difficult tunes to master

[Jim Nollman]

After years of playing traditional tunes on mandolin, some melodies stand out for me as being especially hard to master. These tunes usually don't SOUND any more difficult to play than the rest of my 60 tune repertoire. And since very few of the tunes I learn are played in scales outside of the usual D, G, C, A, F, Gm, and Em) its not a question of having to wrap my fingers and my brain around an A-flat scale (for one example).

Plus, some of the tunes that have actually been quite easy to master, can sound like they'd actually be hard to play, maybe because of some exotic-sounding accidental note, or maybe a sudden, fast legato movement. La Bastringue comes to mind. Or how about the outstanding B-part melody in Rights of Man. Before I learned Ragtime Anny, I was sure that the opening rat-a-tat sequence would freeze my fingers. It's proven to be as easy as pie at full speed. Yet I have a much harder time playing the similar rat-a-tat sequence in Bill Cheatham. I don't know why.

Trying to figure out precisely why some tunes remain so indefinably difficult, all I can say, is that in many cases the fingering sequence seems to go against the "grain" of what I am used to expecting. Well maybe that's not always true, since I am now learning some Chopin and Bach, and I am finding that these pieces are not any more difficult to play than anything traditional. Because these classics are usually longer in duration, they do take an "ear learner" more brain cells to play well all the way through.

Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear what tunes other traditional mandolin players are having a hard time with. If you decide to respond, it would also be helpful to let us know how many tunes you can actually play at full speed, just to give your personal struggle a real world context.

My own hardest tune these days seems to be Colored Aristocracy. I can play it OK in my own living room, but that's not at full speed. When I crank up the speed at a dance, there's two different places in the tune where my fingers always go into a rut. Then I have to start THINKING about finger-brain coordination right in the middle of the tune, which is a dangerous mindgame for any melody player standing up on stage.

[JeffD]

I think it depends to great extent on what kinds of exercises you practice.

If you practice a lot of scales, then tunes with scale runs are not going to bother you. If you practice a lot of arpeggios, then they will be easy when they show up in the tune. Triplets, pentatonics, what ever.

Another thought is to try moving part of it up the neck. On more than a few occations a phrase of a tune is hard to get down fast and smooth, but if I move it, or the previous or following section, down a string and up the neck, the whole thing just falls into place.

For me getting the rhythm is 98% of the difficulty. A fiddle tune with a strong traditional rhythm is for me not so hard, but something crooked, or with an oddly placed triplet, or syncopated in an odd way, will trip me up every time, even if fingering the notes is straight forward.


OK time for a confession: When I get a fiddle tune with a particularly difficult part that doesn't seem to add to the tune or make it pretty, I try and listen to or find the sheet music for other versions, and try to determine if the hard part is essential to the tune, or just some show-off's ornamentation. I don't mind learning any hard tune, and the hard parts if they are pretty or essential, but I am not going to waste time on the arbitrary consequences of momentary testosterone poisoning.

Of course there are tunes that are entirely testosterone poisoning, and well, I just don't play 'em.

A fellow at a session in Scotland once explained to me that if he knew all the tunes he would never get to drink.

[Jim Nollman]

I don't really do exercises. I just learn tunes by ear. 2 or 3 at a time. As i learn more of them, the process gets quicker. But sometimes it doesn't. It took me forever to learn the waltz Rosebud of Allenvale. Now I know it well, and can't figure out what made it so hard. Maybe it was the B part that has the same run in G, then repeated in A. Sometimes it seems that, in general, Scottish tunes are more harmonically complex than the usual Irish or Appalachian reel.

I think your idea of playing a certain run further up the neck rather than across the strings may be worth trying for Colored Aristocracy. Such an obvious suggestion, and yet it never occurred to me.

I don't usually have problems with rhythm. Maybe because I just play whatever rhythm seems to work well for that tune. We do an exercise in our group to play the same song, in succession, as a waltz, a reel, and a jig.

As far as alternative versions, I almost want to answer: aren't they all? In our group, whoever plays a tune best, usually gets to decide the melody the rest of us learn. Not by writing it out, but simply by playing it firmly enough that the rest of us follow it to catch up. And when we do catch up, we're all playing the same "version". Or in another example, in Ragtime Annie, when i first started learning it I didn't like any of the recorded versions of the B-part. So I interjected my own new "version", which includes an initial 8 bars that unfolds around a few repeating flatted 5ths and 2nds that actually seem to better reflect the ragtime roots. Maybe that's how all "alternative versions" originated.

