Kevin Burke and the Waving bow

This is a question to those who´ve watced the DVD “Irish fiddle mastering the art, Kevin Burke”

In the chapter “reel 1” he has a long talk about the waving bow. How good fiddlers use the waving bow. He explains how 8 seminotes are often played slured 3, slured 3 down up. And he plays some examples where you can hear his typical lift.

Is that tecnique something very general or is mostly Kevins thing? Is it a sligo feature etc. Does other players do the same thing wavy thing instead of up and down strokes.

I´ve sat here trying to use that tecnique on some of the reels I play and I like it sometimes, but I´m not sure its something I should really work hard on.
I have tons of respect for Mr. Burke and he is maybe my all time favorite, but I´ve learned that you should always have a certain distance to what even the greatest masters do and especially what they say.
Thats why I ask here

In the case of some masters (not thinking of Kevin Burke here), a certain distance from what they do off their instrument is advisable too. 😉

I’d say, don’t follow anyone’s bowing patterns slavishly. Try it, and put it into the mix along with everything else you hear, see and are told about.

Above all, aim to reproduce the sound and feel you want, not necessarily the mechanics of how anyone else does it.

The “mechanics”--how the bow moves--can and do shape the sounds you get. So certain sounds can be produced only if you do the physical thing that makes that sounds. For example, if you want light skippy bowed triplets, you have to lighten up on the bow. If you want heavy scrunchy triplets, you have to lean on the stick a bit.

I learned some bowing patterns directly from Kevin Burke. They work--they help in attaining a certain pulse. Pedal bowing, for instance, makes for a very smooth yet pulse-filled sound on the string crossing phrases so common in this music (things like the opening phrase of In the Tap Room: E2 BE dEBE). Kevin taught a baseline way to do pedal bowing, and then demonstrated a host of other bowing options. I focused on his baseline version first, then experimented with the others. Eventually, I stumbled on even more options.

I hear and see such bowing patterns and concepts in every other fiddler’s playing. But the better fiddlers never get stuck in a particular pattern, and they bow the same phrase differently the next time around, and the next. They also typically have personal tics or fetishes that give their playing an individual sound--so you can hear Kevin Burke and know it’s him, or Liz Carroll and know it’s her.

I also run into fiddlers who say they don’t play bowing patterns at all. But I’ve yet to hear one that wasn’t falling into patterns--they just weren’t conscious of them. The risk here is that they’ll overuse patterns without being aware of them. Their playing sounds samey and predictable.

Bottom line in my experience is that the bow goes up, the bow goes down. You can change directions or slur. You can create pulse by changing direction, and anywhere in the duration of a stroke or slur. Given those basics, there are many--but only so many--genuinely useful options. (Including counter-intuitive ones like pedal bowing.)

It helps a lot to work through those options until they feel easy and familiar. And then it helps to pay attention so you don’t play in ruts. Ultimately, the tune tells you how to bow it.

Kevin, like a lot of good fiddle players, has had a lot of contact with players from other traditions. He cites Julia Clifford as one formative influence, and she was well-known for having an exceptionally long bow with a slurring style. You can hear and see that long, bouncy/wavy bowing style a lot in Munster, but by the same token, I’ve heard people describe it in parts of Donegal as well.

--Dan

Thanks a lot for your answers. It makes a lot of sense. I will try to relearn some reels with different bowing. I have a tendency to repeat my patterns to much.

Interesting, Burke is playing the Sligo Maid in the DVD as an example of this waving bow as he calls it. If you compare it to his early version on Sweeneys dream, he is more locked into that pattern on the CD than on the DVD, some many years after.

Anders, Kevin’s playing has progressed lightyears over his life. If he was good to start with, he’s brilliant now. His approach is particularly well suited to playing solo, providing *all* of the pulse in a steady (some might say relentless) way.

But there are lots of other ways to fiddle this music.

Some of my fiddle students make good progress when they take an easy tune and bow it deliberately, first with all single bows, then with lots of two-note slurs (always onto the strong beats--in a reel, onto the 1st and 3rd notes in each group of 4), then slurring three notes, single bow one, slur three, etc. Be sure also to try each “pattern” starting with a down bow, and again, starting with an up bow.

Once you get comfortable with each of these, you’ll move on to blending them and mixing them up. Pay attention to the tune--does it want to be smooth and flowy, or punchy, or swingy, o straight? How many ways can you vary the phrasing and still hear the tune? What notes want to jump out as important? What notes can almost disappear and not lose the tune? Where would you breathe?

Take your time and get inside one good tune. Don’t move on until you’ve really explored that tune and surprised yourself with all the variety it offers.

Will, regarding your last sentence - if I’d taken it to heart, I’d have exactly one tune in my repertoire 😉

I prefer to set tunes aside - temporarily - well before I’ve hit a wall with them. Past a certain point, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and sustaining focus on a specific aspect of a specific tune tends not to be the best use of my time. When I find my progress on one aspect of a tune is waning, I move on to something else before I get too frustrated. Then I give myself time to hone my technique and deepen and my understanding of the music in other ways. Later I return to the tune with fresh ears (and fingers, and wrists, and arms); the time spent on other things tends to bring new insight to the tune that I haven’t been able to achieve in other ways. And new ideas for ways to play with a tune often come when the fiddle’s nowhere within reach, and as often as not when the tune isn’t even on the mental radar.

