picking a jig- dud-udu, or dud-dud ?

[chriss]

I've always picked jigs "dud-udu" - seemed faster, smoother + easier when I was learning. Altho getting a decent emphasis on the upstroke took some getting used to, that was easier than making the 2 "downs" in "dud-dud" work right- on rhythm and smooth.

I've run across a couple things + people recently saying they prefer the sound and/or rhythm they get using "dud-dud", even tho it might have taken a while to learn it and get it smooth.

So I'm interested in getting some idea of how many people use which one?

And also, hearing from anybody who has tried switching from "dud-udu" to "dud-dud"...
- did you SUCCEED? or was it like trying to quit smoking or write with your left hand ... tried but never broke the habit?
- if you DID succeed- how long before you felt "settled down" with the new picking pattern?
- and is it worth it in the end- are you happier with the sound and the rhythm?

thx
Chris

[Jill McAuley]

I'm firmly in the DUD DUD camp when it comes to playing jigs - when I first started out playing the tenor banjo back home, I was trying to teach meself and was playing DUD UDU, but then I started taking lessons from Angelina Carberry, who encouraged me to play DUD DUD. I have to say that I'd no problem adjusting to this and it felt quite natural to play jigs that way, as it really lent itself to the inherent feel of jigs, at least for me it did - now I couldn't imagine playing a jig DUD UDU. Enda Scahill, in his tenor banjo tutor, mentions that either method will work, with DUD DUD giving you a more rhythmic feel and DUD UDU a more lyrical feel. Kieran Hanrahan is a DUD UDU advocate. Bottom line - do what works for you and what's most comfortable. If you're happy with your current method then stick with it I'd say.

Cheers,
Jill

[JeffD]

Yea the important thing is getting the emphasis right.

I just checked, and I do Dud Udu Dud Udu. One advantage is that it frees me up if there is a run of quick notes to be done dudu

I have to check because I don't think about it. In fact I screw it up if I think about it.

Now if I am doing a back up rhythm strum, I noticed I sometimes do something like DDU DDU, but I don't tend to do that with melody.

[Brent Hutto]

I have been advised to work at getting my DUD UDU to be smooth, even and up to speed and learn to emphasize any given note within a DUD or UDU triple when I need to. Once that is something I can do well, if I want to learn DUD DUD as an alternative it's always good to have other options available. But doing DUD DUD is no substitute for being able to make DUD UDU or another other DUDUDUDU pattern sound good.

[Ronny]

When I play jigs on bodhran, I play Dud Udu. When I play jigs on mandolin, I play Dud Dud.
The important thing is to feel the triplets. The Music is important, not the way to reach it...

[Hessian]

I too think that it doesn't really matter wich pattern you use as long as you know and feel what a jig is. As for the second part of your question- I did change from DUD UDU (which I played happily for a couple of years) to DUD DUD because I read on the Internet that Mick Moloney strongly recommends DUD DUD. It took me some time to change, especially for the tunes I knew for a long time, but in the end it wasn't a real problem (like writing with your left hand) and DUD DUD now feels natural to me. But I don't think it changed my playing and/or sound very much (terrible then, clumsy now). It might have made the triplet- ornamentation a bit easier for me though.
Ronny, funnily enough I play the Bodhran with DUD UDU and seem not to be able to change that no matter what!

[danb]

I'm a big believe in DDU DDU. I have found that folks get similar results out of DUD DUD, but my main advice is "don't use DUD UDU". You'll lose that all-important pulse and rhythm that comes from the broken pickstroke.

On the other side of the coin for balance's sake, I have seen folks use DUD UDU successfully- all I can say is it's twice as hard and you end up succeeding IN SPTE of your technique rather than because of it.

[Avi Ziv]

I use DUD DUD the vast majority of the time. But occasionally I'll find myself throwing in a UDU where it wants to be and where it sounds good. I don't fight my technique in those rare instances. I just let it be.

