Randal's Ramblings

Music, life, coffee, etc.

Composing "Traditional" Tunes - May 2007

One of the things I like about the Irish music tradition is that it's not dead. Nothing against dead traditions; they can be great subjects for people to study, dissect, categorize, etc., like those butterflies in school biology class, impaled on little pins. Studying Irish music must be a bit like trying to study living butterflies, flitting around the yard, surfing the breeze. You'd probably be tempted to stick some pins in it.

A living tradition is constantly changing, and new tunes are always being made. Some find acceptance and become part of the shared repertoire, and some are popular for a while, then disappear. I've had a few tunes occur to me over the many years I've played Irish fiddle music, and people often ask me for advice on composing "trad sounding" tunes.

I guess my advice would be the same I give young people considering a musical career... "Don't, unless you have to." After all, aren't there plenty of perfectly good, lovely tunes around? What I mean to say is that I've never had much luck at "composing" tunes. I usually find that the only good ones I come up with will pop into my mind, more or less intact. It's hard to take a lot of credit for them, honestly, although I am proud of the good ones. And when I listen to other people's compositions I often feel I can hear if they're newly composed. I'm very impressed when I hear a new tune that sounds perfectly traditional, which doesn't happen all that often.

For my part, I seem to go through periods when new tunes are in my head, often first thing in the morning as I'm coming awake. I'll notice the tune going around and write it down immediately before it fades. This will usually be an entire "A" part or "B" part and sometimes both. I might pick up the fiddle and see how it feels to actually play the tune, and I might make some adjustments, but not much. In one case I had the "A" part of a tune that I liked a lot come into my mind, but no second part, and try as I might I couldn't get another part, so I finally dropped the whole thing reluctantly. About two years later (in the same location) I woke up to find the entire tune in my head, including a lovely second part.

I've learned a lot about the sources of many of the commonly played tunes, and a lot of them that we think of as traditional were actually composed in recent decades. Some of the composers I'm thinking of are Ed Reavey, Charlie Lennon, Junior Crehan, Paddy Fahey, Martin Mulhaire, Sean Ryan, Vincent Broderick, Tommy Peoples, and others. And of course there are many, many more whose authorship has been forgotten. I know personally several well-known players who've composed tunes that are now widespread, but who aren't credited with their composition. For the most part, these players don't mind. There's a lot of satisfaction in knowing people like your tunes and are playing them.

I don't know what to make of the issue of copyright where "traditional" music is concerned. Of course no one should be cheated out of income for their works, but it's a plain fact that copyrighting inhibits the speading, sharing and subtle alterations by each new player that make a piece a part of the tradition. By definition, if a piece of music is "owned" by one person, it's not owned by the community and is not part of the tradition. In the past there would have been little or no money in traditional music, and so no one would have cared much about these things. Nowadays things are different. In the past someone could make little intentional or unintentional changes in someone else's tune and call it something new, and no one would have cared (or known). One example was a movie that came out a few years ago, with "newly composed" music that was clearly a slight reworking of some compositions by traditional musicians.

RB - May 2007

Please email me with your comments: randalbays AT whidbey DOT COM