to emulate a sustaining instrument - yet another opportunistic device to impart texture, shade, volume/tonal dynamics -


    Here's one of those approaches of lending different (trad Chinese) instruments to 'Western trad.' As with mandolin, tremolo on guzheng is a prolific technique. Notice the dynamics achieved - rising/falling, pulsing, etc:


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  31. #146

    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Listen to what Enda Scahill does with tremolo--both on mandolin and tenor banjo. He occasionally takes the standard triplet and extends it into tremolo passages on jigs, reels, hornpipes, and even on old-time tunes. It's flashy, maybe over-the-top for some tastes--but it's certainly a legit choice.

  32. #147

    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Here is a tune played on cittern with tremolo technique adapted from the Spanish guitar. I spent years practicing "Recuerdos de la Alhambra." Then I heard the Irish classical guitarist John Feeley do something like this with the Carolan tune "Blind Mary," and nicked it for a cittern arrangement:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Eedhoctqg

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  34. #148

    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Of all the various tremolo techniques of all the instruments in all the musics of the world, I would think that some variation in deployment - in our case here ITM - would inevitability result, particularly in 'fingerstyle' approaches. I mentioned that more haphazardly earlier on the thread - thinking then of charango and santoor approaches specifically. With our ever increasing 'polyphonic' melding of music, players, style, instruments et al, I suppose it's reasonable that crossfertilization of technical elements like tremolo will ensue.

    *Fwiw, as a cl/fl guitarist long before i ever got into ITM, i've done my share of dabbling with the fingerstyle trem (which I also do on chrngo) approach on cittern. But I'm generally unimpressed with my particular results (I went to other instruments for sustain! ).
    Last edited by catmandu2; Mar-27-2017 at 3:42pm.

  35. #149
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    It really is a case of different strokes for different folks, and unlike Italian (or indeed Croatian and many other traditions) there is not (yet?) a hard and fast expectation about tremolo in Irish mandolin.

    On the other hand there is certainly an expectation of triplets in Irish tenor banjo playing, and many Irish mandolin players will in fact be mainly banjo players. It seems to me that if you are able to play good banjo triplets, then that technique of very quick right hand movement (unless you're left-handed) would be bound to serve you well if you wanted to do tremolo, so I am surprised that you don't hear it more.

    Unless of course you just don't like it, which I guess is what this thread is all about.
    David A. Gordon

  36. #150
    Registered User John Kelly's Avatar
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    Default Re: Tremolo for Irish Trad?

    Tired to access your video, but getting a message saying it is not available! Has it been taken down? Othere videos opening as expected.
    I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. - Eric Morecambe

    http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOldBores

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