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Originally posted by Lonesome Fiddler

Find the melodies within the notes. If you're able to read music, pay due (but not neurotic) attention to what is the first note of the measure and emphasize it a bit when you play it.

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In my experience there are a lot of people that have trouble with keeping basic tempo. That causes a lot more trouble in jams and other situations of playing with others than knowing whether the music is between the notes or somewhere else. Accenting the first note of a measure is not automatically the right thing to do, but it's generally okay if you do it in time.  Make sure you can keep good time, then prettify your phrasing. Keeping good time is essential, more essential even that playing the right notes. It isn't natural to lots of people and frankly I'm not sure how many people can actually learn it if they weren't born with it. Worrying about phrasing won't help them and might even get in the way.

Most people with a good sense of time probably won't need to worry over the zen koan of whether the music is in the notes or in the spaces.

When I was in my early beginner phase, a musician friend made the mistake of dropping by my place one afternoon. He was a top-notch fiddler, and I made him listen to a couple of tunes I was working on. A man of few words, of one tune he said, "You play that pretty fast", and of the other, "That's not an easy tune." Looking back on it, I wouldn't say I didn't understand his understated advice, but rather that I convinced myself that he was just making neutral observations - because I wanted to play fast and play tunes I wasn't ready for. So, yeah, I do wish I had taken his advice to heart!

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Originally posted by Brian Wood

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Originally posted by Lonesome Fiddler

Find the melodies within the notes. If you're able to read music, pay due (but not neurotic) attention to what is the first note of the measure and emphasize it a bit when you play it.

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In my experience there are a lot of people that have trouble with keeping basic tempo. That causes a lot more trouble in jams and other situations of playing with others than knowing whether the music is between the notes or somewhere else. Accenting the first note of a measure is not automatically the right thing to do, but it's generally okay if you do it in time.  Make sure you can keep good time, then prettify your phrasing. Keeping good time is essential, more essential even that playing the right notes. It isn't natural to lots of people and frankly I'm not sure how many people can actually learn it if they weren't born with it. Worrying about phrasing won't help them and might even get in the way.

Most people with a good sense of time probably won't need to worry over the zen koan of whether the music is in the notes or in the spaces.

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I agree that staying in line with a rhythm is a challenge for some players (supposedly Einstein was terrible at timing and tried Kreisler's patience).  But what is the cause of the problem? To me it's a difficulty in distinguishing the beats, a struggle to understand where one beat ends and the next begins. The player with bad timing can't maintain a steady beat and can't line up with an established rhythm. It takes conscious effort to develop that regularity, although it can be accomplished usually with enough dedication. A good player will internalize the rhythm and then will have the ability to push and pull it without wholly departing from the underlying rhythm.

I think it's no accident that the instrument designed especially for keeping time, the drum, is played by percussion. The impulse of the beat is established by the strike of the drum stick on the head, and the sound then begins to decay almost immediately, setting up a space between one beat and the next. If there's too much reverberation, the clarity of the percussion is lost and the sound becomes a layer of sound rather than a rhythmic ground. Children are often instructed in rhythm by doing clapping exercises where they clap on the beat. Doing that helps to set up muscle memory and develop a sense of hearing by realizing where NOT to clap just as much as where to do so. 

The ability to push or pull rhythms,swing them, emphasize the on or off beat Ie: "expression" is dependent upon tempo imo. The faster the tempo the less room there is for expression. and the less expression you try to put in the faster and straighter you can play.

Some like it fast and others like it slower, but if you get in an Irish session with the "young guns" you've got to be able to play fast and straight. And vice versa.

THe space between notes = being aware of the negative space / white space in art (art can get too busy and lose its beauty if no negative space) = “there is no light without darkness”

HOw’s that for “woo”! :-)

In practical terms, I think you are “playing” the silences when you use them to punctuate and frame the music…that little pause and delay where listeners would expect a note, can drive ‘em mad with the dancing, the little surprise of it and the swing it adds. Or snapping off a note early. MUsical space/silence makes the rhythm interesting and shapes the phrases…(in the case of flute friend, it also provides a place to catch a breath!)

