Creative Practice: spaces between

Musicians -- all artists, indeed -- know that the silences, the rests, the pauses, the time for breath, are right, are needed, are as much a part of the creation, as are the notes, the words, and the voices.

As much as they are a natural part of creation, it often takes patience to see them and to hear them, though, to live through them with attention and acceptance. True in other areas of life as well.

Related ideas and music you may wish to explore

The album Alterum, from Scotland’s Julie Fowlis, in a story here at Music Road

From Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, a recording called The Quiet Room. Learn about why they chose the songs and the name of the album.

At Wandering Educators, Music and Horizons: Stories of Hope, which is part of the Music for Shifting Times series I have been writing there for some time. This story includes music from Breabach, Zoe Conway and John McIntyre, Eddi Reader, Sarah-Jane Summers, and Cathie Ryan. You will have met some of the work of these artists here along the music road too.

From harpist, composer, and singer Aine Minogue, the album In the Name of Stillness, in which, in the sleeve notes and through videos, she pairs her music with words from Irish poet and author John O’Donohue. The story is here at Music Road.

Quiet and reflection: I wrote this for publication a few days before Christmas one year at Perceptive Travel; the ideas work at other seasons as well Christmas, Reflections, Travel.

Photographs are by Kerry Dexter. They were made in County Louth, Ireland. Thank you for respecting copyright.

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You can also

Creative practice: landscapes again

Landscapes are part of what inspires me to create. We are all rooted in them, after all, and paying attention to that, in whatever way that works, often results in creative thought. Two of my own photographs, remind me of landscapes which work in all these ways for me: autumn leaves in Newburyport and winter sunrise in County Louth.

Music to go along with these thoughts:
Have a read of this piece I've written for Wandering Educators, called Geography of Inspiration: Music and Place with music from Caroline Herring, Natalie MacMaster, Dawn and Margie Beaton, Carrie Newcomer, and Hamish Napier.

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Music and quiet

Silence: the exterior sort is often inspiration for creative work, and the interior sort is that, too, and is also part of creation itself

So it might seem a paradox that music is very often a gateway to silence. However, when you think about it, really think about and feel music -- and especially if you are a musician yourself -- you’ll come to know that music arises out of silence. It’s not just, hey, we begin! music is, if it’s really good, continuing of and sharing of the inspiration and conversation that begin with that interior quiet. That’s a thought which sounds like another paradox even as I write it, but that makes it no less true.

That idea of creativity arises from silence -- sometimes long quiet, sometimes just the beat of a breath between observation and connection -- works with other sorts of creativity, as well. The dancer in the moment before the dance, the chef at the moment of connecing ideas are also there in that silence. As I write this it is National Poetry Month in the US, so I invite you to think about how this might apply in that area. A recent trip to spend time with the paintings of the Glasgow Boys at Kelvingrove in Glasgow had me reflecting on how this works with visual art as well, especially, for example, the two very different paintings of the Victorian scene in Stirling Station and the evocation of druids in Bringing in the Mistletoe.

Musicians paint their pictures on silence, as the saying goes.

Music to go along with these ideas

Cathie Ryan: The Farthest Wave
Kathy Mattea: Calling Me Home
Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen

and this Eddi Reader: Wild Mountainside

You may also wish to see
Music, meditation, creation
Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition
music, silence, and spiritual journey

Photograph of a wild mountainside in Ireland is by Kerry Dexter, and is copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

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music and focus

Each piece of music holds as many shifting patterns of a sunrise, or an afternoon thunderstorm, or a night of stars: listening, playing, or creating it, or even just hearing it as you are passing, you can move in and out of all the aspects it offers. There’s melody, there’s rhythm, tone, history, timbre, voice, newness and familiarity, association and reflection, there’s throughline which connects all of these. Music is framed in time, it’s true, and one of the things that matters is to give a piece of music its own time, to live with it, to allow it to speak to you as it will.

One of the things about the music we consider here along the music road is that much of it comes from heritage music, music that is handed down, either pieces which are directly that and played and heard in our own time, or music inspired by heritage. There’s a saying -- by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, I think -- that you can’t step in the same river twice because you will have changed and the river will have changed. That’s true when one listens to, plays, and creates music as well. There’s much to be learned from considering all of that.

To go along with these ideas you may wish to see
Through Wind and Rain
music, silence, and spiritual journey
music and intention

Though it’s been a bit quiet here along the music road of late, have no worries, there’s much more good stuff to come. As always, I invite you to explore the more than seven years of ideas here in the archives, as well.