Of course, it could be that I’m just doing the getting-inside-one-good-tune thing wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Again thanks
Lots of good ideas there will, but I funcion a bit more like the Tall misterious guy. I get “killed” if I work to much on one thing and prefer to relearn the same tune a couple of times but with a brak inbetween.
Another thing I find interesting is to learn some tunes that are very different.
Right now I´m working the Sligo Maid the way Kevin plays it on his early CD. At the same time I´m working some Josephine Keegan reels that I´ve never heard on a fiddle “only” on banjo.
The way K Burke is playing the Sligo maid is IMO impossible to use on the Keagan reels. They are much more crunchy and with larger tone intervals, moving more across the strings.

So just another thing.
Burke says to start the wavy bow pattern with an upstroke on the beat, which works well sometimes but sometimes not. On the second part of Masons Apron, I strongly prefer a down stroke on the beat. It makes the bow triplets work better (at least for me)
So a conclusion from what has been written on this thread, is to do everything one way and the other way. In the end it just gives you more liberty of expression?????

Anders, yes, “do everything one way and then the other way.” Anything you can do on a down bow, also do on an up bow. Sooner or later it won’t matter which way the bow is going.

As for sticking with one tune:

A. Don’t take me too literally. Of course you’re playing other tunes over the course of hours and days and weeks that you’re getting inside one specific tune.

B. The idea is to keep getting inside that tune, though. Too often, people play a tune three times through and then move on to the next. You’ll learn a lot more if you spend 10 or 15 minutes in a tune (or a dozen or more times around the tune), playing slowly.

C. Part of the point *is* to get frustrated and stymied, your brain fed up with that tune. That’s when you’re most motivated to try something--anything--different. The more you do this, the more options you’ll uncover (and hang onto for next time). And so the harder it is to get frustrated and stymied. Eventually, you’ll be able to play the same tune for 10 or 15 minutes without feeling frustrated at all--it’s actually very liberating because you have so many options. You can vary the bowing, timing, rhythm, swing, articulations, phrasing, melody, mood, pace, even key and mode.

D. Also, you’re less likely to hate this process if you approach it as play, not work. Sure, sometimes you have to woodshed and work to hone your skills. But this music isn’t that technically demanding. So let yourself play with it, too, more than you work on it. Focus less on your skills and more on the tune itself. You’ll be surprised at how well the tune can sort out all the rest if you just let it.

Will,
it reminds me a bit of when I was young, My violin teacher gave me the scores for one of Mozarts violin concerts. With fingering and bowing all noted. It took me forever to learn the first part (its darn difficult) and when I after some month could more or less play it, then he gave me the same score with a different bowing and fingering pattern. It took me less time, but still a good deal, because this one was more difficult. When I had learned it, the teacher told me that now I was ready to learn that first part my way………
I totally agree that its a good idea to work more specific on one or two tunes instead of just repeating 3 times and often repeating the same faults… And I´ll do my best to make it all something like a kids game. I restarted on the violin/fiddle 3 month ago and I´ve learned +20 tunes. Now its the time to relearn them in another way, find some variations and throw some of them out.

“Kevin Burke a member of the highly acclaimed Patrick Street band appears in this dvd about traditional Irish Music on the fiddle *and freely gives fantastic hints tips and insights on how to master the fiddle and helps you play to a higher standard*”

So why do you have to pay £22.25 for it? 🙂

I will now evaluate it.

Oh, 10-15 minutes, sure. I do that all the time. But the process you described seemed to suggest something in the neighbourhood of 10-15 *hours*. 10-15 minutes is enough for me to come up with a new trick or two, a far cry from “really exploring it”. I still keep my first tunes in practice rotation and I make a point of playing at least one aspect of each tune differently every time I set out to practice it. But taking time away from a tune is just as helpful. Practicing Tune B often gives me insight into something I can try with Tune A.

And speaking of Kevin Burke, was it you who quoted him (or maybe I’m remembering him saying this at a workshop?) commenting that the only reason he’s a better fiddler than most is that he’s willing to try 100 different things before he finds one that works? And that for similar reasons, he is (by his own account) a terrible cook - he’ll only try a dish once or twice before giving up. I remember hearing/reading that and thinking, “Only 100? Man really IS a genius.”

Hmmm. If you can’t really get inside a tune within 10 or 15 minutes, then you must be playing it the same way over and over? I’m talking about finding something new to do each time around the tune, not playing it the same way 5 times, and then looking for something fresh.

Nope, sorry, I don’t think that Burke quote came from me.

Anders, yes, it is better to play 20 tunes with pulse and spontaneity than to play 200 tunes poorly. Good luck!