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Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I seriously think that guitar playing has ruined all music over the last sixty years or so. It is a combination of (i), (ii) and (iii).
(i) It is mostly used for playing chords on and accompanying the voice or other instruments actually playing a tune (not just ITM by the way!). Because one will often learn chords first, many never get on to learning scales and tunes. Because of this, the majority of guitarists (unlike the generation of musicians before- including guitarists) have failed to learn “dots” and basic theory. Most can barely read a chord chart proficiently, let alone explain the function of a minor seventh flattened fifth. (And computer based composing/ recording does not help!)
(ii) It is very good and easy for playing the dreadful BLooZ, encouraging even the player who has being strumming and "licking" for years to endlessly churn out old hat and clichés and never progress onto other more challenging, grown-up or melodic forms.
(iii) The amplified version caused all other instruments and voices to become inaudible in concert for nearly a generation (or until half decent fold back was invented), leading to a preponderance of tuneless over-loud guitar based nonsense and a relative dearth of other instrumentalists and forms.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I am sort of in your camp. However, I have worked with a couple of really good people who play acoustic and really add to the spirit of the play for the musicians and the folks listening.
But they are also good finger pickers and know how not to overwhelm things.
The 'box-bangers' get on my nerves.
What I am more troubled though is the influx of piano players who think the piano should be a 'lead' instrument all the time and play really loud. Worse yet, alot of them fancy themselves as singers.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I agree that in the earlier years guitars didn't do much for trad (the conventional style of accompaniment, to me anyway, tended to make the music sound jazzy or blue grassy). However, with the advent of the groups in the sixties and seventies this all seemed to change with guitarists actually complementing the music by following the melody lines / tune structures. Just one example of how a guitar can enhance a recording is Steve Cooney along with Séamus Begley on their Meitheal album with those driving slides and polkas. BTW I'm not a guitarist!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
And something tells me you haven't heard *real* blues, the kind they play in blues clubs and backyard parties. It's very expressive stuff, very soulful. It's only when you take it out of its original context that it loses its bite.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I must admit that I concerts full of singers/guitarists usually fill me with dread. One problem with the guitars is their ubiquity but I'd have a similar problem with everyone playing fiddle or box for example. Also, they're easy to strum accompaniament on so it all (well nearly) ends up sounding the same. Not there aren't wonderful guitar playing singers but most seem to blend into one another in mediocrity.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Not completely and not all. Giving an ear to Lenny Breau or countless other luminous guitarists (happily) frees the instrument from blanket indictment. At any rate, if you pick one up, you can make some approximately nice sounds early on. And, because the masses often don't have the demented single-mindedness that characterizes instrumentalists (ITM definitely included), it's nice to think that they could make their own, well... folk music.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Eh?
Another thread bashing guitar players.
I suppose that is because there are so many people who try to play guitar. And, yes, a lot of them aren't much good, but then the same could be said of players of any other instrument. And there are also some very good guitar players who are GREAT musicians (e.g., Martin Taylor).
So a lot of guitar players can't read dots. The same could be said of fiddle players (as opposed to violinists, who also aren't restricted to first position). And anyway, what has reading dots got to do with playing an instrument, especially in traditional music? I am a guitar player and I read dots (probably better than most) but to be honest dots don't work too well for the guitar where you are often trying to notate two octave intervals on a single stave. You need the staves really wide apart.
The guitar is a great instrument in the right hands and despite what you say about it ruining music it does nevertheless seem to be very popular with the masses. Perhaps yours is a minority opinion.
So what is the function of a seventh flattened fifth? Go on, enlighten us!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Well, that's a harsh assessment! On the flip side of your title, several forms of music (most notably rock) likely wouldn't exist without the guitar. (Maybe that's OK with you...)
A few thoughts on your three points:
(i) This is not just the guitar's fault. Poor musicianship is possible on any instrument. Of course, the guitar is readily available, sexy, and easy to learn at a basic level, so maybe there are more poor guitar players than poor basoon players. And it does seem that public acceptance of mediocre guitar playing is broad.
