Martin Hayes Workshop

Martin Hayes is a well known and loved Irish fiddler, and probably the fiddle player whose style I'd most like to emulate "when I grow up". His lyrical, conversational playing grabbed me the first time I heard him play "Out on the Ocean," a simple, kind of hackneyed session tune, which he turned into something gorgeous and expressive. When I had a chance to attend a workshop with him, I jumped at the chance, and was not disappointed. I have paraphrased a lot here, since my recording of the workshop is NOT audible, and I'm going from memory. I didn't want to lose the essence of what he said, and think this catches the gist of his workshop. Hope it's fun.

The tune was "Bob and Bernie" and Martin described it as "an old sounding tune" Simple, and well written. He said "it's easier to write a flashy tune. It's difficult to write a good, simple tune."

He played it for us, lightly, leaning into some notes, adding only a few quick ornaments, a grace note here, a treble there, but not many, and not heavily done. Then he taught us the tune in the usual fashion, playing a phrase slowly, repeating it with us until we could also play it, then playing the next segment, repeating it until we'd learned it, combining it with the first segment until we had the story so far, and so on until we had the whole tune.

We didn't sound very musical, but we had the bones of the tune.

"Now we'll take a little break from playing." he said, and talked with us about the tune, how its simplicity left it open to become a conversation or story. In his opinion, the complicated tunes, the unpredictable tunes don't leave room for a story or conversation. "Some of them are wonderful tunes, and we love to play them." He said, but the implication was that they became more fun for the player than the listener.

He described one of the old timers listening to a flashy young player. At the time, Martin was young, and impressed. "so what do you think?" he asked the old fiddler.

"There's nothin' in it." The old man replied.

Martin talked about fast playing as well, of his father who played for dances, fast playing leaving little room for that conversation. "For dancing, you need that lift and drive, and you often lose the story or conversation of the tune." I wanted to ask him if it was at all possible to have both, to work on the technicalities to the point where you could have it all. but I didn't.

His preference was for the slower, listening style where there would be time to vary the pace, draw out a word or phrase of the conversation, and make sure there was "something in it"

One workshop participant asked him about vibrato. "I see that you use it, and I've been told by Irish players that it 'isn't done'"

Martin sighed. "Ah, ethno musicologists." He talked about how they looked at a snap shot of history. How that's interesting and useful, and informative, but not the law. "I don't use much vibrato, but there are times where I think it works." He went on to comment on "traditional sets." "Just because someone played a set of tunes on a particular recording, do they always have to be played that way? Why recordings haven't been around all that long."

"You have to put yourself in the tune" he said. "You can't listen to a recording and try to play like Sean McGuire or Tommy Peoples. You have to find your own approach to a tune."

He made it clear that, to say what you really want to say with a tune, you need to work on technique. "All of us, when we play, rely on patterns. They make it easier, faster for us. They are useful when we want to avoid the things we aren't good at, string crosses, and the like." those patterns, he continued, can make a tune more mechanical, and can prevent you from saying what you intend to say with the tune.

As one way of breaking bowing patterns, he described an exercise where he plays a tune he knows well, putting as many notes on the bow as will fit, then changing direction when he runs out of bow. Demonstrating this exercise, bow direction changes came at very random places, and he just had to adapt. This became useful when he started phrasing a tune and wanted a breath, a pause in a certain spot and wasn't constrained by patterns.

He didn't get into ornaments, and how to produce them. He played "Bob and Bernie" for us again, a beautiful, musical version, and asked us what we'd noticed about it. We were quiet, unsure of what we were supposed to notice.

"there were no ornaments" He said. It was all done with volume and length of notes. "You don't need to ornament a tune to get that conversation."

As he talked about his approach to the music, he often lilted the tune, like a conversation "ti YAah ti ta t'n DEE t'n daaah" ti YA ti ta t'n Dee t'n daah" light, varied. I could almost hear "And how are you today auld man?" "I'm very well indeed, I am." neighbors with the same lifting accent, who have known one another for a long time.

When he applied it to his playing, there was definitely "something there."

Water under the Bridge

I had forgotton about this blog. 

Last spring, at about this time, I got a call from the Montpelier Building Inspector.  Someone had complained of the events I was holding in my attic, and they had to come and inspect.

The attic's on the third floor of my home.  It's an attic, after all.  I now can no longer hold concerts or workshops, or any event open to the public, or where money changes hands.  It still makes me sad. 

Over the past year, I've organized a couple of concerts and workshops at other sites around town, thanks to the generosity of the Summit School, Church of the Good Shepherd, and Onion River Exchange.  I'll probably continue to do this now and then, but whenever I leave my house with cider, cookies, fiddle and change, I am reminded of how easy it used to be.  It's more than just the simplicity too.  There's something different about an audience in the intimacy of a home.  I suppose I'll always have a little regret about losing that.  At the time, it was wickedly painful.  Now, just a dull ache. 

But there is still a lot of music in my life, and in the Attic as well.  Perhaps this can become the place where I write about the people, tunes, venues, teachers and bands who make my life rich, (well not financially, but you know what I mean.)   Stay tuned, and please play responsibly.

Why the Attic?

The third floor of my home is a busy place.  It's a guest room, class room, performance space, and a lovely spot to sit and play my fiddle, sing a ballad or think.  Attics in general are places where things collect, memories, junk, treasures, and other people's stuff.  Attics are also where, traditionally, writers and thinkers have been forced to live, since writing and thinking haven't often been highly paid or valued. 

And so, here I will write about my little corner of community, my memories, and my thoughts on music, politics, friends, cats and whatever else comes to mind.   Oh, be careful of your head.  The ceiling's a little low in spots.