Hi, i feel my fiddle playing is lacking a certain something. I feel i need to start getting into that zone that makes a tune sound so much better by playing in the groove. I have no trouble doing it when playing along with great players but it's something i struggle with when playing on my own. I think if i figured this out it would take my playing onto another level. Sorry if that's vague. I haven't really hit the nail on the head but I hope you know what i'm talking about here.
If anyone's been here before let's hear from you because I am wondering if i will ever break through this barrier or maybe i'm doomed to never progress from this situation i've found myself in.
I am 26 just now and have been playing like mad for the last year and a half or so.
Are there any tunes or exercises that can help?
# Posted on October 23rd 2007 by Dow
Getting the right groove is about timing and emphasis, and of course relaxation. Some people think of it as something that's impossible to achieve unless you have natural ability, but you have to believe that we all have natural rhythm. It's just a case of finding it, and that may take some time.
First of all, if you're trying to learn tunes off sheetmusic, throw it out now and don't use it at all. You haven't got how to play the tunes yet so, until you can, don't use sheetmusic. It won't help.
It's the same with language. Take English as an example. If I write the word "pineapple", and I tell you that I'm saying it out aloud now in front of my computer screen, you know that I'm saying "PINE-app-le" and not "pine-APP-le" or "pine-app-LE", right? That's because you already know how to speak English, and you know how you're supposed to say "pineapple" properly. It's a given. It doesn't matter if you see an actual pineapple and want to tell a foreigner how to say it in English, or if you read the word somewhere or whatever, you'll always say it or "read" it in your head exactly the same way, with the stress on the 1st syllable, and the first syllable slightly longer than the others.
Your language has a natural rhythm, and that comes from inside you. If it didn't have that natural rhythm, then people would find it very difficult to understand what you were saying, so you'd have to write it down to communicate it, and your bad English would probably cause you to make mistakes in your writing as well. Same with people who don't have that groove. They're like speakers of a foreign language who haven't got the length and stress of each syllable right.
It's exactly the same thing with tunes. You have to learn to speak the language of Irish music. You're learning the music in your 20s, so that's quite late compared to Irish kids who learn it at school and can pick up the rhythms early. So as an adult, you've got your work cut out I'm afraid. You're going to have to spend a few years working hard on making your tunes sound authentic and not just like a bunch of notes. You need to work hard so you're not being carried by your session mates. Anyone can recite something in a foreign language along with a bunch of native speakers, hiding behind them, but not everyone could get away with reciting it solo and make it sound like a native speaker. You need to get to a stage where you can hold your own rhythm so your session mates can simply hold a normal, relaxed musical "conversation" with you. They don't want to have to slow their speech down to help you catch what they're saying, and they don't want to have to limit their vocabulary either.
At least you've got past the first stage. You've realised you haven't got it, and you've decided you want it. A lot of people don't even get to that stage. They think they're playing the music when in fact, to a seasoned Irish musician, they simply sound like "foreigners" or "non-native speakers" of the music.
So what you have to do now is decide you're going to put in the hard yards in order to sound like a native speaker. You're going to have to listen carefully to how long each note is and how much stress to place on each note. Listen to a lot of really good musicians play the same tune. Buy all the classic recordings and give them all a listen. These are your native speakers. Listen to how they communicate the same thing. They'll do it all in different ways (like slightly different accent in your pronunciation) but there'll be something they all have in common, and that's the groove.
Try this for starters. Take a jig you think you know really well and record yourself playing it and listen to it. Now say "panda bear" over and over again: "panda bear panda bear panda bear panda bear panda bear" without any gap or pause between the words. Notice that the first and third syllables "pan-" and "bear" are longer and slightly more accented than the "-da" in the middle. This is your natural speech rhythm. Notice that you don't have to "keep time" by tapping your foot. Your body is producing the right sounds in the right timing and stress extremely consistently because of the years of exposure you've had to your native tongue, and the years of practice you've had speaking it and understanding it. You don't go around tapping your foot to make sure your sentences are in time when you're having a conversation with a friend do you? With tunes you shouldn't have to tap your foot. Your body should be producing it naturally. That's not to say you shouldn't tap your foot; a lot of musos do, but, crucially, the good ones don't NEED to.
Now play the jig again, and play the notes in a kind of 6/8 rhythm but make them say "panda bear panda bear" etc. Sometimes it'll come out "PAN-da bear" and sometimes more like "pan-da BEAR" but that's ok. At least the rhythm will be consistent. Once you can do this, you can speed it up to any speed and your rhythm will still be consistent. Try saying "panda-bear-panda-bear-panda-bear" as fast as you can, but make the words make sense, so e.g. don't shorten the word "bear" to "beh", otherwise you've changed the meaning of the phrase. Notice that you can say it quite fast and the rhythm of what you're saying will always be consistent. At the same time, maintaining the "meaning of the phrase" will keep your rhythm in check. It's a two-way thing. Your rhythm communicates the meaning, and the meaning communicates the rhythm.
You can find your own phrases to repeat for reels, hornpipes and other types of tune. Just realise that you already have really solid rhythm there inside you. You just have to apply it to your music.
