Improvisation in Traditional Music: Learning Practices and Principles

This article discusses approaches to improvisation from a learning perspective, using Irish traditional fiddle music as a case study. Within this genre, concepts of improvisation are largely implicit: many skilled musicians are engaged in spontaneous variation, without particular attention given to the phenomenon and without reference to the term improvisation. This is also evident in teaching practices, as demonstrated through a case study of a fiddle workshop during the 2016 Ennis Trad Fest. In this context, improvised variations emerge as intrinsic to the practice of playing tunes rather than as a separate layer of performance action to be taught independently. In line with this premise, the analysis invokes the concept of implicit learning to explore how particular arrangements of instructional activities may support the development of improvisational skills without being explicitly engaged with improvisation. Finally, the article introduces the notion of a principal difference between a work-oriented and a technique-/formula-oriented mode of learning and performance. The latter suggests a teaching approach marked by an attention to the practical exploration of expressive affordances through sound-producing movements (techniques) and correspondingly less attention to abstract principles (such as harmonic/intervallic rules and compositional concepts).