I tell you that, but i must also confess that my favorite songs to play are those that have a tantrum if you play an "alternative" note, because anything added simply destroys true perfection. There are lots of tunes like that. Shenandoah Falls is just the first tune that comes to mind.

So Jeff, what tunes are hard for you?

[JeffD]

I agree, there are some tunes that any diversion is a subtraction. Wild Rose of the Mountain is one such tune, perfect and can't be improved.

Compared to something like Fisher's Hornpipe, the B part of which is really a template for your imagination. I am not sure I have every played it the same way twice.

Tunes that are hard for me? Well every tune that I know is easy and every tune I don't yet know is hard.

That being said some tunes are harder to learn than others.

Spootiskerry, for example, was hard for me because of the rhythm, but once I stopped trying to learn it, and just learned to sing it, the tune came easily.

Two tunes from Donegal whistle player Packie Byrne that I am wrestling with: The Forgotten Highland, and The Unnamed Highland. Hauntingly beautiful but the rhythm trips me up.

I am working on a bunch of rags, and that ragtime rhythm is not in my bones yet, so they are all uniformly a struggle. In the case of ragtime I need to listen to a lot more of it and let it sink in, and then come back to the tunes when the rhythm is more "obvious" to me.

There is a tune that is kicking my butt. Nola. Its a piano rag by Felix Arndt. I don't usually go in for show-offey tunes, but Nola is a delightful tune to hear and fun to play as well. It is a very steep learning curve for me however.

Here is a guitar version that I like.

[JeffD]

I don't really do exercises.

Something to try.

I find that very often when I pick up the instrument there is nothing in particular I want to play on the instrument, I just want to play. Its sort of an "all the tunes I know bore me" moment. That is when I do different exercises, just to enjoy the sensation of my fingers and the pick.

[bgjunkie]

I don't spend a lot of time on the cafe these days, but I am glad I dropped in tonight. This thread has been one of the more interesting I have read in a while, especially since I have been dealing with the same issue of dealing with tunes that aren't really that hard, but I seem to have trouble with them just the same. This time I decided to tackle three tunes at the same time and each one has the one little problem area.

Jeff - your suggestion of moving the troubling part of the tune just made my life easier, thanks. I have been working on a version of Cattle in the Cane and there was a phrase that had an open in the middle of it that just kept messing me up. I don't know why I didn't think of playing the closed A, especially since it was already coming off the 5th fret G anyway.

Guess I better take another look at the other tunes and see what I can do to get those moving more smoothly.

[Samjessin]

JeffD - met you at Genero, I had the bowlback, you had the bowlback.

That Nola is beautiful, I keep seeing the name of that tune but never looked it up. I like that version, the three guitar parts really tackle that piano sound.

No tunes that I play kick my butt 100% of the time or else I wouldn't play them. There are tunes that are less enjoyable than others for a larger percentage of the time, but if they act up too much I will just not play them and they will never call themselves to mind. Sort of like old friends.

When I started playing for instance I played in A a lot because of a fiddler who I learned with. He played a lot of those Hangman's Reel, Sally Gooden, Ways of the World type tunes. After putting in more time playing with others I learned that I don't enjoy playing in A on mandolin as much as I enjoy some other keys and I found myself learning less and less A tunes and now (luckily I have found musicians who shy away from A as well) I barely play any tunes in A. I don't go to sessions much, and the one I do occasionally attend plays mainly in A and D. I learned to tune a mandolin down Yank Rachell style so I can play in C and it will come out A or I can play in F and it will come out D. Nobody knows the better.

Now, of course I would be a much stronger musician if I found a way to like playing in A, but what I am trying to get across is that people should find what they like and tackle that. Life is too short to play what you don't want to play.

[JeffD]

Now, of course I would be a much stronger musician if I found a way to like playing in A, but what I am trying to get across is that people should find what they like and tackle that. Life is too short to play what you don't want to play.

Like Calvin says:

[Samjessin]

Exactly Calvin, exactly.

[Jim Nollman]

One selfish reason I started this thread was to get some names of new tunes from other players.

I downloaded a version of Wild Rose yesterday. The melody of that tune (or is it just the version of that tune I downloaded?) does something I've never heard before in a fiddle tune. Each individual line pushes towards a resolution on the last note of the line, but suddenly ends the line a beat early, so that the actual resolution is merely implied. The result is a forward momentum that I can easily imagine dancers stomping down on that implied note as being their own. It reminds me of a reggae bass with the gaping hole on the "one".