[foldedpath]

I use DUD,DUD because the jig pulse flows naturally from the pattern, instead of requiring emphasis from the player in a straight alternating pattern. The DUD,DUD pattern also feels like a more consistent launching and recovery point for treble ornaments, although I haven't thought too hard about that (thinking messes up my picking!). I've heard people play treble ornaments with alternate picking, so maybe it's just what you're used to.

As DanB and others said, the main thing is to honor the pulse of the dance, whether it's this pattern or any other. If the pulse isn't there, then you're not playing a jig.

[Jill McAuley]

I have been advised to work at getting my DUD UDU to be smooth, even and up to speed and learn to emphasize any given note within a DUD or UDU triple when I need to. Once that is something I can do well, if I want to learn DUD DUD as an alternative it's always good to have other options available. But doing DUD DUD is no substitute for being able to make DUD UDU or another other DUDUDUDU pattern sound good.

I'm kind of not understanding your phrase "..doing DUD DUD is no substitute for being able to make DUD UDU or another other DUDUDUDU pattern sound good...." Some of the top trad tenor banjo/mandolin players advocate DUD DUD and I don't think it's because the "can't" do DUD UDU or DUDUDUDU - first off, we're talking about jigs here, so DUDUDUDU isn't really on the table as that's not a picking pattern you'd want to use to play jigs - unless you want them to sound like reels. I'm also interested to read the words "smooth" and "even" used in reference to DUD UDU - to my ears if you're playing a jig and your picking patterns sounds too smooth and even, then where is the emphasis that makes a jig a jig in the first place? Awhile back a pal of mine was trying to teach herself the mandolin - she found some clip of a fella giving "irish music lessons" on Youtube - in this particular clip he was playing "The Irish Washerwoman" - he was playing DUD UDU but so fast, smooth and evenly that it basically sounded like DUDUDUDU - zero emphasis to be found anywhere, so needless to say it didn't sound like a jig at all. I told my pal to stop using that fella's "lessons" and instead check out vids on youtube by Mark Conyard or the cafe's own Dick Glasgow (Ptarmi).

One thing I notice in a lot of folk who are new to playing irish trad music is their difficulty in making jigs sound like jigs - if we took a straw poll I wonder how many of those same folk were using DUD UDU as their picking pattern of choice? I'm not saying you can't make a jig sound like a jig using that pattern, but I think for folks starting out playing trad it's likely a wee bit easier for them to instill that jig emphasis by using DUD DUD.

Cheers,
Jill

[Ed Goist]

This is a very timely thread for me as I just started working on Jigs for the first time this week.
So, not much useful to add.
I will say that based on Jill's recommendation I am playing them DUD DUD and I can say that this is very intuitive to me because it allows me to conceptualize each triplet as a "unit" which is always played the same. (If that makes any sense).
Also, as soon as I develop even respectable speed on a Jig, the wife (a non-musician) immediately notes: "Hey, that's an Irish Jig, isn't it?"... So, they must sound somewhat like jigs.

[Brent Hutto]

Jill,

I'm simply talking about precedence in a beginner's journey of learning to use the right hand effectively. Of course you don't play DUD DUD because you can't play DUDUDU effectively. But now in my fifth month of learning mandolin, I can't even play a simple DUDUDU pattern and make the D's and U's the same loudness. So that takes precendence.

My teacher's advice was basically to concentrate on getting the simplest possible picking pattern to work properly, first. Then if I'm not satisfied with how jigs in particular sound it might be useful to vary that DUDUDU into Dud Udu Dud Udu until I can get that pattern to work. Then maybe try DUD DUD and see how I like that. All are useful patterns (and eventually DDU DDU or whatever you might need) but it does me no good to use a crappy, random sounding DUDUDUDUD some times and then switch to a crappy sounding DUD DUD for jigs.

