Learning a style from within
What's in a fiddle (or any traditional) style?
The magic of a fiddle tune is not in the notes, but in the feeling, the “style” that produced the tune, the culture that uses the tune for listening, dancing, marching, or other community functions. Even in classical music, where it’s not uncommon to hear music from many cultures and eras played the same way, there are musicians who specialize in a style, such as renaissance music, baroque music using original instruments, German romantic, American modern, and so on, and they sound better when they’re able draw upon the characteristic styles of those cultures.
Fiddle music is local music from around the world. There is not only a noticeably different style from one country to another, but there are also clear differences between regions of a country, or from village to village. In some places, the local style has been built entirely on the playing of a single well-respected fiddler. People may recognize that person’s, or that town’s style of playing. Or the fiddler may not teach anyone, and when they’re gone, the culture suffers. I heard of one town in Romania where the fiddler died, and social dancing ended in that town.
One time, I attended a concert by an eclectic group playing folk tunes from around the world. It was fun and interesting. But when they played some of the tunes and styles I knew best, it became clear to me that they were playing all this different music in the same way. They were able to reproduce the melodies and beats drawn from a variety of places, but not in the styles the music was born into.
For listeners who know a style well, particularly those who grew up with it, it is truly moving to hear a great player from within that tradition. Playing all the notes of a tune may be done in an entertaining and even virtuosic way, but could lack the soul of the tune if the style is missing. There’s a song that speaks of this for one type of music, but could easily apply to them all when it says that, no matter how amazing the player, “it don’t mean a thing if ain’t got that swing.”
How do you learn a fiddle style, especially if it’s from a culture different from your own? Like anything else, what you learn depends on what you become aware of. The more you are aware of, the more you hear, and the more chance you have of incorporating that awareness in your playing. If you want to find out what “that swing” is, you need to listen to really good players from the tradition, and try to get a sense of what they are trying to do. In particular, what is it that moves those who care about that kind of music?
The best way to learn a style is from within, rather than copying it from the outside. Although someone growing up in a culture has an easier time understanding a style from within, there are also many people native to a culture who don’t pay attention to or value their own traditions. Someone who chooses to delve into a style, and the culture that produced it, can potentially stand a better chance of getting the feel of it than someone who grew up with it but doesn’t care about it. (There is a famous story of Handel, who wrote music for the king of England. When confronted by a man who asked how Handel, a German, could dare to write music celebrating an English victory over the Germans, Handel replied, “I am an Englishman by choice, whereas you, sir, are an Englishman by accident!”)
In learning about a fiddle style, here are a few things to listen for.
1. Timing
Every style has a different sense of timing, a different way of using and filling out the beats. For example, Scottish style uses as much of a beat as possible, often sounding late. An experienced dancer in that style may look late to the beat. But where is the beat for a dancer? If they’re hopping, is it when they touch the ground, reach their lowest point, start back up, or leave the ground? The beat is a gray area, not a point as on a metronome, as you may have read in this earlier article. Different styles use the beat in different ways. Sometimes they maintain a perfect beat on important notes, but give and take on the notes leading into or out of those important beat notes. Some styles emphasize the downbeats; others the offbeats. Klezmer and Romanian players sometimes play exactly the same tunes but one builds around the beat and the other builds around the offbeat. Listen closely and try to feel what the musicians and dancers are feeling.
2. Bowing (blowing, squeezing…)
In fiddling, timing is created by the bow. Weight is given to important notes. Playing expressively, emphasizing downbows in one style or upbows in another, using separate bows some places, slurs by beat or slurs across beats, or punching certain notes on or off the beat — these are all built into the feeling of different styles. Some styles need short punctuated bows with syncopated rhythms; others use long slurred bows to feature certain notes and leave others in the shadows. Some lean into drone strings, others prefer clean notes.
