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"Ornamentation"

for the Irish tenor banjo

by Chris Smith

There are a number of different things you can do to make your tenor banjo playing more "Irish"—more idiomatic to the style, phrasing, and aesthetics of traditional Irish music. This factor is shaped by considerations which include left-hand position and fingering, right hand technique and position, and, most crucially, phrasing and articulation (usually described, misleadingly, as "ornamentation").

Models for your sound

The core instruments in Irish traditional music are fiddle, flute, and pipes. The shape, range, keys, and phrasing of the traditional tunes all re.ect these instruments. The preference for keys and modes of 0-3 sharps (e.g., C major, G major, D major, A major, and modes based upon them) re.ects the GDAE-tuned fiddle's resonance and the pipes' and simple-system ("timber") flute's D fundamental. The range of most tunes (from approximately D up an octave plus sixth to B) re.ects the comfortable range for the flute and D tin whistle and the range of the fiddle in first position. The use of various slurs, articulations, double-stops, drones, and ornaments in the tunes re.ects those things which "fall under the fingers" on flute, fiddle, and pipes. These instruments can play the long, lyrical melodies of the song/air repertoire and the driving, rhythmic, and percussive tunes of the dance repertoire. Even the humble tin whistle, an inexpensive six-hole flute pitched commonly in D, can encompass this full range of expression—which is why most youngsters in Ireland start out on the whistle.

Most other instruments which have entered the tradition—including concertina, button accordion, harmonica, banjo, mandolin, bouzouki, and guitar—have been able to do so successfully because they are able to mimic and borrow from the models of flute, fiddle, or pipes. My personal model is the fiddle, because the banjo's similarity to the fiddle's tuning, fingerings, and favored keys makes it a particularly "close" model. Thus I get a lot of ideas, about phrasing, time, and especially about ornamentation/articulation, from fiddle players.

Unfortunately, some crucial things that are very easy on the fiddle (notably, sustaining notes, and modifying or "ornamenting" those notes) are essentially impossible on the banjo. Once we've struck the note (unlike a fiddle player), we can't shape that note any further.

What we can do is try to use "banjoistic" techniques which mirror the ornaments, phrasing, and articulations of the fiddle. In this short discussion, I'm going to use a common D-major Irish session tune, "Dick Gossip's Reel," to illustrate ways we can make our banjo playing sound more ".ddlistic," and thus more authentically Irish.

Let's look at the tune!

The upper staff in each system represents the tune's "bare bones"—the way you'd find it in a tune collection like O Neill's Folk Music of Ireland. However, trying to learn the tune solely from notation is a very bad idea, as so much of what makes the music sound right doesn't translate well to notation. This means that, once you've played through the tune as notated—or even before hand—it's a very good idea to .nd at least one recording by an Irish style fiddle player of this tune. A good place to hunt for recordings containing this tune is Alan Ng's wonderful irishtune.info, which indexes hundreds of tunes by their appearances on various great recordings.

Some comments:

• Generally speaking, in Irish music those additions to the basic melody that we usually call "ornaments" are more than mere decoration; they are a way for a solo melody player (flute, fiddle, or pipes) to add rhythmic kicks, breaks, and articulations at certain crucial spots. You'll notice that, in the "ornamented" version (lower staff), those articulations often fall:
  - At the downbeat of a measure or beginning of a new phrase: see mm. 2, 3, 4;
  - A the moment of an implied chord change: see 3rd beat of m. 6, 1st and 3rd beat of m. 8;
  - At the last strong beat of a phrase or section: 1st beat of m. 9.
• The most typical ornaments for an Irish fiddle player are "cuts" (brief interruptions of the main note, rather like our "pull-offs", played on one bow stroke), "turns" (triplet-like "hammer-on-and-pull-off" .gures, also on one bow), and rolls (5 notes on one bow: main note—note above—main note—note below—main note).
  - Sometimes we can mimic these exactly: see 1st beat of m. 4, where the E under the first finger is struck, and then, using "hammer-ons and pull-offs", we quickly sound F#, E, D, E, F# on the way to 3rd beat G.
• More commonly, we sometimes have to substitute a more "banjo-friendly" ornament instead of a roll. Most typically, this is a simple triplet, played DUD very quickly, either
  - On the same pitch: see 1st beat of m. 2;
  - Or, more elegantly, with the middle note of the triplet varied: see 1st beat of m. 3
• In addition to various forms of triplets, we can use the whole arsenal plucked-string tricks, including:
  - Hammer-ons: 3rd beat, m. 2 and m. 3; 1st beat, m. 5;
  - Pull-offs: 2nd and 3rd beat, m. 6;
  - Double-stops: 3rd beat, m. 4 and m. 6; 1st beat, m. 8, 9, and 10;
  - Even "triple-stops": 3rd beat, m. 10.
• We can borrow other ideas from fiddle players, including:
  - Slides into notes: 1st beat, m. 6;
  - "Filling in" melodic passages: 1st and 4th beat, m. 13;
  - Staccato or spiccato attacks: 1st beat, m. 15; 1st beat, m. 17
  - Playing short passages, or even whole sections, in an octave transposition (that is, an octave higher or lower than usual: make sure you learn both upper and lower octave versions of each of your tunes!)
• Finally, and most importantly, we can combine and vary these techniques each time we play a repeat of the tune, thereby always "making the tune new," providing interesting new ways of hearing its melody and rhythm, and "lifting the .oor" for the dancers and listeners.

Try applying these techniques to any Irish tune familiar in your repertoire, and make sure you spend lots of time listening. To play this music in an authentically "Irish" way, we need to have the sound of flute, fiddle, and pipes, played by master musicians, in our ears. In upcoming columns, we'll look at the left-hand and right-hand fingering and picking techniques that make the above possible.

Have fun!

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Christopher J. Smith is Assistant Professor of Music History and Literature at Texas Tech University School of Music. He holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts and Indiana University, serves as Director of the Vernacular Music Center at Texas Tech.

His research interests are in American Music, 20th Century Music, vernacular music and culture, improvisation, and historical performance. He is the author of Celtic Backup for All Instrumentalists and the forthcoming Irish Session Tunes by Ear (both Mel Bay), is the authorized biographer of Irish musician and folklorist Séamus Ennis, and has published articles and presented papers on many topics in jazz, classical, and world musics. His solo CD of traditional Irish music (with fiddler Randal Bays and bouzouki-player Roger Landes) will appear early in 2004.

In addition, he records and tours internationally with Altramar medieval music ensemble, leads the Irish traditional band Last Night's Fun, and has lectured or performed across North America and in Europe. He directs Irish Session Workshops, a non-pro.t organization, serves as co-Director of the Symposium of World Musics and on the Steering Committee of the Buddy Holly Symposium, and is a founding staff member of ZoukFest, the world's only music camp and festival for players of the Irish bouzouki.