Improvisation in traditional music: learning practices and principles

ABSTRACT

This article discusses approaches to improvisation from a learning perspective, using Irish traditional fiddle music as a case study. Within this genre, concepts of improvisation are largely implicit: many skilled musicians are engaged in spontaneous variation, without particular attention given to the phenomenon and without reference to the term improvisation. This is also evident in teaching practices, as demonstrated through a case study of a fiddle workshop during the 2016 Ennis Trad Fest. In this context, improvised variations emerge as intrinsic to the practice of playing tunes rather than as a separate layer of performance action to be taught independently. In line with this premise, the analysis invokes the concept of implicit learning to explore how particular arrangements of instructional activities may support the development of improvisational skills without being explicitly engaged with improvisation. Finally, the article introduces the notion of a principal difference between a work-oriented and a technique-/formula-oriented mode of learning and performance. The latter suggests a teaching approach marked by an attention to the practical exploration of expressive affordances through sound-producing movements (techniques) and correspondingly less attention to abstract principles (such as harmonic/intervallic rules and compositional concepts).

KEYWORDS:

• Traditional music
• improvisation
• learning practices
• pedagogics
• creativity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There is a vast literature on informal learning in music that could have been consulted in this context (see e.g. Cope 2002; Folkestad 2006; Green 2008; Jaffurs 2006). However, although the social organisation of learning activities is an important contextual factor in my study a more comprehensive consideration of this aspect is left for future studies.

2 See e.g. the discussion thread ’”crossing over” from strict classical violin to fiddle - help!’ on the forum called thesession.org (https://thesession.org/discussions/1480).

3 As Berge and Johansson (2018) argues, folk musicians increasingly promote their artistic projects in explicit and strategic ways to set them apart from those of competing artists. Interestingly, one example is the revitalisation of improvisational elements among some contemporary Norwegian fiddlers who oppose what they claim to be an increasingly more work-oriented musical practice. In this regard, the authors note the fundamental difference between improvisation as an implicit element of the traditional practice of playing dance tunes and the strategic staging of improvisation as an artistic concept, the latter being contingent on explicit knowledge and intentional attention towards variation/improvisation per se.

4 For a comprehensive review of current music education research that addresses issues of improvisation in formal music education, see Siljamäki and Kanellopoulos (2020). Within the genres of concern in the present study, the literature on how to teach and learn traditional techniques of improvisation is very limited. One of few examples is Olof Misgeld’s (2014) Att befria det lekande sinnet [To set free the playful mind]. Misgeld’s approach can be characterised as analytical-deconstructive, outlining a number of methods and principles through which (Swedish) tunes can be used as a springboard for improvisation. More precisely, although the approach highlights the flexibility and openness of the tune material, it utilises a music-theoretical language which is contingent on the ability for abstraction. Examples of such abstract knowledge include inferring scales from particular melodic formulas; identifying structurally important notes of a melody (a so-called ‘melodic skeleton analysis’); sorting melodic and rhythmic patterns into a number of different categories; and an overall awareness of how performed segments and versions are composed and contrasted. While all this may seem unavoidable in an analytical account of improvisation and learning, I will propose that other modes of musical knowing may be equally important to consider.

5 As is common in this type of workshop, all participants were encouraged to record the session. In addition, I have received written permission from the tutor to use the recorded statements and musical excerpts for research purposes. He was also offered the opportunity for withdrawal at any point and to refute any written statement in the present version of the manuscript. As for how the workshop participants were treated, it should be noted that the data collection falls under the category of unstructured observation at a public event: no intervention was staged by the researcher; the workshop was tightly integrated with the larger context of the festival; it was a drop-in event with no registration; and people came and left during the session, meaning that there was no consistent group of participants. Moreover, no information about the participants is presented in the paper or otherwise recorded, meaning that neither results nor any other research documents allow identification of specific individuals.

6 ‘Ard Baithen’, a composition by Tommy Peoples, jig (source: Tommy Peoples and Oisín McAuley). Hereafter referred to as jig 1. For a score representation of the general outline of the tune, see: https://thesession.org/tunes/6807#setting6807.

‘Michelle O’Sullivan’s’, jig (source: Brid Harper). Hereafter referred to as jig 2. Score representation: https://vimeo.com/343927722.

