Paraphrase this: a note on improvisation

ABSTRACT

This article explores concepts and practices of improvisation in traditional music making, presenting an analysis of two recorded reels by the Irish fiddler Frankie Gavin. This case study exemplifies the phenomenon of paraphrase improvisation: on-the-spot creation of a continuous stream of melodic-rhythmic variations without compromising the identity of the tune in question. My analysis interrogates the implications of these observations for understanding the generative mechanisms of improvisation, drawing on Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ phenomenology of expertise to account for how expert performers perceive and respond to multidimensional configurations of musical stimuli. Particular emphasis is placed on how different aspects of skill formation overlap and interrelate, promoting the view of melodic-rhythmic variability as intrinsic to the technical/stylistic practice of playing tunes, as opposed to being a separate layer of performance action. I further discuss how improvisational practices are constitutively framed within a particular culture of musical mediation and learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Improvisation
• Irish traditional music
• skill acquisition
• musical learning
• creativity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Mats Johansson holds an MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Bergen and a PhD in musicology from the University of Oslo, Norway. Currently, he is Professor at the Department of Folk Culture, University College of Southeast Norway, where he also leads the research group Practice, Tradition and Technology. In addition, he participates as a senior researcher in the newly launched research project ‘TIME: Timing and Sound in Musical Microrhythm’. Johansson’s research spans several areas, including rhythmic performance and microrhythm; musical learning and embodiment; representations of gender in musical performance and historiography; and authorship, copyrights and cultural ownership.

Notes

1. For further discussion of forms, aspects and taxonomies of jazz improvisation, see Kernfeld (1994).

2. The following examples of well-known fiddlers, each with their own characteristic (bowing) style and sound, should bring out this point:

•   • Liz Carroll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbjLh1tqCUE (accessed 1 March 2017).

•   • Tommy Peoples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAbNV3BaORI (accessed 1 March 2017).

•   • Dezi Donnelly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwKCYR0-Yjs (accessed 1 March 2017).

•   • Kevin Bruke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMNzoTmUoEI (accessed 1 March 2017).

•   • Cathal Hayden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwrI5c2NhHk (accessed 1 March 2017).

•   • Sean Smyth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdcj68C2r-4 (accessed 1 March 2017).

•   • John McCusker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9YFwAcEpn8 (accessed 1 March 2017).

3. Examples from personal experience include attending workshops where the teacher presents ever new versions of the motifs and sections of a tune, seemingly unaware that they are different. One of these workshops was with the Norwegian Hardanger fiddler Bjarne Herrefoss (1931–2002) in February 1993 during the Rauland Winter Festival. To my knowledge, Herrefoss had never been a teacher before; neither did he ever have a teacher himself, but learned by listening to other fiddlers (Bøe 1996). Interestingly, Herrefoss is widely considered one of the most original improvisers of Norwegian folk music and his playing typifies the concept of formulaic variation. For further accounts of variability in Scandinavian folk fiddling, see Kvifte (1994), Misgeld (2014) and Omholt (2012).

4. This notion corresponds to a common characteristic of many definitions of improvisation; that spontaneous creativity is always framed within constraints, which in turn provide a common ground for musical communication (Berkowitz 2010: 1–3).

5. The importance of rhythmic qualities is so obvious among performers that it is rarely talked about. One exception is when fiddlers are asked to explain things about style to people with little knowledge about Irish traditional music, as in the following example from an interview with Frankie Gavin for the Fiddler Magazine in 2002:

Asked if he has any advice for fiddlers who want to learn to inject some Irish soul into their playing, Frankie Gavin says, ‘It's dance music, let there be no mistake about it. And if it's going to be dance music, it's going to be rhythmical. To me the rhythm is almost everything.’ (Fiddler Magazine 9(2): 19)

6. For a striking example, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1EU4ipTkRg (accessed 1 March 2017).

7. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SL-9QOuBbw (accessed 1 March 2017).

8. For details of recorded versions of this tune, see https://thesession.org/tunes/347 (accessed 22 February 2017).

9. See Keegan (2010) for a more comprehensive account of Irish traditional music ornaments and their notation.

10. A roll starting on the first finger will comprise the finger pattern 13101, while the ideal third leap is abandoned when the roll starts on the second (23212) or third (34323) finger. If the note in question is an open string, there can be no roll. This is one of many examples of how idiomatic constraints of instrument, technique and performance style are allowed to dictate the course of the performance: when a tune is played in a different key, the placement and execution of embellishments will be different, often leading to a different overall character.

11. For details of recorded versions of this tune, see https://thesession.org/tunes/900 (accessed 22 February 2017).

12. It should also be noted that, to many people today, traditional tunes and songs do not represent one of these ‘stories’ that they have heard since childhood. Rather, ‘traditional’ represents a specialised branch of music to which people are exposed mainly by actively seeking out certain contexts and milieus.

13. Clearly, this is always the case to some extent because all forms of music change over time. However, it is a matter of degree: the openness to idiosyncratic and ‘accidental’ variations over canonised materials is not at all representative of, for example, classical violin playing in institutional contexts.

14. The clip from the master-class session at the 2014 Temple Bar TradFest can be found online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVVx8g28JN8 (accessed 1 March 2017).

15. Fiddler Magazine 2002, 9(2): 18.

16. This is not uncommon in Irish traditional music: other fiddlers who often play a semitone sharp include Tom Morrow (Dervish) and Cathal Hayden (Four Men and a Dog).