On Repetition and Variation in Fiddling (Part 2)

©2007 Mark Simos. All Rights Reserved.

For many years I instinctively valued variations and improvisation and distrusted the "naked structure" which they clothed... One breakthrough teachable moment for me occurred at Clifftop, at one of the annual sessions with John Herrmann that I came to think of as my "Zen Old-Time" lesson for the year. After playing a Salyer tune with John one time, with me doing my usual shenanigans, he looked at me and said: "Yes, that's cool, that's one option - and then there's another option, which is playing the tune absolutely straight through from beginning to end." Incredibly, until that moment, it had never really sunk in to me that a "need" to always vary the tune could be just as compulsive (or compelledly impulsive) as anything else.

The following comments were originally posted to the fiddle-l newsgroup on the subject of repetition and variation in fiddling. Though the comments came about during a discussion of the challenges of teaching old-time fiddle music, I include them here because the Clifftop Trilogy project was a seminal experience for me in gaining insight about many of these issues:

Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 12:21:18 -0500
From: Paul Mitchell <EMAIL DELETED TO AVOID SPAM-BOTS!>
Subject: Re: Brown's OT Ensemble (was "ear vs. page")

None the less, given your particular style, you might have a harder time than most playing a tune simply, and consciously, without variation. Sometimes a "fixed text" can be an important learning aid - don't under-value it. Nothing is more frustrating than being unable to discern the object in the foreground (Gestalt psychology rears it's ugly head) when you're trying to establish a context.

Paul makes a great point which is much appreciated, for playing as well as teaching. Lest my prior comment about "maybe confusion is a good thing" sound like justification for or even taking pride in compulsive improvisation or vagueness in teaching, let me share something fairly personal in my own musical development:

I have in fact struggled with my tendency to always change the melody over the years, as a player as well as as a teacher. This tendency may have been influenced by the fact that I got familiar with old-time and Irish music at about the same time, in my final 'teens in the mid-70s in California (California- well, of course, that might explain it too!)--and therefore that Irish music or the Irish aesthetic for continuous micro-variation in performing a tune affected my old-time playing. But it's just as likely that my own predilection for doing that was part of my attraction for Irish music in the first place and part of the "filter" by which I conceived of what was going on, and what was important, in old-time music.

In any case, it has been a many-decades journey for me to peel away layers of egotistical self-satisfaction and showing off interwoven with a pure love of inventiveness--a journey still in progress, I might add. For many years I instinctively valued variations and improvisation and distrusted the "naked structure" which they clothed. In my case I've come to believe that some of this is not a moral failing but rather a variety of attentional... if not dysfunction, then "challenge".

One breakthrough teachable moment for me occurred at Clifftop, at one of the annual sessions with John Herrmann that I came to think of as my "Zen Old-Time" lesson for the year. After playing a Salyer tune with John one time, with me doing my usual shenanigans, he looked at me and said: "Yes, that's cool, that's one option - and then there's another option, which is playing the tune absolutely straight through from beginning to end." Incredibly, until that moment, it had never really sunk in to me that a "need" to always vary the tune could be just as compulsive (or compelledly impulsive) as anything else. I've since explored this idea further with John, who has also expressed it profoundly in talking about guitar accompaniment and the technique of creating a "colonnade" of unvarying chords behind a tune.

Old-time music is a remarkably varied assemblage of regional and individual styles that range from players who (apparently) attempt to play with very little conscious variation; to players like Buddy Thomas who would, as I have heard, "work up" a tune with great care, exploring alternate lines; to players like the recently departed Ralph Blizzard who "never played a tune the same way once." I now believe each place on this spectrum has its own aesthetic value; as a player I want to choose my spot out of intention and not compulsion, and as appropriate to the setting. In terms of the effect of the music, I believe:

1) Continual variation can rapidly become a "sameness" to the ear, diminishing the impact of each individual variation. (Generations of disenchanted recovering Schoenberg serialists have no doubt discovered the same thing.)

2) Conscious repetition in music is itself a skill and a discipline, spiritual as well as technical. That is, as a player, the "will to repeat" is like centripetal force complementary to the centrifugal "will to vary". (I'm starting to explore what philosophers like Kierkegaard and Gilles De Leuze have had to say about this and welcome any pointers from well-read philosophy students out there.)

3) Repetition has a specific "affect" on the listener (or the dancer), creating an intensity that only deceptively looks like simplicity. Since repetitions unfold in time, we are not the same listener that heard the last repetition. (Heraclitus was an old-time fiddler.)

4) When a listener is presented with a seemingly "repetitive" pattern, their ears will activate that pattern and create variations in their experience. So the player's urge to continually vary in performance can be, in one sense, unwillingness to let the listener do their part in creation of the musical experience.

And last but not least, when teaching a tune, throwing in too many variations up front can be roughly equivalent to Chinese water torture.

I'd like to think that the more I learn these lessons, the better a fiddler (and teacher of fiddling) I'll become.

As you are all discovering to your woe and chagrin, my attentional disorder also manifests as "logorrhea" when it comes to fiddle-l postings and I apologize for my long-windedness.

Mark

Read on for further discussion...