Trying to find myself...

[dow]

many of us feel that way about bickering

I don't know about that Denny. Maybe some of us don't!

Do Too!!

[Guinness]

Y'know, Freud never did say much about flute envy despite its prevalence.

[Denny]

well Kenny,
that's one of the problems with that whole "tyranny of the vocal minority" thing, innit?

[kennychaffin]

well Kenny,
that's one of the problems with that whole "tyranny of the vocal minority" thing, innit?

Says who?




KAC

[Cubitt]

I am prepared to elaborate a bit on the "peanut butter analogy," as I expected it would get someone's dander up.

First of all, there's nothing mediocre about peanut butter, so don't go thinking I'm condoning mediocre playing. Neither am I discounting how much virtuosity can be put into playing trad, even when the ornaments are not elaborate and the ease with which the music is made belies the skill that produced it. I am also not trying to make a case for classical music over trad.

The nature of trad invites players of all skill levels because it reveals its beauty to the less skillful as much as it does to the virtuoso. Classical music is simply much more difficult to get right, even if you are an advanced player. My point is that difficult music requiring that you observe the nuances the composer sets down, as well as adding your own, does not necessarily make for a more fulfilling musical experience. Trad relies much more on the musical taste and aptitude of the player, which is all to the good musically, and allows the less skilled to render a good performance without having to be an exceptional player. However, striving for continuous improvement is a worthy goal.

When one concerns one's self about "style," it can get a little sticky in that one is trying to evaluate whether one's "style" adds to, or maybe compensates for, a lack of advanced skill. I am suggesting that a pleasureable performance trumps all, and if the pleasure comes from an appreciation of your style, that's icing on the cake, but not necessarily a valuable goal.

[dow]

The nature of trad invites players of all skill levels because it reveals its beauty to the less skillful as much as it does to the virtuoso.

I think you've got something there, Peanut-Butter Cubitt.

BTW, I prefer peanut butter and honey, not jelly.

[bradhurley]

The nature of trad invites players of all skill levels because it reveals its beauty to the less skillful as much as it does to the virtuoso.

I think classical music has no trouble "revealing its beauty" to the uninitiated and attracts orders of magnitude more players because of it.

Classical music is simply much more difficult to get right, even if you are an advanced player.

It depends on what you mean by "right," but I think it takes just as long to learn to play traditional music convincingly as it does to play classical music convincingly. If James Galway sat down today to learn how to play traditional Irish music on the flute or the whistle in a way that actually sounded traditional (as opposed to what I've heard him play in the past when he does traditional tunes), I bet it would take him a good few years and it sure wouldn't be easy for him.

[Cubitt]

The nature of trad invites players of all skill levels because it reveals its beauty to the less skillful as much as it does to the virtuoso.

I think classical music has no trouble "revealing its beauty" to the uninitiated and attracts orders of magnitude more players because of it.

Classical music is simply much more difficult to get right, even if you are an advanced player.

It depends on what you mean by "right," but I think it takes just as long to learn to play traditional music convincingly as it does to play classical music convincingly. If James Galway sat down today to learn how to play traditional Irish music on the flute or the whistle in a way that actually sounded traditional (as opposed to what I've heard him play in the past when he does traditional tunes), I bet it would take him a good few years and it sure wouldn't be easy for him.

Regarding your first point, I meant "reveal its beauty" when the less skilled play it, not listen to it, which is what I think you're talking about, here.

Regarding your second point, I vigorously disagree, but that's okay; it's just my point of view.

[jim stone]

The Galway example is perhaps not so persuasive,
because he would have to unlearn his present
technique to play ITM right.

I'm pretty sure that the chops required to do anything
like justice to the classical literature far surpass
what's required to play persuasively ITM or
American fiddle tunes. But I also think the
best players have chops equal to those of
classical musicians and there's a reason they do.

I expect folks are acquainted with what people
who wish to play seriously classical music
go through.