However, I think there's nothing wrong with an instrument used for easy accompaniment or playing simple songs and such. This is not a new phenomenon...think of the autoharp. Satisfying music can be achieved without great complexity or virtuosity.
(ii) Yes. My own guitar playing is much as you describe. (But then the flute is my passion.)
(By the way, blues isn't the problem--real blues is hard to play. Pentatonic noodlings--or BLooZ, as you put it--is another matter...)
(iii) Maybe, although the quest for loudness already began in the 19th century as orchestras got bigger and louder, requiring louder instruments. I'll agree, though, that the dominance of guitar-based/amplified pop music over the past 50 or so years has left the commercially/popularly perceived musical landscape a bit dry.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Wow! I looked and went off to write up a quick reply and suddenly there were ten replies already!
Well... As a guitar player, I have to agree with you, except for the part about ruining all (or any) music. The popularity and virulent spread of the guitar over the past sixty years has certainly increased the amount of garbage music, but it's also increased the amount of good music. I don't have to listen to the garbage . And I don't.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
The guitar and Mel Bay chord chart enabled two or three generations to participate in music instead of just consuming the commodity, and it enabled the great revival of traditional music that we benefit from now. In a very real sense, it gave music back to The People. Obviously, some (most?) of The People had barely a clue what to do with it and that's your i, ii and iii.
What *really* ruined music was the *electric* guitar! (Tongue only partly in cheek)
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Talking of suspended thirteenths or 13sus chords I suppose the G version would be the most popular, usually played as 3x3210 - it's just Fmaj7 with a G bass. But it was the aforementioned Lenny Breau, I believe, who came up with the movable version so that, for instance to play Bb13sus he played 6x6543, playing the two highest notes (the Eb and the G) with his index finger by turning it sideways so that the G on the top string was played with the flesh between the last two knuckles. Hard to describe, I know.
My God! Don't tell me I'm a chord geek!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
A guitar chord chart enabled the great revival of traditional music ??? Come come now. You mean it enabled the invention of the fashion clique, Folkie. It's got nothing to do with traditional music
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
We have done this topic to death, without much meaningful discussion ever ensuing. One way to help some of the problems described in this thread is offering helpful guidance to guitarists who wander onto this website, instead of bashing them out of hand as soon as they show up. Just a thought......
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Fap,
I'll field that question, although it's been some time since I thought about playing guitar. But back when I did, though, I used m7b5 chords in a couple of different ways. Most often, I used it just as a minor chord. I seem to remember thinking that using a m7b5 as a ii chord went nicely into a "V7b9" in minor keys. Lots of times people frame this chord in modal terms. In the Ionian mode, for example, it would be the chord built on the seventh note of the key (so, if you stack a seventh chord starting on B in the key of C, you get a m7b5). if it's the one, you're in the locrian mode (I don't think that thinking modally is particularly helpful, but you can get a sense of it's possible functions if you want to go there).
I also used to think of a m7B5 chord as just a V9 chord without its root. A gm7b5 is spelled G, Bb, Db, F; an Eb9 is spelled Eb, G, Bb, Db, F. If you're playing with a bass player, say, and s/he's playing the root of the dominant, you can go without it.
It'll have other uses too, though...I just can't think of them at the moment.