Also, I’ve been working on several book ideas, and you may wish to take a look at several stories I’ve done elsewhere

At Perceptive Travel, an encounter with the Lewis chessmen and their Nordic history, and walk through the murals in the Bogside of Derry.

At A Traveler’s Library, music for a Canada road trip

At Wandering Educators, eight songwriters tackle an interesting challenge and come up with thoughtful, funny, and engaging songs in The Cecil Sharp Project, and more about Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, an artist you’ve met here along the music road, in West of Ireland to the World

photograph was made in Derry, Northern Ireland, and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

If you'd like to support Music Road, a quick way to do so: you could

If you enjoy what you are reading here, I've recently begun publishing an occasional newsletter at Substack with more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it. Come visit and check it out!

Music of the waters

Water -- ocean, river, lake, waterfall, or rain -- is one of the earliest sorts of music people ever heard. The sounds made by waters have inspired musicians from classical composers to rock bands to bluegrass ensembles to Gaelic singers to those who make music in the languages of the First Peoples. Whether your experiences are landlocked or water borne, take a trip out on the waters with these songs.

Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh is from Donegal in Ireland’s far northwest, a place where people are well acquainted with the many moods of the sea. Ni Mhaonaigh ‘s father, Francie, wrote a song celebrating the freedom of sailing out on the waters. Whether you understand Irish or not, still, the message of freedom and celebration come clear in Seolta Geala.

Bill Staines is from another part of the world well acquainted with the ways of the sea and the people who live along it -- he’s from New England in the United States. His song, too suggests the connection with nature and freedom to be found at the ocean’s edge inSalt Air

The Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico are the waters Del Suggs navigates in his music. Saltwater music it is, and on Break in the Weather he speaks of finding a way on sometimes rough and uncharted waters, all the while seeking a safe passage home.

Cathie Ryan knows those rough passages, too. While walking by the sea in Ireland and seeing the things cast up on the strand she realized that there could be a lesson in this -- and a song, which became Be Like the Sea.

Ryan often chooses images from the waters in her work. Another song well worth you listening, and which also came from Ryan’s time living in Ireland, is the graceful story of grief, loss and resilience told inThe Farthest Wave.

Through all the ideas these songwriters offer there is a sense of lessons learned and hope renewed with the turning of the tides and the winds upon the waters. As Claire Lynch sings. when a good wind blows your way, Be Ready to Sail.

you may also wish to see
music, meditation, and weather
music, history, and Heisgeir
cathie ryan: the farthest wave

Photograph of the Irish Sea is by Kerry Dexter and is copyrighted -- which means you must ask and receive permission if you wish to use it. Thank you for respecting this.

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Music, Meditation, and Weather

Weather and music seem to be intimately connected at times. That makes sense when you think about it: the first music people ever heard was the rush of the wind, the fall of rain, the crunch of snow. As winter and spring are negotiating the weather in my neck of the woods just now. it has me thinking about music, weather, and contemplation.

R. Carlos Nakai plays Native American flutes; Will Clipman plays all manner of percussion, including Frame drums, claves, Tibetan bowls, bodhrans, all sorts of other things. For Awakening The Fire they’ve paired up the fluid melodies of flutes with striking, beating and chiming notes of percussion in a dialogue which leads them through ten tracks of original music. By turns fast paced and reflective, pieces including Kindling the Essence, First Morning, and Portal evoke the landscapes of the southwestern United States, landscapes which often suggest mediation themselves with the fall of light and shadow.

The landscapes of the Highlands of Scotland have a different character altogether. They inspire and evoke reflections as well, though, through their wooded glens, dramatic coastlines and rugged crags, all with falls of northern light with characters all of their own as well. For Celtic Airs and Reflective Melodies Ian Green of Greentrax Recordings has chosen eighteen slow airs and reflective tunes from across the Greentrax catalogue, a creative companion and a doorway to meditation that speaks without words. Harp, fiddle, and pipes are the primary instruments as artists including Fiddlers’ Bid, Ceolbeg, and Tony McManus lead the way through tunes including Cairn Water, Ye Banks and Ye Braes, and Wendel’s Wedding.

you may also wish to see
Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen

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Music and memory

Music and memory: that’s a powerful combination. It’s also a powerful choice. Music can help us remember, and it can help us choose and understand what we remember.

It is also a way to reach across loss of memory. I’ve a friend whose mother could not speak toward the end of her life, but she could sing, and loved to sing with her family as she’d always done her whole life long. Another friend’s grandmother was lost in her mind to Alzheimer's and did not know her grown up granddaughter at all -- until her granddaughter began to sing to her, a song they’d both loved when she was small. Then, for the space of the song, recognition and love returned past the gates of memory.