[Rob Sharer]

I, for one, agree totally with Brad on both points one and two. I'm inclined to believe that there are several deeper levels to traditional music that could very well be escaping folks who haven't put the time in to delve into them, yet choose to hold ignorance up as a virtue. After all, there's a difference between the fellow standing in the cockpit enjoying the beauty of all the little blinking lights, and the fellow who actually is able to fly the 747 to Paris for cocktails at sunset. I know who I'd rather have at the controls. Cheers,

Rob

[Aanvil]

I, for one, agree totally with Brad on both points one and two. I'm inclined to believe that there are several deeper levels to traditional music that could very well be escaping folks who haven't put the time in to delve into them, yet choose to hold ignorance up as a virtue. After all, there's a difference between the fellow standing in the cockpit enjoying the beauty of all the little blinking lights, and the fellow who actually is able to fly the 747 to Paris for cocktails at sunset. I know who I'd rather have at the controls. Cheers,

Rob

Rob... step away from the yoke and put down the martini or we'll have to punch your commercial ticket.

[Rob Sharer]

But the Straits of Hormuz look so lovely in the moonlight....wait, where were we going again?

[bradhurley]

I'm pretty sure that the chops required to do anything
like justice to the classical literature far surpass
what's required to play persuasively ITM or
American fiddle tunes.

And it's worth keeping in mind that "chops" are only about 1/3 of the equation in the playing of any kind of music. Any good classically trained player can sight-read and play the most complex Irish reel imagainable with no difficulty at all. But to make it sound "right," that takes a lot longer.

[Rob Sharer]

I'd put it a different way - trad music is accessible & digestible. It's a music derived from the ordinary people. Classical music may or may not be a great recipe but it's fundamentally indigestible!! And what's more, many of the ingredients in that recipe have been borrowed from the folk tradition. Dressed up, prettified and destroyed..........

Just to jump back to this interesting point:

Reading this, I was reminded of a screed I myself issued on the hallowed "Whistle Discrimination?" thread a few months back, to wit:

Chromaticism is not a measure of anything in music. Music is also not an evolutionary continuum, itself an inherently fallacious construction and a misappropriation of Darwin, who never proposed anything like the famous litho of the slowly evolving/standing ape-men (read Stephen Jay Gould for more on this). The fallacy would have it that the simplest rhythms and melodies are at the bottom of the ladder, and the most complex are at the top. This would be a fine representation, if complexity for complexity's sake was the goal. Fortunately, music is a human endeavour, and as such contains layers of meaning and complexity that far exceed the manifest note-count and pitch relationships of any piece in question.

Take Chinese music, for example. There may be only five notes in the scale, but the important thing is inflection, even more so than melody, much less "chromaticism." Is Hindemith better than all Chinese music? Ask a Chinese and you may get a different response than if you asked Guinness (billion-to-one odds, I'd say). For that matter, is Hindemith better than Mozart? Is James Galway better than Micho Russell? Is "Flight of the Bumblebee" the most important piece of music in the Western tradition? If I play piano with my arse, is it better than "Chopsticks?"

Music, capital "M," exists entirely independently from the instrument being played. It means different things to different people, but it has much more to do with the human component, with feeling, feeling in playing as well as feeling in response to hearing, than it does with any sort of artificial mechanical measure. The amount of good which can be transferred from one human being to another, perhaps through such a simple conveyance as a tune played on the whistle, is a much more reliable measure of musical value than is the chromatic capability of the instrument itself. When was the last time you were moved to tears contemplating the chromatic capabilities of the trombone?

I for one am glad we don't actually live in a world where the chromatically sophisticated, Western-Classical Gods swirl above us, we humble grovellers in the diatonic primordial ooze that is folk music, pausing in their jubilant flight only long enough to stoop to earth and "collect" some of our inconsequential little melodies for a symphony or a tone-poem. Hang on a minute....

Rob

[kennychaffin]

Ah yes a blast from the past with a side injection of evolution.

KAC