The minor 7th chord with a flat 5th, aka the half diminished chord, composed of the tones: I -III bV -VII , commonly works as the transition chord in a II -V - I progression
(ie: B-7b5 - E7 - Amin), but has many other mysterious uses, including the support of statements denigrating the noble guitar, or intellectually intimidating dolts. As if anyone cares about dolts. Now dullards... another kettle of frogs.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I would never ler the dreadful scratchy out of tune fiddlers I've heard make me condemn all fiddlers. I just try to avoid the bad ones and play with the good ones.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Man, I've NEVER seen so much whining, moaning and complaining as there is on this website. Somebody always has something to b**ch about. Who cares! If you don't like guitar music, then don't listen to it and don't play with them. But all that this whining about instruments and people who play them does is exclude people (many of them young people) from feeling like they can be a part of something that they really enjoy. Who the hell cares if someone jumps in for a session with their guitar or their bodhran or box or dulcimer or whatever else. Let them play their music. I believe there are no rules to folk music (sorry, this IS folk music),and that's the beauty of it. Anything goes. The ugly side is the people who endlessly complain about everything that they don't like.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Personally, I'm all for the guitar, if it's done right. Ah, yeah. I know a certain someone that has definitely ruined the music for me when I was in high school a couple o' years back. ::Cracks knuckles::
Although knowing some theory and scales would be helpful, it's not like everyone is a serious musician, some people just do it on the side..
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Sorry Marty, and I'm not being flipant here but there are rules for this kind of music. We discuss them endlessly.
And hands up who does care when someone jumps in for a session with their guitar or their bodhran or box or dulcimer or whatever else and plays "their" music?
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I know you discuss it endlessly and I can't stand it. But if people like you guys who constantly b**ch about this were the ones making the rules, the music would have died out long ago. I disagree 100 percent about the "rules". I think you guys like to just to think that you're important and that your whining actually makes a difference. Guess what? Banjos (not trad.) guitars (not trad.) and everything else that p*sses you off are here to stay and no amount of your complaining will ever change it. They ARE a part of ITM now, whether you like it or not. If people like you whiners had your way, the music would either be gone from the face of the Earth or it would be stuck in limbo forever with only harps, pipes and bodhrans "allowed" to play the music.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Alright, I owe an apology to everyone who is unhappy with instruments and their players that don't always fit in. My intention was NOT to add to this tension brought on by new or un-traditional instruments (I know, I did a poor job). I just very strongly feel that if someone has the music in them, let them play. It doesn't hurt and most of the time you only have to put up with it for a short time. I believe that you're only making yourself miserable by taking the stance that these things don't belong in ITM. Maybe they don't, but they are here.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Michael, that "fashion clique, Folkie" was a big part of the wave upon which the revival of more authentic trad music surfed. Oh man, I'm in goofy metaphor mode!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yes, this has been discussed here before, but so what? These topics have endlessly gone round in homes and pubs long before the ‘net was invented, much less as a thread on thesession.org, and will continue to be a subject of interest for many years to come. I hope.
I enjoy reading peoples’ opinions. And if I think what they’re writing is total gobsh*te, I shrug it off or I skip it. And I hope any guitarists take this discussion with a grain of salt and don’t get discouraged. Angry, maybe, but not discouraged. But maybe it allows them to realize how some people feel, and help them become more savvy players. And, some of humanity’s best humor comes in the form of complaining, I think.
As to topic: No, of course not. You haven't been listening to the right guitar.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
It is the hypocracy that gets me. In yhaalhouse's biog s/he says s/he only learns aurally (no dots) and hates "purist pillocks". Is there not a contadiction going on here?
I would agree that it is important for guitarists, just like any musicians, to learn some of the theory if they are to progress. The more you understand how the chord structures to given keys work the more you can vary the chords you choose and thereby avoid constant use of I - VI - V - VII which I personally fed up seeing used by some folk ALL the time.
I would not choose to come on a forum and slag off people with a lack of knowledge in a given subject if I was, likewise, completely inept, ignorant and stupid.
Anyway fidkid you are dead right - guns don't kill people - people kill people and I am feeling particularly bloodthirsty tonight!!!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Marty - what was wrong with your first post? You were moaning about something you don't like - that is common here as you pointed out yourself. Don't worry about it. Essentially you were right.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Take five people who've just discovered ITM and give one a guitar, the other a fiddle, another a concertina, the next guy a flute, and the other an accordion. Tell them to learn to play in 6 months. Bring them all back together and have them play a session together. Then figure out which one is "ruining the music." My point is that until people learn to play them right, any instrument is capable of ruining the music, or making it sound bad.