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Originally posted by NCnotes

…(in the case of flute friend, it also provides a place to catch a breath!)

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That's a good reminder that much musical phrasing is derived from the human voice and breath patterns.

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Originally posted by Brian Wood

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Originally posted by NCnotes

…(in the case of flute friend, it also provides a place to catch a breath!)

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That's a good reminder that much musical phrasing is derived from the human voice and breath patterns.

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This is such an important part of playing a musical instrument, especially so with the violin. Many great musicians sang in choirs in their youth, and that experience gave them an insight into musicality that helped them in different genres and with different instruments later in life.

In the legendary film "From Mao to Mozart," Isaac Stern gives a masterclass to a young girl who plays accurately but very mechanically. Stern stops the playing and asks the girl to sing the melody for him. When she does, he points out to her the musicality in her singing and her excellent intuitive phrasing. He then asks her to play that way and explains the intimate connection between singing and playing the violin. It's one of the great moments in violin pedagogy history.

The shaping of phrases and the sense of space is especially prominent when you encounter plainchant, Renaissance polyphony, and chorales by Bach or many Classical era composers. In plainchant it comes out so strongly because there aren't any superimposed layers of harmony above, just the undulating motion of the melodic line itself. The choice of pauses makes or breaks it. If you follow the rules, it unfolds in a hauntingly beautiful way. If you ignore them and plow through or chop phrases up, it completely loses meaning and all sense of direction.

It can go both ways, however. Bing Crosby developed his sense of phrasing by listening to Heifetz recordings.

I also detest "woo" in music or elsewhere, but I don't think the idea of spaces and pauses is one that counts as such; it's a very practical concept that's based in technique and the physicality of breathing or singing. It has analogous practical applications in classical art, where students are carefully instructed to use negative space to understand and measure objects. It's also a practical concept for violin design. 

Try those theories out in a real life situation with a simple (or not so simple) tune, and a load of young guns that can play the a*se off of a trad tune. You'll soon find out they don't work and you will be left in the dust. They will have finished the set and be looking at their phones while you are still pretending to adjust your bow tension.

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Originally posted by pete_fiddle

Try those theories out in a real life situation with a simple (or not so simple) tune, and a load of young guns that can play the a*se off of a trad tune. You'll soon find out they don't work and you will be left in the dust. They will have finished the set and be looking at their phones while you are still pretending to adjust your bow tension.

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There are plenty of fast players. Playing fast takes skill. But playing fast doesn't automatically equal good playing. And a tune played fast without phrasing is just a jumble of notes. That's not good or impressive.

The idea of space between notes is one promoted by tons of truly great musicians and put into practice daily throughout the world. It's doesn't get any more real life than that. What's not real life is a vague claim that a random group of fiddlers who play "trad" would all reject common musical principles and just hastily dash off simple tunes. There are lots of fast players, but the excess in speed and lack of articulation is the reason why players like Martin Hayes have gone to the opposite extreme--to slow things down so much that you're forced to think about phrasing to keep the tune from falling flat.

Your description reminds me of the Guinness world record for playing "The Flight of the Bumblebee" on the violin. Florian ZaBach set the record in the 50s, playing the piece flawlessly and with musicality. That record remained for half a century until David Garrett started a career for himself by breaking the record. Garrett played the piece fairly well, but without the finesse of ZaBach, and nowhere near as cleanly. Some years later, another player made an attempt that was technically even faster, however the playing was terrible, notes were missed, and there was no sense of timing--it was basically a lot of faking and sliding around instead of hitting notes squarely. That attempt was accepted as the new record, but the piece was murdered and technique was abandoned to beat the clock. Perhaps the judges were distracted by the Swarovski crystal-covered electric violin.

Of course slow sessions are boring, but if you're getting out your stopwatch at the session, that's no better. Bragging about the speed of young players is like bragging that you make the hottest gazpacho soup--sure, you can accomplish that feat, but the product is no longer the same thing once you've destroyed it. 

