my ideal beginners session

Subject: my ideal beginners session
From: Mo the caller
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 08:31 AM

This needs a leader who is a competant musician and fairminded, to: -
1.Arrange the seating to include all,
2.Encourage everyone to start a tune,
3.catch them when they fall off,
4.keep the speed as the one who started it wants for the first few times
5.encourage the playing of tunes lots of times for diffident joiners-in
6. for those too incompetant/shy to start a tune, ask them to name a tune and then play it for them to join in with, very slowly at first.
7.make sure everyone knows what key, and what the first couple of notes are (I did say beginners)

If anyone organises such a session, within say 40 miles of mid-Cheshire, we'll come, if its not on a Mon.,Wed. or when my band has a booking

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Paul Burke
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 08:35 AM

Add
8: encourage everyone to learn each others tunes.
9: have a tactful but effective manner with real spoilers.

This last one refers to the Sh******d Irih Centre some years ago, when the learners' session was persistently made impossible by a completely arhythmic, loud and utterly insensitive, guess what, bodhran "player".

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: GUEST,Danny
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 08:55 AM

Fancy meeting you here Paul. If you're gonna enlist the skills of an experienced player, you'd need to think what's in it for him/her?
The Kudos of being Queen/king bee?
The fact that a very attractive girl/guy is among the beginners?
Free drink?
Money?
Just the fact that s/he is an extremely nice and patient person who likes to see new people take up playing in sessions?
There is nowhere else to go within a 50-mile radius?

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Mo the caller
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 09:06 AM

There must be some extremely nice and patient people around.
Maybe all that and experienced players too.
If its too much to ask as a regular thing then maybe at a festival.

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: MuddleC
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 09:06 AM

- the satisfaction of opening up the beauty of the muse, to encourage and nurture the skills and enjoyment of playing and singing..to boldly go where no bodhran has gone before.....

oh, all right, the drink and the girl!

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Paul Burke
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 09:12 AM

Well, in S******d it was Brian H wanting to sell his pipes...

No, cynicism aside, it's something that teachers have and I haven't got. They do it DESPITE the grief it brings them.

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: mooman
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 09:22 AM

Mo said:

There must be some extremely nice and patient people around.
Maybe all that and experienced players too.

Exactly! That's what I try to aspire to. I'm not in it for the kudos (I don't need it), the beer (I scarcely drink at all), the attractive person of the opposite sex (my wife co-runs it) or the money (that would be handy but I'm firmly against mixing "sessions" and money). Unfortunately the session I organize and lead is a bit outside your radius (Brussels, Belgium)!

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Tim theTwangler
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 09:35 AM

Leave the Bodrhan players alone and stop complaining just because you are not good enough to play at anything faster than a plod.
Bodrhans are used to enhance the tune not to help other players with no sense of rythm keep time.
He HE HE

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Mo the caller
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 10:24 AM

I'm not complaining, just saying what MY ideal session would be.
As for incentives, how about we passed the hat round and everyone put in the price of a drink for the leader (not exactly a proffessional fee I know...).

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 11:27 AM

In this age of computers, copy machines and projectors, it seems silly to retain the tradition of learning tunes simply by ear. A person who has had no music lessons at all can still be helped if he sees the tune written out. Ask any Lutheran.

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Paul Burke
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 11:37 AM

If you don't learn the tunes by ear, you'll never play them by ear. This isn't to say that you can't learn tunes from music, but you can't learn HOW TO PLAY the tune from music.

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Paul Burke
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 11:49 AM

However, this might help people to learn by ear:
Best Practice slowerdownerator.

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Mo the caller
Date: 03 Dec 05 - 05:37 AM

If you can't play by ear the tune is over before you've found the dots.
And it might be in a different key.

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 03 Dec 05 - 06:19 AM

So, is any one up for leading this session?

And where might it be then?

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Mo the caller
Date: 03 Dec 05 - 06:55 AM

My front room, near Kelsall (between Chester & Northwich)?

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 Dec 05 - 11:01 AM

"If you don't learn the tunes by ear, you'll never play them by ear."


That's not true. I play both ways all the time. Seeing the tune helps one learn it faster. Also, having a copy means that you can retrieve it if it slips from your memory.

Most of us have a higher standard of living than our great-grandfathers. However, paying for that standard means we don't have the leisure time they had. (Well, some of them.) Learning tunes by ear wastes time that could be used to learn other tunes and to make new friends to play music with.

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: Mo the caller
Date: 03 Dec 05 - 11:12 AM

I prefer the dots myself, trying to find the tune by ear slows me down. My husband plays by ear and is slow reading the dots. But how many of us would need the music to sing a song that we knew. With practise you find your fingers do the same.
I can only do this on tunes I already know e.g. that we dance to.

Subject: RE: my ideal beginners session
From: breezy
Date: 03 Dec 05 - 04:59 PM

play by ear and recognise the phrasing

Those who go for the dots sometimes fail to convey the tune to the listener

play slowly and plod it

The pain is the plyer who knows it and takes over, usually the one on the malodeon......

as for the bodran player, their turn to buy the round...hide the beaters...