Jeff, I'd be thankful to hear more about what you consider to be a good exercise. I tend to pick up the instrument and immediately start a tune I know well, and do 3 or 4 verses, continually pushing the rhythm until its moving forward at max speed, then stop. The tunes I choose include St Ann's Reel, Sailor's Hornpipe, Haste to the Wedding, and Jimmy Allen.

Another thing I've been doing lately, which some may consider heresy, but which i consider to be creative, is to merge the individual lines of 3 or 4 tunes into one unified melody. One example starts with the B part of Over the Waterfall, which actually sounds like a dialogue of two voices if you think about it. Then I add the B part to Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine, then make my melody increments smaller, adding 4 bars of each tune, plus 4 bars of the two A-parts, or even adding shorter phrases from Pay's de Haut or Swinging on a Gate. I do a similar merger using Jimmy Allen and Jubilo, which remain interchangeable in tiny two bar bursts.

[JeffD]

I have not seen Wild Rose of the Mountain played at a contra dance. Dance folks would have to weigh in on how dancable the tune is. I agree about the momentum though. The tune just aches beautifully when played slowly. I do it with lots of tremolo, and holding the passing tones a little long.

Exercises. Well I do a lot of the following, with varying degrees of success or enthusiasm, depending on how much time I have and how tired I might be.

Major scale for one octave, up and then down and then an arpeggio of the I chord in that scale. All keys all octaves. (Similar in some respects to some of the FFcP exercises I believe.)

Arpeggios of the I, IV, and V and I chord of every key, every octave. Sometimes I add the VI arpeggio, because it shows up often in bluegrass.

Another thing I do with arpeggios is walk down in fifths. So I will start in some key, do the arpeggio, then do the arpeggio a fifth below that, then do the arpeggio a fifth below that, working around the circle of fifths counter clockwise.

Pentatonics in every key. (I just started doing something fun here, I do bugle calls in every key.)

There is a bunch of figures I can only describe as sewing machine thingies. I play them right side up and even upside down sometimes. Its hard to describe here. But look up the tune called Glass Island Reel, or another tune called The Gale, and play the B part. Things like that. Funny, when I discovered those two tunes I found them relatively easy to learn, because my fingers were already used to sewing machine thingies. (You music theory folks can fill in what the technical term is.)

Its a good idea to put in some minor scales and chords, something I don't do much and to which I need to give more emphasis.

And then I do a bunch of double stop exercises, in all keys. This is the least organized part, but I try to get all the different kind of double stops and then transitions between the I and IV and V double stops, and also walking around the circle of fifths counter clockwise.

Its not nearly as nerdly as described, believe me. It just reads rather intensly, but its pretty straight forward when I do it. I don't do all of it all the time, but I make sure what ever thing I am doing I get all the keys and all the octaves of that exercise done.

I have been criticised for not doing enough right hand practice, which is probably right.

I enjoy playing the mandolin more than I enjoy playing any particular kind of music on the mandolin, so this stuff gets to be kind of fun. As soon as it gets tedius I play Chorus Jig or Pig Ankle Rag, and put the mandolin away.


I don't know about combining different parts of different tunes. I have a thing about the tunes themselves, (see my blog - oh I see you have), and it would be like putting the beginning of a Hemingway story with the end of a Jack London story, Yikes!

I love the tune Pay's De Haut. That is a fun one.

[Jim Nollman]

I know exactly what you are talking about with your "sewing machine thingies". I think of the start to Ragtime Annie. Or the B part of Devil's Dream. Repeating triangular patterns that demand constant finger movement, often repeated up or down the neck a whole tone, or a fifth. I agree, that gypsy song you mention, The Gale, is a great example. One of the more simple
versions of Soldier's Joy does the same thing on the A part.

Your exercises sound worthwhile, especially doing everything you mention in every scale. It not only sounds like a huge mental chore, but also like an astute regimen for becoming more proficient at Jazz mandolin. I probably speak for most mandolin players when I confess that I'm emphatically weak in certain key, C#, G#, Bflat. How could it be any different when 50 or 60 traditional tunes I play are overwhelmingly in only 4 keys? I'm working to break through this obvious limitation as I write, now learning the Louis Armstrong version of Stardust which is in G#.

There's a few Scott Joplin pieces that are constructed as a series of 8 or 10 individual melodies, each in a different key, each of 12 or 16 bars in length. They are linked together by 4 or 8 bar modulating sections that are among the most interesting (but very difficult for a non-reader) musical statements I've ever encountered. Check out "Bethena for just one example.