For a long time I felt that I had to do more with the tune as I played it, change it or add something to it to make it interesting. Now I resist that impulse. I think if you’ve played the tune a thousand times you may feel the urge to do that, but the listeners experience hearing it for the first time is different. They need to hear the melody clearly established several times before they “get it”. If you mix it up too soon or too much you’ll cloud the message. Don’t fear the repetition. Listen to Kenny Baker, as versatile and fluent as he is he’s not afraid to play it the same way 5 or six times in a row, maybe changing a few notes here and there. There’s something very pleasurable about listening to music that revolves around anticipation and expectation, then fulfillment. A little dopamine hit whet you hear the hook or the jump to the next part.

Fast straight playing is essential at most of the sessions i have attended, and is as much of a skill as any other aspect of playing. Locked in fast playing is just exiting. i have been trying to do it for decades . Sometimes i get it, but i am mostly left in the dust.

Too much swing, short phrases, uneconomical bowing and fingering, sticking to "The Notes" too much, not using the ornaments to split the notes, not arranging the tune for fast playing in the first place...Etc. All slow me down.

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Originally posted by pete_fiddle

Fast straight playing is essential at most of the sessions i have attended, and is as much of a skill as any other aspect of playing. Locked in fast playing is just exiting. i have been trying to do it for decades . Sometimes i get it, but i am mostly left in the dust.

Too much swing, short phrases, uneconomical bowing and fingering, sticking to "The Notes" too much, not using the ornaments to split the notes, not arranging the tune for fast playing in the first place...Etc. All slow me down.

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If you want to play fast and straight , stop "looking for something that isn't there"...Its easier to dial back from there than  turn some swingy, shmaltzy, over ornamented on the fly version of a tune into a straight fast version.

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Originally posted by pete_fiddle

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Originally posted by pete_fiddle

Fast straight playing is essential at most of the sessions i have attended, and is as much of a skill as any other aspect of playing. Locked in fast playing is just exiting. i have been trying to do it for decades . Sometimes i get it, but i am mostly left in the dust.

Too much swing, short phrases, uneconomical bowing and fingering, sticking to "The Notes" too much, not using the ornaments to split the notes, not arranging the tune for fast playing in the first place...Etc. All slow me down.

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If you want to play fast and straight , stop "looking for something that isn't there"...Its easier to dial back from there than  turn some swingy, shmaltzy, over ornamented on the fly version of a tune into a straight fast version.

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Agreed, but those things aren't what I was referring to when writing about phrasing. Regardless of the speed, a tune has to be phrased well to have meaning. Straight playing doesn't mean just rattling off notes. 

Well I’m here at the Willie Clancy Summer Music School (festival) week in Milltown Malby in county Clare Day 2. I’m taking the intermediate fiddle lessons. And almost the first thing our teacher pointed out is that we should always play slowly. He said if you can’t play a tune well slowly there’s no way you can play it well at speed, nail the tune slowly and fast will look after itself.

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Originally posted by martyjoe

... nail the tune slowly and fast will look after itself.

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I actually don't agree with that. Learning slowly is good, but speed is won't come on its own, at least not in my experience. 

"Straight playing doesn't mean just rattling off notes. "

Exactly that's where arranging a tune to play at at speed comes in. Bowing strategies, and dynamics that keep/enhance the rhythm, Ornaments to split the notes, ergonomic/economical fingering to cut out string crossing etc. Then you can dial the tempo back from there and add swing or whatever to make it more lyrical.

This is also why playing slow does not necessarily lead to being able to play fast. But learning to play straight and economically will give you the room to add swing and fancy bits, or play fast....i must try this out some day

Just thought, classical players are maybe taught this from the outset. Straight playing of scales /arpeggio's,  at so many notes to a bow, at relaxed tempo's ?? fiddlers dive straight into tunes learned with swing etc already added by the person they learn it from.

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Originally posted by pete_fiddle

"Straight playing doesn't mean just rattling off notes. "
 

Just thought, classical players are maybe taught this from the outset. Straight playing of scales /arpeggio's,  at so many notes to a bow, at relaxed tempo's ?? fiddlers dive straight into tunes learned with swing etc already added by the person they learn it from.