Does that make sense? My this week's assignment is to record myself playing DUD UDU with every note the same. Then I'll move on to recording myself playing Dud Udu with those two beats stronger, then dUd uDu, then duD udU all of which may take me a month or a year or a lifetime for all I know. So far DUDUDU all the same sounds great...until I do it into the microphone and I hear what I'm really doing which like Du...du...dUdUDUDU...Dudu...duDu...du...kind of like Porky Pig playing a jig. That's all folks!

[Vigee]

I play D-- D--. That is to say, I make sure that I can hit to the downstroke on the beat when required. I find DUD DUD to be a bit slavish, rather limiting one to an Irish jig whenever playing in 6/8 (and not necessarily useful playing six-huits and montagnardes). I also found, personally, that with DUD DUD I tended to prefer to pick each note rather than find other methods to change notes. Someone here pointed out that more experienced players will find a unique pattern for each jig. I sort of do the same, starting out with DUD DUD until I get a better handle of the melody and feel.

[John Flynn]

Well, I've been working on DUD DUD for a while, but I am about to give up on it. I find the concept is holding me back rather than empowering me. I can keep up at sessions with DUD UDU. I fall off the track with DUD DUD.

I do have a couple of counter points. It's already been pointed out that Enda Scahill's book says you can do it either way. Gerry O'Connor's "Complete..." book doesn't make a deal out of it one way or another. It got discussed on The Irish Tenor Banjo site and two comments struck me: One was that the most important thing is to emphasize the first note of each measure more than the other notes of the measure. If you are downstroking the first and fourth notes, it is hard to get a lesser emphasis on that fourth note. So that guy prefers DUD UDU, but he emphasizes the "up" on that fourth note, giving it a little more emphasis, but not as much as the first. The other comment I liked was to the effect, "If you have to think about your pick direction at session speeds, you're thinking about the wrong thing." In other words, just play.

But I'm sure DUD DUD is probably better. I can hear how it is technically better. However, at a session with 20 people, me not emphasizing the fourth beat is probably not a big deal. Me not keeping up with the tune is. So do I keep investing precious practice time on something that I don't seem to be getting anywhere with, or do I invest that time in getting tunes up to speed?

[EdSherry]

I started out straight alternating picking (Dud Udu), and played jigs that way for years, figuring that I could always accent the "U" stroke on beat four. It sounded OK, but a while back I made the conscious effort to work on Dud Dud.

It took about a year for Dud Dud to become "second nature" (after playing the other way for a dozen years at sessions), but I find that the change has helped me to get a bit more "drive" to the tunes.

I still use Dud Udu on some tunes, when it "feels" more right for the particular tune than Dud Dud, but have largely switched over. I willl sometimes fall back on Dud Udu when the tempos get faster.

I fully agree that what matters is the "feel." Speed will come with time.

I haven't tried Dan B's Ddu Ddu yet; maybe that will be the next thing to investigate.

[Brent Hutto]

Of course for some of us "tempos get faster" means anything above 85bpm!

[Jill McAuley]

Jill,

I'm simply talking about precedence in a beginner's journey of learning to use the right hand effectively. Of course you don't play DUD DUD because you can't play DUDUDU effectively. But now in my fifth month of learning mandolin, I can't even play a simple DUDUDU pattern and make the D's and U's the same loudness. So that takes precendence.

My teacher's advice was basically to concentrate on getting the simplest possible picking pattern to work properly, first. Then if I'm not satisfied with how jigs in particular sound it might be useful to vary that DUDUDU into Dud Udu Dud Udu until I can get that pattern to work. Then maybe try DUD DUD and see how I like that. All are useful patterns (and eventually DDU DDU or whatever you might need) but it does me no good to use a crappy, random sounding DUDUDUDUD some times and then switch to a crappy sounding DUD DUD for jigs.

Does that make sense? My this week's assignment is to record myself playing DUD UDU with every note the same. Then I'll move on to recording myself playing Dud Udu with those two beats stronger, then dUd uDu, then duD udU all of which may take me a month or a year or a lifetime for all I know. So far DUDUDU all the same sounds great...until I do it into the microphone and I hear what I'm really doing which like Du...du...dUdUDUDU...Dudu...duDu...du...kind of like Porky Pig playing a jig. That's all folks!

