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:	post by DestroyYouAlot at 2009-07-22 15:23:07

That, or you could pick up something new.

There's sort of a hierarchy, here. With ITM, the melody line is king (and the melody line is what holds the rhythm as well, as opposed to percussion in other styles). A trad Irish session has the bulk of the players playing the melody, in unison, with individual flourishes on the articulation but little in the way of harmony playing, and most of all in the same rhythm. Then you've got chorded accompaniment (guitar, mandolin, banjo, bouzouki, etc.), and as a rule of thumb you don't want more than one of these going at a time, two if the players know what they're doing and can play nice together. These need to concentrate on accenting the rhythm the melody players are laying down and staying in key, but there's actually a lot of room to improvise on chord changes and flourishes within the key. Last you've got percussion, and again you want to be careful about having more than one percussion player going at the same time. What's more, the cardinal sin for ITM percussionists is to play every beat of the melody line - it's all about accent.

The core three instruments in the Celtic trad stuff are the fiddle (by far the most important), the whistle, and the pipes. I've got a couple of potential fiddlers in mind but nothing concrete, there. I'm a bit intimidated by the idea of picking up the fiddle myself, but I'd love to own one to bang on. Pipes are obviously a huge investment and are notoriously difficult to pick up, so I won't kill myself if I can't find a decent uilleann player. Conversely, the whistle is about the easiest ITM instrument to learn (they're diatonic as oposed to chromatic, so you don't really need to learn the scales), and by far the cheapest (20 bucks or so with an instruction book). I'm messing around learning whistle but I'm not to the point where I could teach with it. (Of course, the "most traditional" Irish instrument of all is the harp, but a) good luck finding a practicing harper, and b) it's not usually found in the dance stuff anymore.)

Then you've got the more recent additions, such as the mandolin, guitar, bouzouki and button accordion, with banjo, dulcimer and piano accordian being somewhat on the fringe but still accepted. Bodhran, bones and spoons have been pub session mainstays for most of the 20th century, while snare, highland pipes, horns and bass are usually reserved for outdoor ceilidhs (i.e., with step-dancers).

As I understand it, the trick to really nailing the traditional Celtic stuff is to learn it on something you don't already have too much experience with - less to unlearn. I'm starting with melody guitar (which I'm just almost competent on) for teaching purposes - since I'm organizing the session, I'm kinda responsible for making sure there are some tunes to teach, which means me picking them up in a timely fashion - but ideally I'd like to pick up a banjo and/or a decent mandolin to have something more to bring to the table, and to get my hands on something new. Hoping to build myself a dulcimer at some point, too. Just keep in mind that there's always a million guitars, and never enough fiddlers. LOL

All the same, as long as you don't have more than one or (at most) two accompaniment players (i.e., rhythm guitar, chorded banjo, etc.) playing at the same time, any number of melody players can get along - although it's usually a good idea not to have more than two of the same instrument going at the same time. If you're playing guitar at a pub session, plan to sit out a lot more than if you're bringing something a little rarer.

Anybody that's interested should google around a bit for some of the articles on session (or seisiun) ettiquette, keeping in mind that I'm not gonna be to concerned about being all prim and proper at a learning session. We'll be taking things REAL slow at first, until people are more comfortable with the phrases and the technique.

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