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That's actually an interesting thought. I've generally considered practicing scales etc as unnecessary since playing tunes involves more of the real thing...

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Originally posted by pete_fiddle

"Straight playing doesn't mean just rattling off notes. "

Exactly that's where arranging a tune to play at at speed comes in. Bowing strategies, and dynamics that keep/enhance the rhythm, Ornaments to split the notes, ergonomic/economical fingering to cut out string crossing etc. Then you can dial the tempo back from there and add swing or whatever to make it more lyrical.

This is also why playing slow does not necessarily lead to being able to play fast. But learning to play straight and economically will give you the room to add swing and fancy bits, or play fast....i must try this out some day

Just thought, classical players are maybe taught this from the outset. Straight playing of scales /arpeggio's,  at so many notes to a bow, at relaxed tempo's ?? fiddlers dive straight into tunes learned with swing etc already added by the person they learn it from.

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I don't think it's accurate to say that fiddlers learn all the ornaments and other add-ons all at once. Most fiddlers that I've encountered do what most players do: pick up the basics of a melody as landmarks and then build on those, only adding in ornaments when the landmarks are established. The fiddlers who try to start with the ornaments tend not to really learn the tunes and instead make somewhat similar-looking bow motions without hitting many right notes.

Scales are taught (not only to classical players) to work on proficiency in intonation, evenness, tempo, and tone production. Yes, there's an argument that scales exist in tunes, but not learning scales means you miss out on the finger patterns that are attached to keys and you have to think more when playing a scale. Classical players are taught to make use of the whole bow, but scales allow all kinds of variations in bow length, articulation, and bowing patterns. If you start playing jazz, one of the first things you'll be told is to learn the scales, because ability to improvise will be limited if you aren't proficient. 

Slow practice has been proven over and over to lead to better results playing faster. It's such an obvious idea that it's hard to understand arguments to the contrary. If you can't play a phrase slow, it's certainly not going to be clean enough fast. One of the most common beginner mistakes is trying to learn things at full speed that are beyond the reading or listening ability of the player. I think a lot of the arguments that suggest that learning at speed works are just the product of bad hearing--playing fast glosses over a lot of problems if the ear isn't able to pick them up clearly. Just hitting the right notes at the right time isn't enough if you want to play well, either. In interview after interview with great musicians, the importance of working up tempo from a slower speed is almost universally discussed. 

It's similar to the golf swing. Amateurs see professional players hitting and think that they can get the same results by swinging faster. Yet any teacher will start you out by breaking the swing down into parts and only letting you take a full swing after understanding the parts and then moving slowly. Some of the most powerful hitters have swings that seem impossibly slow. In violin playing, the most brilliant players are able to play fast passages in such cleanness and with such relaxation that it seems impossible as well. If a player sounds rushed, the playing is probably not very accurate. That precision and cleanness only comes from careful study at slow speeds. 

Hmmm, I guess I agree that classical training does prep you for speed. At most local sessions, the speed is “cruising speed” for me and I sometimes get complaints for exceeding the speed limit (luckily no tickets are issued!)

But I’ve learned that with the Irish/Scottish tunes, Rhythm is king. WHether you’re loping along or breathlessly sprinting, it’s all about the Rhythm. All the little stuff (rolls, cuts, triplets, slides) are all about punctuating and playing with the Rhythm…they are nice, but not necessary. This is something fiddlers seem to get, but violinists often struggle with ( hey, I am trying :-)…..

no i dived straight into tunes, ornaments swing and all. i found the shmaltz easy,and the tunes messy but hey i'm trying also.

i enjoyed transposing other fiddlers also the little twiddly bits fascinated me, still do. its like magic even after listening over and over at slow speed there's always some little bit that i am hearing wrong or some little timing issue to sort out.

so i suppose i try to shoehorn those bits in without much success sometimes

I always say to new fiddlers - scales scales and more scales. Til you know beforehand what notes are avalable/possible in what keys. aside from the benefits mentioned.

Festina lente, as the saying goes…

The ancients left behind some wisdom of incalculable value.

I knew Festina she was in my class at school.

Och, made me google!