I understand your point in your first paragraph - as a matter of fact Enda Scahill's banjo tutor covers reels first specifically because Enda feels that "...once you can pick reels correctly then jigs are a piece of cake..." One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given starting out was to listen to loads and loads of jigs so as to be able to internalize the feel of them - once that happens then whatever picking pattern of choice you go with kind of doesn't matter.

Cheers,
Jill

[Bernie Daniel]

....Enda Scahill, in his tenor banjo tutor, mentions that either method will work, with DUD DUD giving you a more rhythmic feel and DUD UDU a more lyrical feel. Kieran Hanrahan is a DUD UDU advocate. Bottom line - do what works for you and what's most comfortable. If you're happy with your current method then stick with it I'd say. Cheers,
Jill

Jill that is the best summary of that topic I have seen. The idea of rhythmic versus lyrical -- it is a concept I more or less felt, but didn't really realize it. Now I do.

I think Irish trad music is mostly the home for the DUD DUD idea?

Somewhere there is an instructional video by Chris Thiele where he (if I recall correctly) states without exception, always alternate the pick direction othewise you have wasted motion.

One of those personal playing decisions -- I always try to alternate because when I don't I get inconsistent results. (actually even MORE inconsistent results truth be known).

[Brent Hutto]

My teacher seems to generally favor the "always alternate" although perhaps not as absolutely as the statement from Chris Thile. But it is definitely from a wasted motion perspective. What your top clean speed might be, doesn't it almost have to be slightly slower with DUD DUD than with DUD UDU?

Of course if you have enough speed to play a dance at 130bpm either way I suppose the theoretical ability to play even faster with DUD UDU is no help anyway. My own top speed for a jig at the moment is maybe 100bpm on a good day, more comfortably around 95bpm. Even if DUD DUD slows me down by a few percent that's speed I can afford to lose.

I think I can totally buy the "more lyrical" versus "more rhythmic" idea, too. And for my own part, I aspire to as much lyricism as possible in almost anything I might play. Then again, at the moment I aspire to play reasonably fast DUDUDU without sounding like a centipede with a wooden leg. I hope my constant chiming-in (as a total beginner) is not too distracting from the higher-level conversation taking place...

[Jim Bevan]

Ya, DUD DUD fer sure -- gives a real snap to the third note, but just to mix it up
the person who taught me the most about Irish music (well, really all she gave me was a hip repertoire and a level of professionalism above the standard session plateau), Chilean whistle-player Francisca Sanchez, played duos for years in Galway with an Irish guitarist who plays DUD UDU (there's a recent video of the two of them on Colin Goldie's website) -- he's Irish, he sure sounds authentic enough...

[Jesse Harmon]

This is also timely for me as I am working on Irish songs of all variety as a beginner mando player. I learned flatpicking with book called Melodic Rhythms for guitar that taught picking up on the upbeat and down on the down beat pretty much consistently. The main thing is pick control first and then I think you are able to do what you want in any anomaly that you want to do differently. The up on the up beat has always kept me grounded in the music even when it is more complex and I just like the feel of it. I haven't read through that book with the mando yet but I am going to soon to see if it will work.

[foldedpath]

Just touching on a few points raised here:

I play D-- D--. That is to say, I make sure that I can hit to the downstroke on the beat when required. I find DUD DUD to be a bit slavish, rather limiting one to an Irish jig whenever playing in 6/8 (and not necessarily useful playing six-huits and montagnardes).

A preference for DUD,DUD doesn't necessarily mean a rigid pattern. I think most of us who use that approach consider it just a general framework, where each specific tune might require moving out of that pattern for a bit, then coming back. An Irish fiddler never uses a rigid bowing pattern for playing this music, and a good mandolin player won't be too rigid about the pattern either.