I am immersed in an "exercise" right now, trying to master new chords by stretching out my material beyond traditional tunes. For instance, been having a lot of fun figuring out various inversions within one small grouping of extraordinary chords in the Bach C prelude that goes: Cmaj7, C#dim, Gm7, GM7, Cm6,D.

But I always bring it back to traditional music. I discovered early on that the same flourishes that work so well in a Bach fugue, works just as well embellishing reels and jigs. Being familiar with one supports the mastering of the other. These days I am having fun playing two contrasting styles. I love the mixolydian stuff by spitting out the melody on one string (say the D), while keeping an open drone on the A. Until I started these tunes, i never realized how much a John Lee Hooker Boogie draws inspiration from this traditional genre that includes Kitchen Girl, Cluck Old Hen, Sandy Boys, and also your tune: Wild Rose.

The other style I tend to dwell on are much more classical sounding, including (but not limited to) Scottish waltzes like Hector the Hero, Herbie MacLeod, Josephin's waltz, and Rose of Allenvale. Gorgeous stuff.

[JeffD]

It not only sounds like a huge mental chore, but also like an astute regimen for becoming more proficient at Jazz mandolin..

I don't know much about jazz actually. I move things into all key mostly because I enjoy the feeling of some of the odd keys. Its like an alien landscape in which I have to rely on my ear, and on closed position patterns. I have to admit, I sometimes don't know what key I am in, I am just up the neck somewhere.

I don't do huge mental chores, certainly not for free. Practicing mandolin is no chore at all, its the dessert of my day.

[JeffD]

Scottish waltzes like Hector the Hero, Herbie MacLeod, Josephin's waltz, and Rose of Allenvale. Gorgeous stuff.

What is the deal with Josephin's. That tune is everywhere these days. Nobody every heard of it or played it a few months ago and now its at every jam and everyone's to-learn list.

Its the new psudo-obscure tune -a tune that someone brings to a jam with the glee that it is an arcane tune nobody does. At first nobody does it because nobody heard of it. Soon enough nobody does it because its played too much.

Yea its a very pretty. But I suspect its a virus.

[Jim Nollman]

Re: Josefin. I can only comment on how the tune came to me. I spend too much time searching out obscure fiddle tunes on the itunes store. Right now, I have a special thing for tunes that blur classical and traditional forms. That's where I first discovered the recorded output of Natalie McMaster, the cellist, who is among the best at taking obscure fiddle tunes and embellishing them with her own formidable classical chops. Josefin may be her finest arrangement. Check out her version of it. For more on this same popular nexus, check out anything recent by Alasdair Fraser or Buddy McMaster.

To make this integration of forms work at all, takes compositional talent joined to virtuosity. I like a lot of it. Chris Thile is doing much the same thing with his merger of traditional melodies, filtered through styles as diverse as Coltrane, Bartok, and Charles Ives. I heard a group at Wintergrass last winter, that was playing nobody's definition of bluegrass. The leader was a middle-aged bass-playing whiz of a woman, who had surrounded herself with three guy whizzes mostly in their late teens. It reminded me of the Charles Mingus quartet playing tunes from the Bill Monroe playbook, but not vice versa. Even though the instruments were bass, mandolin, guitar, and dobro.

Here's the strange part. When I first heard the McMaster's recording of Josefin, I thought it was an alternative version of Sheebeg and Shemore, with which it shares a crucial descending phrase. People I often play music with, like to play Shebeg and Shemore, although I have always hated it as a syrupy kind of sentimental melody. In Natalie's hands, Josefin (it's near twin) gets voided of all sugar. She invigorates it with a certain monumental quality I admire in the best waltzes. Maybe the problem you have with Josefin, is that those who play it at your jams, simply don't have the talent to perform it without the extra syrup.

Granted, someone else may hear Josefin and wonder what in the world I'm talking about to compare it with Shebeg and Shemore.

[catmandu2]

I've only skimmed this thread so far, but it seems you all have an interesting discussion going here. I find that this (learning new and complicated music) is very much a puzzle: when you crack the code, as it were, it becomes exponentially easier. For example, I've lately started learning tunes from Vasen CDs--this is difficult mostly from a rhythmic standpoint. And when I studied flamenco guitar, the compas is extremely complicated rhythmically, especially at first. Even though I play many varied musical styles, still the vast majority of it is Western 12-tone form, so the notes are pretty much the same, but just in new orders and configurations. But the rhythmic structure and nuance varies considerably, which makes it feel and sound much different. Usually, deconstructing new and complex rhythms is very challenging requiring very careful listening--especially to learn something like flamenco compas accurately, which is very important; learning new ways to count and feel is perhaps as awkward as learning a new spoken language. But after I break it down, immerse myself and acclimate to the forms, the notes tend to fall into place.