If the guitar was really ruining the music it wouldn't be so widespread. If the guitar wasn't perceived as being an easy access to sessions it wouldn't be played by people who haven't taken the necessary time to learn it and join sessions prematurely.
Regarding style: each instrument is capable of playing ITM in different styles, and we choose the one we like best. The guitar can be played in different styles as well. One style of ITM is no accompaniment; but that's just one style, and if that's what you prefer -- great, but that doesn't mean everyone else who likes guitar accompaniment is "ruining the music."
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Marty was right, although a bit restrained. How the hell can someone just classify the majotity of guitarists as useless, for all types of music. So John Williams is out the door, ITM electric guitar such as Johnny Fean and Richard Thompson are out, great accoustic players, Thompson, Drake, and about 10 youngsters in the small town in which I live, all useless. What a load of codswallop, for want of a better word. And there are some great dadgad players, a thousand times better than the old piano "vamp" accompaniment.
And so many people do little but bitch. There are no rules, American banjos, Italian mandolin, Greek bouzoukis, where is the violin from?, there would be NO Irish music if some people had their way.
So Martin, you are right, never mind apologising.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
“Take five people who've just discovered ITM and give one a guitar, the other a fiddle, another a concertina, the next guy a flute, and the other an accordion. Tell them to learn to play in 6 months. Bring them all back together and have them play a session together. Then figure out which one is "ruining the music."”
Interesting. Would there even *be* any music? Meaning would there be melody? The fiddle player would have his instrument on his lap. The guitar player would know chords, but no melody. I'm pretty sure the flute takes longer than 6 months to learn. Can you learn the concertina or accordion in that time?
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
A close freind says it takes most people a year to figure out how to hold the box, much less get sound out of it.
I have several guitar freinds who say no matter how many years of practice on the box, it still doesn't make acceptable sound. Frosts me.....but they make the same comments about the whistle (screechy) and the fiddle (squeeky)
Maybe that's the problem. We all seem to know good guitar players. But there are a bunch of arrogant ones who manage to get on everyone's nerves.
I suppose same could be said for most other instruments though. Have you ever tried to discuss musical diversity with high church pipe organist. A few nice folks...but alot more grunt or make quizical looks like your underwear is being worn over your pants.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I'm not apologizing for what I said, just the way I said it. One of my pet peeves (big understatement) is all the intolerance and seclusion that people bring to the table. Everyone will always have opinions about the music played at the pub, as well as how it should be played. My stance is I try to be open to (almost) everything. Some people suck, but that's no reason to exclude them from playing. Sometimes it is infuriating. But the most valuable lessons I ever got from experienced players was when I was learning and sucky. People tend to step in more and give friendly, helpful "advice" to the budding young musician than to someone who thinks they have all the "rules" down and never deviate (the best way I can think of to just stay right where you're at forever). The absolute best way to learn is to do it, and if you can do it with people who know what they're doing, then all the better for you. I know it doesn't always work that way. Maybe in a utopia-esque (esq?...esc?... whatever) society.
But still, the name calling was a bit out of line.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
It seems that yhaalhouse is talking about popular music in general "over the last sixty years", and his/her dislike for "six string devil players" (see bio)
is not new.
Perhaps the previous 60/120 years were dominated by the piano; being the commonly available instrument. I am confident that millions of people also tortured pianos over the years, as well as anyone in earshot. There were/are also a number of musicians who can delight with a bit of Chopin, Bach, ragtime, jazz, and sundry other genres.
The difference may be that pianists didn't tend to carry their instruments uninvited into other peoples spaces.