‘Cottage in the Grove’, reel. Score representation: https://thesession.org/tunes/558.

7 See the discussion thread ‘Workshops—What do you think? Good? Bad?—How? & Why?’: https://thesession.org/discussions/3200.

8 Notably, even the few versions of a small two-measure phrase referred to here include five categories of variation: melody notes, legatos, grace notes, double stops and intonation. It also differs which notes/metrical positions that are subjected to a particular type of variation, indicating an infinite number of combinatorial possibilities, which would seem impossible to keep track of when viewed as different compositional variations. On the other hand, when understood in terms of a limited set of techniques being employed (slurring, double stopping, cutting, rolling etc.), the multitude of versions are perhaps to be seen more as musically interchangeable formulaic gestures. This technique-/formula-oriented perspective (see final discussion) suggests that concepts of compositional complexity might be incomplete and misleading representations of the music-making process.

9 In Irish traditional music, the term triplet refers to a physical movement in the form of an abrupt ‘shake’ in the bow hand that corresponds to a very rapid burst of three notes and a rhythmically distinct sound.

10 On this note, at a later stage of the workshop O’Kane plays back a recording of the tune by its composer, Tommy Peoples, noting that it sounds very different from his own version(s). This observation merely occasioned a few self-ironic jokes and laughs, O’Kane commenting that ‘at the same time, Tommy Peoples played it differently as well.’

11 This gradual increase of intensity and complexity was exemplified many times during the workshop. For other examples, see e.g. Frankie Gavin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHBhFQv2-nc and Oisin Mac Diarmada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFn0jDIqiK8.

12 Compare, for instance, the rendition of the well-known reel ‘The Fermoy Lasses’ by Séamus Egan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwfrbuobEw8) to that of The Dubliners (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2UrhxMHiKI). As different as these versions are – they are barely recognisable as the same tune – they are both possible/acceptable within the tradition.

13 An even more important site of musical socialisation is the jam session. More particularly, the Irish traditional music session is a prototypical example of informal participatory music making and learning where presentational modes of performance are largely abandoned for the mere sake of having fun by playing and socialising together, albeit in a public (pub) setting. For further readings on the session as a site of musical enculturation, see Cope (2002), Crawly (2020) and Ferraiuolo (2019).

14 In a wider perspective, this is reflective of the notion that in oral musical traditions creative efforts tend to fall under the heading of performance rather than that of composition and arrangement (Bowman 2003; Danielsen 2006).

15 This line of thinking is reminiscent of music cognition models that presume a hierarchical separation between musical concept or goal imaging (a representation of how the music should sound); applied technique/motor production (the translation of goal images into required physical movements); sounding result; and self-monitoring feedback (musicians’ ability to correctly monitor their own performance and to make appropriate corrections) (Lehmann and Ericsson 1997; Woody and Lehmann 2010).

16 This is a common feature of Norwegian traditional fiddling (see Blom, Nyhus, and Sevåg 1981). For an Irish examples, see the reel ‘The Pinch Of Snuff’ (https://thesession.org/tunes/591).

17 Notably, reversing this argument does not work that well as there are infinite solutions that are musically viable from a compositional perspective while violating technical/idiomatic constraints (a passage being very difficult and/or awkward to perform). Such counter-idiomatic solutions are not representative of traditional fiddling due to the strong focus on rhythm, groove and flow: finger-bow combinations that imply breaking up the rhythmic flow – if ever so slightly – are typically avoided.

18 The more general notion that musical knowledge is inseparable from the body actions through which it is expressed is found frequently in ethnomusicological literature. As Timothy Rice (1994, 113) reflected during his process of learning to ornament melodies on the Bulgarian bagpipe (gaida), ‘the fingers seem to be a locus of musical knowledge’, which manifested as ‘[a] sense of my hands as possessing knowledge independent of my mind.’

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Department of Traditional Arts and Traditional Music, University of South-Eastern Norway.

Notes on contributors

Mats Johansson

Mats Johansson is professor at the Department of Traditional Arts and Traditional Music, University of South-Eastern Norway. Currently, he leads the Arts Council Norway funded research project Participatory Aesthetic Practices, as well as participating as a senior researcher in the Norwegian Research Council funded project TIME: Timing and Sound in Musical Microrhythm led by Anne Danielsen. 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.