Singing to a child -- to an adult, too -- calms when nothing else will, establishes that connection of voice and melody which, while it may use words, important words, connects also in ways beyond their meaning. Further along this line of music and memory, how many times have you had a fragment of a tune or a verse of song bring back to you in vivid detail a place, a time, a person you’d not thought of in many a long day?

Music can help us remember, and it can help us understand and connect with what we remember. It can help heal memories. How has any of this happened for you?

To go along with these ideas, you may also wish to see
Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin: Songs of the Scribe
Kathy Mattea: Calling Me Home
Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition
listening to Christmas

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Music and the new year

It is a time of year for resolutions, changes, and making lists. It is also often quite a shift from the warmth of connection and the quiet reflective days called forth by the major winter holidays. As you move into the work and life of the new month and this new year, music can serve as a companion and encouragement for exploration. Let it also be a reminder to keep the warmth and reflection and good things about the holidays alive in your heart and life as you take your next steps.

and to add to your plans for this new year, support live music. Go to a concert or a festival, and bring a friend or two along.

music to go along with these ideas
over at A Traveler’s Library in repsonse to a request for a story to fit in with a week of best of lists, I offer a list fo best music for journeys real and spiritual
you may also wish to see my choices for best music, 2012
and this music, silence, and spiritual journey

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Season of grace

Into this climate of fear and apprehension
Peace enters
Christmas
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope high up in the bright air
the world is encouraged to come away from rancor
come the way of friendship
it is the glad season

....

on this platform of peace we can create a language
to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other

....
Peace, my brother
Peace, my sister
Peace, my soul

These lines are from Maya Angelou’s poem Amazing Peace, which she wrote some years ago. I'd recommend looking up the whole poem. Amazing Peace has also been made into a well illustrated book that's good for children and adults.

music to go along with these ideas
Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter's Night

Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

fourth sunday in advent: community

best music, 2012

update 2016: these stories too may be of interest
Four Songs of Hope
Music for the heart of winter: Cathie Ryan

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Music and memory

Music and memory: that’s a powerful combination. It’s also a powerful choice. Music can help us remember, and it can help us choose and understand what we remember.

It is also a way to reach across the loss of memory. I’ve a friend whose mother could not speak toward the end of her life, but she could sing, and loved to sing with her family as she’s always done her whole life long. Another friend’s grandmother was lost in her mind to Alzheimer's and did not know her granddaughter at all -- until her granddaughter began to sing to her, a song they’d both loved when she was small. Then, for the space of the song, recognition and love returned past the gates of lost memory.

Singing to a child -- to an adult, too -- calms when nothing else will, establishes that connection of voice and melody which, while it may use words, important words, connects beyond their meaning. Further along this line of music and memory, how many times have you had a fragment of a tune or a verse of song bring back to you in vivid detail a place, a time, a person you’d not thought of in many a long day?

Music can help us remember, and it can help us understand and connect with what we remember. How has this happened for you?

To go along with these ideas

Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin: Songs of the Scribe

Kathy Mattea: Calling Me Home

Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Music and forgiveness

 

Forgiveness: it is a circumstance that holds both past and present -- and at times, future -- and ways of finding balance among all those things. At times it’s necessary to forgive others, once and many times, and at times it is just as necessary to learn how to forgive one’s self. A place of peace, an open vista, room to grow, and a hard road, sometimes, to get there. It is a subject musicians deal with directly and indirectly, and music is often a good companion on the journey.

Music to go along with these ideas

Carrie Newcomer  Hush
Cathie Ryan Be Like the Sea
Carrie Newcomer  Before And After
Cathie Ryan In the Wishing Well
Bill Cooley Requiem for a Mountain


you may also wish to see
rest in music
cathie ryan: the farthest wave

photograph was made in Derry, Northern Ireland, and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Music and Landscape

The line of horizon, the way light falls on a summer afternoon, a winding path, the sky at night -- all these things and many others form landscapes to the way we move and think and experience life. Landscape is a bedrock of many sorts of music, too. It has a hand in the ways music connects us to each other, and the way we connect to and understand music.

Whether you’ve spent time in the Western Isles of Scotland or not, whether you under stand Scottish Gaelic or not, you will hear this love, this connection to the land and the people who’ve lived on it and seen the same landscapes in Roderick MacKay’s Moladh Uibhist, a song he made about North Uist. Julie Fowlis, who is also from North Uist, sings it here.

