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One common trick which some players do consciously and some without thinking, is to stay firmly within the implied chord progression logic of the tune, perhaps also within any arpeggio structure the tune is built on, while keeping the very end of each phrase the same as the standard, unornamented setting. Since a huge majority of Irish tunes are built around strong arpeggios within equally strong chordal progressions, you’ll find plenty of latitude to scramble arpeggios, change directions, and yet somehow maintain contact with the tune this way. All the best players have personal ways they step outside the tune while still honoring it. Some are more understated than others. One of my favorite founts of variation is Gerry O’Connor, who expresses his love of bluegrass by throwing in occasionally counter-intuitive, unexpected, and chromatic flights of fancy in his Irish settings. But rather than tossing you into the deep end, let’s start by paddling around a little in the shallow end of the variation pool. Here’s a transcription of a lovely newish reel, "Cahir’s Kitchen," written by piper/whistle player Paddy Keenan, who was a founding member of the Bothy Band in the 70s. It’s from "The Long Green Acre," a CD Paddy recently recorded with guitarist Tommy O’Sullivan and which is available in the U.S. on Compass Records. "Cahir’s Kitchen" is a pretty standard 8-bar reel pattern with an A part and a B part which actually share the identical chord pattern for accompaniment. But Paddy doesn’t bother to play it through with slavishly repeated A and B parts before beginning his variations. The variations start immediately, so the tune almost sounds like a four-part reel until you examine the pairs of 8-bar patterns and see that they’re really all variations of each other. I’ve transcribed the first two times through the tune for you, as Paddy plays it on the recording. I’ve tried to stay as close to his low whistle setting as I could though, naturally, a few of his slurs and slides are impossible to notate properly for the mando (and probably impossible to play, too). As you feel around for fingerings and ways to get up to the high bits in the B parts and back down alive, you’ll sense how this tune was clearly written on and for a traditional instrument very different from a mando. I love how Paddy feels so free to play arpeggios in seemingly any combination at the beginnings of phrases, while managing to get back to the same two-bar phrase each time. And this richness of invention is done without ever changing the underlying chords or rhythmic logic of the tune. I hope you’ll hunt down the CD to hear the tasty way Tommy O’Sullivan chords under the melody, but for starters, I’d recommend a light, swingy backbeat sort of feel, without snapping off the 2 and 4 beats too quickly. Rather use more of an ascending brush stroke to jazz it up a little. And adding suspensions to the chords can’t hurt one bit. After working with "Cahir’s Kitchen" for a while, try revisiting some other tunes in your Irish repertoire and looking for arpeggios you can scramble up or knock holes in, and see if this doesn’t encourage you to get more satisfaction out of each tune before moving on to the next one. |
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