3. Ornamentation
Grace notes, slides, triplets, rolls — these decorations are often mistaken for the heart of a style when they are really only there to help express it. Some styles use grace notes to emphasize beats because the beat is what they love; others use grace notes to fill in spaces because they like to keep things flowing. There is a notation in an old Scottish book from 200 years ago about how some English composers used to try to make pseudo-Scottish tunes by simply using lots of snaps (short-long rhythms characteristic in Scottish style). This note from centuries ago points out the superficiality of copying an ornament in order to sound stylistic, when in fact the ornaments themselves are there to express a deeper feeling based on the cultural preferences of listeners and dancers. I have seen compositions by classical composers add in a slide or two to a piece of music such as a “hoedown” in an attempt to create instant folk music, even though little else about the cultural style may be present in the composition. Listen to good players and notice how natural their ornamentation sounds; it is built into the feel of their music. In future, we will be discussing ornamentation and how to make use of it to support the feel of a tune.
4. Melodies and modes
Some styles are built around melody, using distinctive note patterns that express particular moods. Other styles are less melody-driven and more interested in the mood of the scale, the mode, or the exploration of ways to shift from one mood to another. Some start with a distinct melody and then release the players to experiment with motifs of that melody and build new ideas or refer back to old ones. Some styles stay within a narrow range of keys (sometimes for the purpose of accommodating certain instruments), while others spread out to many keys.
5. Medleys
Players in some styles like to play a tune twice and move onto a new one, and in this way build a long composition moving from one tune to the next in a creative way. Other styles like to repeat a tune for a long time, to get into the zone of a tune to explore many possible variations of expression within it. How a culture uses its music, whether for listening, whiling away time, marching, or dancing different kinds of steps, determines whether and how tunes are put together to make longer medleys.
6. Notes and note patterns
Usually the obsession of beginners is getting all the notes right, but the notes themselves are not at the top of the list for people who love a style of playing. Note patterns are like words; they help you express a larger thought, and the larger though is closer to what the style conveys. Some patterns are more common in one style than another, and certain note combinations may be more important than others. The better you know a style, the more you’ll know which notes are interchangeable and which are not.
7. Function
The reason a piece of music was made and played can and often does affect all of the above characteristics. How are tunes used in a particular culture? What traditions regularly use special types of tunes and why? Funerals, weddings, commemorations, dances, parties, lullabies, marches, all have their own needs for rhythm and moods that vary from one culture to another. Military units often use a wide variety of tunes to communicate movements of soldiers, whether for wake-up, bedtime, dinner, attack, retreat, and it’s essential that these types of tunes communicate clearly through melody, rhythm, and tempo.
How to learn a style
A great technique for gaining a great understanding of a style is to imitate good players. This can be done through a lot of careful listening, or simply by absorbing the feel of a style by becoming immersed in it through dances and other social functions if you’re lucky enough to visit or live in that cultural setting.
Learning directly from a good player can put you in direct contact with the feel of a style, especially if the teacher is able to articulate how to listen to and express the style well. While you can learn a great deal from CD or YouTube, your own sense of a style is naturally limited to what you are aware of. A good teacher can broaden your awareness. It’s not unlike learning to speak a language more fluently. A teacher will correct you because they care whether you get things right; an average listener will not correct you because they just want to understand what you are trying to say.
Nobody, not even the best players, executes their music exactly as they hope. Some of the most famous practitioners of any style of music are the older players, who, through a lifetime of experience, know how to eke out nuance in their music. Ironically, though, the older they are, the less ability they may have to execute that nuance. But if you gain awareness and understanding and feeling for a style of playing, you can hear not just what a good player is doing — you’ll hear what they’re trying to do. And with that awareness, you can hardly help from trying to do it yourself.
As you broaden your awareness, you’ll find yourself beginning to understand a style and its culture from within, rather than merely copying it from the outside. There’s little more moving than playing a style of music for people from that culture, and feeling their excitement and appreciation when you get it right!