>


In English, one of the closing verses is

The last glimpse of the sun
After it has circled the whole sky
May be seen from my land
Just before it rises again on it
I must cut short my account for today
Since my time has gone
And even if I lived twelve times as long as a stag
I could not recount all the beauties of Uist


Fowlis recorded the song on her album Mar A Tha Mo Chridhe/As My Heart Is. Most of the songs on that recording are ones Fowlis learned and gathered from North Uist.

What are your favorite pieces of music that speak of landscape?


You may also wish to see
Brave the movie, Julie Fowlis, and music
Archipelago from Fiona J MacKenzie

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Music and Mystery

How are songs and tunes constructed?

The are built with notes and scales, tone and rhythm and words, if you choose to use words. They come too from the breath and heart of those who play them, from ideas, from the connections which happen between singer and song, composer and sound, player and instrument. They come from what happens between musician and listener, and with how music is worn and burnished as it is passed from one person to another, from one generation to another. It cones from mystery.


These two photographs are what got me thinking about these ideas. The intricacy of the tree and the window and their contrasts, and the long view of mystery with mountains in mist. The tree and and window are in Fort William in the Western Highlands of Scotland, and the mountains are the Mournes in Northern Ireland.

Music to go along with these ideas
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
history into song: capercaillie: glenfinnan
music, silence, and spiritual journey
Lovers' Well: Matt & Shannon Heaton

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Music and silence

Music and silence arise from each other. They frame each other in the listening, the sharing, the creation, the performance. Think of the moments in between songs or tunes or orchestral movements. They form as much a part of the music as does the unfolding story of the notes and words.

There is music that calls directly on that aspect of framing silence, as well.

Tony Duncan’s music lends itself to that idea. On his album Earth Warrior: Light of Our Ancestors he performs songs which honor his family, his tribal heritage (he is of Apache/Mandan/Arikara/Hidatsa peoples), the landscapes of their history and his own, and the connections of all of these things with music. Duncan’s instrument is the Native American flute, an instrument he first began to learn from his father. Through traditional pieces including Zuni Sunrise, Taos Round Dance, and Going Home and his own stories in song including Battle for Night, Ancient Stories, Grandmother Moon, and The Flicker of Light, Duncan both invites and guides contemplation of landscape, story. sound, and silence.

So does Padraigin Ni Uallachain, though she comes for a very different set of landscapes and music tradition. The wellspring of her music for Songs of the Scribe is the poetry of ancient Ireland. She chooses not the great epic stories, compelling as they may be, but rather the marginal notes, the asides, the personal poetry of those scribes who created illuminated manuscripts, and at times left marginal notes which illuminated their own lives as well. Longing for a lost love, a reflection that the wild winds of an Irish night mean that the writer is safe from Viking attacks for these hours, the flight of a blackbird across the water, a hermit's praise to God, a quiet time with a companionable cat: all these are things which caught poets’ imaginations and catch Ni Uallachain's, as well, as she creates contemplative settings of these words though her voice and spare accompaniment of drone, bells, harp, and Tibetan bowl.



you may also wish to see
rest in music
music, silence, and spiritual journey

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Music and journey

Music has many roles along life’s roads. At times it a companion, at other times a historian, sometimes music is a connector. At times music is immediate and of the moment, and at still other times it calls back memories. Whichever of these roles music fills at a given moment. it takes us on a journey.

That’s as true whether you are listening to a song, a dance tune, a chamber music piece, or an orchestra movement. Music tells a story -- may stories, really -- and invites us along.

When musicians are creating albums, they think of that aspect too, in the way they sequence the pieces on an album. Now that it is possible for listeners to pick and choose in purchasing and listening to tracks rather than having whole albums, this experience of following a sequence is one that many people choose to bypass.

That can be a mistake. Hearing how an artist chooses to set one song alongside another, listening to what sort of connection there may be across pieces that open an album and that close it, hearing how songs interact with each other melodically and lyrically and in all the ways musicians choose to present them -- those are things which help make the journey of listening to music one of discovery.

Kathy Mattea, Cathie Ryan, and Nuala Kennedy each take quite different journeys on their new albums. Mattea, who has said that her doorway into country music was through folk music, has been walking back through that door since her album Coal, and that she continues with Calling Me Home, an album that begins with a traveler far from home and ends with Requiem for a Mountain. Cathie Ryan draws on her background and experiences in both Ireland and America to create a wide ranging yet clearly focused journey through the joys and sorrows of life on her recording Through Wind and Rain.
Nuala Kennedy brings in her heritage of Celtic tradition and her work in the contemporary world in a collection that looks to past and present for its inspiration on her recording Noble Stranger. You will be hearing more of each of these recordings in days to come.

following up on that, you may want to see the article Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain for more on that album


It is also possible to lead this sort of journey through music without words. Two recordings you may want to check out to hear fine examples of this are Hanneke Cassel’s For Reasons Unseen and Alison Brown’s
The Company You Keep.

