Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Megan Beller. And today I'll be bringing you a setting of In Memory of Coleman by Ed Reavy from a session at the Arthouse Bar in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to be talking about composing fiddle tunes, or writing your own tunes. I have been on a writing spree, you could say, I like to write tunes when I'm very alone.
Where I'm not, I'm not going to be interrupted, of course, I have three kids. So when I'm at home, the chances of me not being interrupted are very low. So I tend to write tunes. Other places, I've been going camping, to write tunes, or riding them away from home when I have some free time, doesn't have to be away from my home, but sort of requires that everyone else be gone. And that doesn't happen that much.
I have really been enjoying writing the tunes. And I was going to tell you a little bit about, we'll talk about some aspects of composing for fiddle tunes. We'll talk about either starting from a melody, or starting from chords, and writing intentionally versus just having something stuck in your head. And a little bit about how I capture the music that I compose.
I n terms of where to start and composing new music. I mean, I grew up playing the violin. And my other instrument was the flute. And I sang soprano. So I was very melody driven person. And when I started composing fiddle tunes, I always started from the melody, I never kind of had a progression of chords in mind. I was always starting melodic lines that I liked, kind of fitting them together into a fiddle tune.
Another thing about the way that I compose tunes is that I usually do so very intentionally, like I sit down, and I'm gonna write a tune. Oftentimes, I'll I'll be trying to write a tune that goes into another tune that already exists, or comes out of a tune. So like I have this traditional tune, I think, oh, it'd be great to have a really driving D Major reel after this. So I try to, to write that, I'd see a need for a tune, and I'll write a tune to fit that need.
My father who, who writes a lot of fiddle tunes, when I've talked to him about it, he's kind of said, he'll be driving, and he'll get a tune stuck in his head. And oftentimes, he'll go and try to find the tune, and he can't find it. And sometimes he figures that he just wrote that. So it's a little different.
Some people write tunes, from chords. I was talking a little bit to a pianist who I work with. His name is Marc Irwin. And he writes a lot of music, and a lot of different genres. And it sounds like he does a lot of writing from the chords or even when he's writing melodies, he's kind of hearing the chords along with it. Which he said, Well, you know, you're always, anytime there's a melody, there's also chords.
Well, you know, when you play the violin, and you don't play rhythm, you don't, you know, know the chords, and you don't necessarily hear the chords along with everything. So he was talking a little bit about starting with the chords. And the other place that I heard about this was two different places where I recently read or watched more about the professional music, business, pop music, and how they write and create songs.
One was, I think, the Taylor Swift documentary, and one was a book by Rick Rubin. And both of them talked about a music producer, or somebody who was sort of supporting a songwriter, coming up with a chord progression, and kind of a groove to go along with it. And then giving that to a songwriter and having them come up with a little melody with words on top of that.
In the documentary about Taylor Swift, there were examples of that. So she had her producers giving her this progression with a groove, or even just a track with already drums on it. And then she's writing melodies to go with that. And Rick Rubin talked about the same thing, and he worked with a lot of different kinds of bands.
I never thought about this. I think I'm gonna have to try it. Come up with a progression I like and then try writing a tune over it, just to understand it better. If you haven't really ever composed a tune, you can try playing questions and answers. If you go back to the improvisation podcast, I talked a little bit about how to dip your toe in the water making up music, and that's exactly how I do it with children and adult fiddle students to get them used to making up music and start to start to compose.
You'll want to when you write a tune, you want to capture it. Do not assume that if it's good, you'll remember it. Yeah, I don't think there's any professional artist who creates music, who would say, Oh, sure, don't, don't write it down. If it's really good, you'll remember it.
Never assume you'll remember anything, even if it's genius. So you can capture it. Most people just turn their phone on and they go to voice memos, and they do a voice memo of it. I actually sketch it with a pencil, I just have a tiny little staff and I write out the a part and the B part really quick, with a pencil. And then I have to make sure I don't lose the sketch on like the back of an envelope or something.
I do put my tunes into music notation software, I use MuseScore it's cheap, it's really easy. I love it. You know, just be aware that your tunes will often sound like other tunes, or like each other. You know, lately, I've been writing tunes, and some of them just sound very similar. It's like, oh, this jig is just the reel I wrote the other day, but in a different key. And the notes are basically the same, the chord progressions the same, it happens.
I try not to get down about that because then every now and then I will write a tune that's very unique from the others. So just keep writing a lot of tunes and you'll find the good ones. Yeah, I have a friend recently told me that their new album of mostly composed fiddle tunes came from writing just A Tune a Day in which they did during lockdown. Just write a tune every day and they said there was lots of garbage and there was good stuff in there.
So that might be the best way to do it. You know, don't wait to be inspired by some magical fiddle tune that pops into your head while driving. Just just write it, write a tune every day or tune every week and see what you get. Yeah. Oh, let me know how it goes.
The tune today is In Memory of Coleman. This is a real by Ed Reavy, it's a good opportunity, because I'd review wrote a lot of fiddle tunes. So I did look up a little bit about his process for composition, but Coleman refers to Michael Coleman, who was an Irish fiddler and dancer, and the Sligo style, lived in New York City recorded in his 20s as a fiddler, played a lot with piano. I love that. I should look up those recordings, always curious about the Irish piano.
So Ed Reavy wrote this, this tune in, in memory of Michael Coleman. Ed Reavy was, of course, a fiddler, also born in Ireland, but lived in Philadelphia, one of the most popular composers of Irish Dance tunes of fiddle tunes, I would say, I don't think many people would argue with that.
I looked it up. And it said, it said that his tunes came to him in moments of reflections, and that he had to be in a certain mood before he could start writing tunes. But the moods can kind of come on anytime, day or night, but most likely to occur when he was making music with other people. That would kind of get him in the mood to write a tune.
And his son said that he would, he would think about Ireland, when he was writing music, he would think about his childhood there. Or even think about the problems that, that Ireland was having. This is the quote, "the trials and tribulations that the Irish people went through for the past 750 years. All that enters into music and naturally shows up in places". Went on talking about how his memories of Ireland and his thinking about the Irish people and what they've been through, enters into the Irish tunes that he is composing.
In terms of capturing his compositions, a lot of them were not written down immediately. It took Ed's son Joe, who started to collect his father's tunes, write them down, a lot of them would be recorded on homemade 78 records, Ed had a way to record them and his friend Tommy Caulfield recorded a bunch.
Joe would write them down and try to collect them that way. And many of them had been unnamed, too. They were just called Reavy's tunes. So when Joe and Ed started to collect them all, write them down, make recordings of them, that was when they named them as well. Always named my tunes right after I write them.
Okay, well, so we're gonna play this In Memory of Coleman. It's really interesting tune.
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