[pkev]

Hi

Interesting...I checked out another thread recently on the Cafe board regarding a prep course available for a diploma in teaching / performing music with an emphasis on Scottish trad music

I checked out the link to the Mandolin Syllabus offered by the Organisation ICMA (Independant Contemporary Music Award)

The Syllabus offers exams from Grade 1-8 for mandolin using set pieces from the traditional music repertoire

There is a tune called "Highland Wedding" that is listed as being Grade 8

In my own personal view, I would have perhaps graded this piece lower at say Grade 5....

I don't know who grades these pieces but I would feel as though I was short changing the students listing that piece as grade 8

However different strokes for different strokes I suppose, some may find that piece hard others may find it easy to play

What would I put in place of that piece I don't really know but I might teach / play that tune just because I consider it a good tune to play

If you like a tune and wish to play it, no matter how hard it is, you'll make the effort to learn it. Whether you think you've mastered it, who knows

pkev

[JeffD]

In my opinion you have mastered a tune when:

You can play it comfortably
You enjoy playing it
You enjoy hearing yourself play it
AND
Others recognize the tune from your playing
Others enjoy hearing you play it

When those for things are in place, the tune has been mastered.

Playing it faster, and faster, getting every little ornament in the way that so and so does it, all of that is besides the point to me.

A great example is Poppy Leaf Rag. I learned it originally by ear, and I thought the triplets in the B part were fancification. And, I was still struggling with triplets. So at those points I did something that worked, sounded ok, and I moved on. And I enjoyed playing the tune and others enjoyed listening to it, and I got some compliments on my alternate B part.

Some time later I saw the tune written out in one of my tune books and I played it as written, with the triplets, which by this time were not as difficult, and came to the conclusion that the triplets were essential to and actually made the tune. I now play it with the triplets, and I like it better, but I am not sure I had not mastered the tune, (or at least my version of it), before.

[Jim Nollman]

Pkev, please tell us a few more tunes from each of the 8 "grades". I can't help but disagree with this general idea of grading. As I have said here, some tunes sound easy to learn but are actually hard, and vice versa. Plus, the 1-8 scale is going to vary markedly from person to person. My 8 might be your 4. You are almost saying that in your comment. I'll definitely check out Highland Wedding.

Two of my own current crop of private 8s, are Oklahoma Redbird and Ode to a Butterfly. I'll eventually get the first one down perfectly, maybe never the second one at speed.

I've started to learn Wild Rose. The A part is easy, and I got it down very quickly. The B part is a dog, because of a few things that both Cat and Jeff have pointed out here. It goes way low to start off, and then kind of compresses its first 12 note choices in this new register. Then it adds an odd pause, before opening up a few significant gaps in the scale. In other words it expresses a rather unexpected configuration of notes in a tune that, up til then was straightforward. When i first started ear-learning the B part, I thought I heard some accidentals. On successive listenings I understand these as a being in the scale, but sounding strange because of that pause and that lowered register. That's a great tune, Jeff.

I would suggest you all give a listen to the Alasdair Fraser version of Earl Haig. I'm not sure what it is exactly, certainly not a reel, jig, or waltz. It is slow, slow. The tune contains a full three octaves from the lowest A to the A on the E string. Not as hard for me to learn as Wild Rose, but still challenging.

[JeffD]

I've started to learn Wild Rose. That's a great tune, Jeff.

Just for all the lurkers - this is the tune I mean.

[Jim Nollman]

I just about have that B part for 'Wild Rose' under my control.

The process of learning this beautiful and unique tune made me realize what it is, which makes certain tunes so difficult. You and I had both mentioned in this thread, that certain tunes only work when you get every note down correctly, mostly because of some indefinable but essential flow to the melody. Yet other tunes sound just fine (and even accurate) with much less effort.

Having gone through this process with this new tune, I can say with confidence that the reason it took me a few days to figure out that difficult B part, was that nothing besides the correct notes, gives it the same flow and accelerating tension which then resolves by completely going limp on the last 7 beats.

Thanks again for suggesting that tune.