I was thinking about this while running a few jigs yesterday, looking at what I actually do vs. the "theory." I'm really all over the place in terms of pattern, depending on the tune. Some jigs are fairly simple and it's mainly DUD,DUD, with others that's more of a tendency than a full description of the picking pattern.

I think Irish trad music is mostly the home for the DUD DUD idea?

Well, make the upstroke silent and you have a nice blues shuffle.

My teacher seems to generally favor the "always alternate" although perhaps not as absolutely as the statement from Chris Thile. But it is definitely from a wasted motion perspective. What your top clean speed might be, doesn't it almost have to be slightly slower with DUD DUD than with DUD UDU?

Top speed usually isn't an issue with jigs (except for ornamentation, which is a whole other subject). If you're playing Irish music then you're probably also playing reels, which will almost always be at a faster tempo. That's where you might want to focus on picking efficiency. Even with reels, this music seldom approaches Bluegrass tempos. With jigs, you have the luxury of a slower tempo where you can focus on finding the pulse.

The huge variety of dance rhythms is one of the things that makes Irish/Scottish music very different from Bluegrass and OldTime music -- all those reels, jigs, slip jigs, slides, polkas, mazurkas, strathspeys, marches, and so on. Using the same picking approach for everything, runs a risk of flattening them out, and losing the distinct pulse of each dance form.

That's what much of this discussion about DUD,DUD or DDU, DDU vs. DUD,UDU is all about. You can impose the dance pulse on a strictly alternating picking style, but it's more of an intellectual exercise, compared to a pulse that flows more naturally from the picking pattern.

From my own experience, I find getting the right rhythm pulse for a reel, and keeping the distinct flavor of a hornpipe vs. a reel, is one of the hardest things to do. You get no automatic help from the neutral, alternate picking pattern used on those dance rhythms, like you do with DUD,DUD or DDU,DDU for a jig.

Of course if you have enough speed to play a dance at 130bpm either way I suppose the theoretical ability to play even faster with DUD UDU is no help anyway. My own top speed for a jig at the moment is maybe 100bpm on a good day, more comfortably around 95bpm. Even if DUD DUD slows me down by a few percent that's speed I can afford to lose.

Don't worry so much about speed. You can't force that. It comes naturally over time, with enough hours spent in the woodshed. Working on getting the pulse of the dance rhythms can be done at any speed, and with any approach to picking patterns. Some are just easier patterns than others.

[Brent Hutto]

Today I've been just clocking away at doing DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDU until it sounds even. Then playing back the recording and finding out it isn't so even after all. Repeat as needed.

Speaking of speed, though, after 20-30 minutes of DUDUDUDU practice either on a single note or on a simple, repeated short pattern I notice that I can just turn around and rip through a major scale or some two-octave arpeggios at half again my usual top speed. Which tells me that a lot of what I've thought was left-hand slowness is in fact right-hand sloppiness making the left-hand seem slow!

Maybe the old cliche is true...it really is all about the right hand.

[Vigee]

A preference for DUD,DUD doesn't necessarily mean a rigid pattern. I think most of us who use that approach consider it just a general framework, where each specific tune might require moving out of that pattern for a bit, then coming back. An Irish fiddler never uses a rigid bowing pattern for playing this music, and a good mandolin player won't be too rigid about the pattern either.

Of course. However, I think some players can be a bit deaf to how a given tune is moving, missing opportunities to shift from more rhythmic to more melodic playing, or playing with the different emphases in a tune. Indeed, there are really two interrelated issues in these discussions about jig picking: how one plays a jig and developing awareness and control over one's picking.

There are a few odd patterns that I find useful to practice:

UUU DDD
DDD DUD
UDU DUD (I'm hitting two notes with the first stroke, but using the upstroke to emphasize the higher one)

[JeffD]

I'm not saying you can't make a jig sound like a jig using that pattern, but I think for folks starting out playing trad it's likely a wee bit easier for them to instill that jig emphasis by using DUD DUD.

That or DDU DDU, but I agree with your point.