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Music and summer reflections

Late summer. Light lingers long in the evenings, encouraging conversation reflection and the telling of stories. Rains come, pouring and flooding and changing landscapes. calling for cooperation, caring, and more stories.





music to go along with these ideas
Aoife Clancy: Silvery Moon
Carrie Newcomer: Before & After
rest in music

Photograph was made in County Down, Northern Ireland, and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this


you may also wish to see
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Music and focus

Many stories to be taken from watching the Olympics in London just now -- one of them is the power of focus.

Focus is important in learning, playing, creating, and listening to music too, of course. One of the sorts where this is most evident is the style known as sean nos.

In Irish, those words can be taken to mean several things. The sort of music they have come to be associated with across the years and decades is a traditional style, often unaccompanied, and most often music sung in Irish. The emotional and character of the story is meant to be carried and conveyed primarily by the dynamics of the singer’s voice, and his or her choice of what exactly to do with that. In very traditional settings or in homes where songs are shared around the kitchen table, the singer may sing with eyes closed or turn away from those who listen and face the wall to increase the intensity of the song. In such surroundings, too, one or two of those sitting nearby may at times take the singer’s hand as the song unfolds.

Sean nos style finds its way into the work of contemporary Celtic musicians, although at times in ways that have changed from how things were not that long ago. Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, who grew up in the wets Kerry Gaeltacht, comments that such singers “wouldn’t so much teach you the song. They’d give you the verses, but you had to find your won way in to the story, to the emotion and the ornamentation of how you;d sing it.”
Cathie Ryan has heard these older tradition bearers too. “ Some of the the traditional sean nos singers, maybe they didn’t have the best voices, maybe they were not the most brilliant singers, but they could transport you, they could take you to another place, by the power of their singing.”

One of the things they had, indeed, was focus.




Bright Star of the West: Joe Heaney, Irish Song Man is a book that will introduce you to one of the tradition bearers. The writing is a touch dry but it is well worth the read to learn about the music and the life of this important musician. You can also hear Joe Heaney discuss and sing the song Roisin Dubh here


Roisin Elsafty writes about sean nos from a singer’s perspective

Iarla O’Lionaird adds to the sean nos conversation

Roisin Elsafty with Ronan Browne on pipes and Siobhan Armstrong on harp
with Roisin Dubh



you may also wish to see
Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh: Daybreak/Fainne an Lae
Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition

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here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Music and Challenging Times

Music, especially the sorts of music we talk of here along the music road, is a good companion in times of sorrow as well as times of joy, in times of sorting things out as well as times of confidence moving forward. The music we talk about here is diverse at times, butit holds in common threads of hope and threads of reflection, in hard times and happy ones.

There are many sad things going on in the world, and in our day to day lives, as well -- and many ways joy is present, as well. Let us remember the joy and comfort music brings in all sort of circumstance.

















music to go along with these ideas

Music for a midsummer's day
listening through the changes
Carrie Newcomer: Before & After
Seven Stories
cathie ryan: the farthest wave

speaking of finding hope in troubled times, you may like this video, too, which is courtesy of Mary Allen, America's Inner Peace Coach


Photographs are from Ireland, Scotland, and Canada, and are copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Music for a midsummer's day

Music as a companion and a guide as a day unfolds. Take a listen...




you may also wish to see
music and finding time
Carrie Newcomer: Before & After
late summer: two for the road
Carrie Newcomer: Kindred Spirits

--> Update: You may also like to know about Carrie Newcmer's recent album, The Point of Arrival.

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here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Music and time

Listening to and playing music, practicing and learning it, are ways to find quiet, as quiet often makes a space to find music. Both arise, I think, from the quality of focus, on the one hand, and being relaxed, on the other.

Some while back, I read that a person in medieval times received as much information in a year as a person now does in the course of one day’s time. As information, connectivity, and electronic devices -- and people’s expectations concerning all that -- continue to grow, we might be up to receiving several years’ worth of information in a day by now.

As this season unfolds, take time to step away from that flow of information and into the stream of listening to playing, and sharing music, relaxing into a landscape or a candle flame, and hearing the quiet.


music to go along with these ideas

Scotland's Highlands in music: Duncan Chisholm

Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen


the photograph is of sunset over the Mourne Mountains in County Down, Northern Ireland. it is copyrighted. thank you for respecting that.

you may also wish to see

music, silence, and spiritual journey


and
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.