The guitar is simply the current popular instrument. Would-be musicians who haven't been introduced to anything else will naturally gravitate to the guitar and, as mentioned above, will get some early satisfaction as soon as their fingers stop hurting.
I don't suppose that yhaalhouse or anyone else is objecting to individuals strumming a few chords in the privacy of their own homes; but to upstarts in public showing more volume than skill.
As for traditional music, if most pubs still had an out-of-tune piano in the corner, and some one always turned up at a session to pound out their impression of what was appropriate, what then?
My first heroes were Andres Segovia and Barney Kessel, and yes, I played guitar and taught folksong accompaniment on them, and saw many people discover the pleasure of making their own music.
I dislike the majority of guitar playing I hear, but that does not reflect on the instrument; only its ubiquitousness and available amplification.
The portable 'keyboard' can be equally obnoxious and inappropriate.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Surely it's all a matter of personal preference and no one has the right to pontificate and say this is the only way. Sometimes it's good to listen to the unspoilt solo instrumentalist but equally the colour of ensemble playing may sometimes be more entertaining. Neither is right nor wrong, it's just part of the great mosaic of the Irish tradition which is so appealing to people throughout the world. As for the merits of guitar playing there are many examples such as Andy Irvine, Steve Cooney, Dennis Cahill - I rest my case.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
"But NO violins either. That's a relatively new addition."
I'm always puzzled by where this fallacy comes from. The latest estimates of when relatively modern "fiddles" (actually, if you look up 'history of the fiddle' sites, more like a modern violin than was present at the time in England and Wales) were routinely played in Ireland are the eleventh century.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yup, guitars are evil.
Let's replace all the session guitarists, rock guitarists, folk guitarists, etc. with Ukelelists, as would seem to be the proper thing to do from our 1st poster's bio.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Pontifical nit-picking alert!
It's not "flattened fifth". It's "flatted fifth". Notes are not flattened or sharpened. They are flatted or sharped. And strings are not dampened (not intentionally, anyway). They are damped.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Hmmm ... I've been trying desperately to find the site I found before which had a quote like this on it (from memory):
"The fiddle came to Europe around the turn of the 9th century from Asia, and rapidly spread to cover the whole of Europe, including England and Wales, and Ireland. By the 11th century the instrument was widely used, particularly as an instrument for dance."
(I'm aware, btw, that the 'fiddle' is not *exactly* the same as a modern violin). I'm not making the above up - there are two phrases which struck me especially: "England and Wales, and Ireland", which struck a chord because it seemed an unusual linguistic construction; and "particularly as an instrument for dance".
And this is where vague memory from way back kicks in, because I have always understood that the fiddle spread BACK from Ireland to Wales, where it was taken up as a dance instrument, before being eventually condemned by the sweeping tide of Chapel-like Christianity as 'the Devil's instrument'.
But now, the best I can find is a violin history site saying that the fiddle did indeed come to Europe from Asia at the turn of the ninth century; and Wikipedia saying that the Donegal fiddle tradition is "at least 200 years old".
But we know that there were violins in Ireland a long time before that - after all, where was the world premier of Handel's Messiah? Temple Bar, Dublin in 1742, that's both where and when.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Actually, Bob himself, I think that may be another example of the way we are 'divided by a common language'. Over here, notes are 'flattened' or 'sharpened'.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
OK... it didn't work, so I am posting, LOL.
What if the guitarist took the trouble to spend many decades learning the tunes, dots or no dots. Then what. Are we allowed in? If you hate the sound of the thing, we won't come to your session. No problem, fair enough.
I don't like guitar bashing either, and right, it can sure ruin the music, alternating two chords and hoping to get them right about 50% of the time (can you believe someone once told me that's what he does.... he quickly stopped coming to that or any other session as far as I can tell).
Anyway, please don't lump us all together. I know I could not care less about chords, just about the right key of course, and when I do use chords they are used almost as an accent or a stress, for the briefest moment, and often are just partial chords, not a full one. I know others that know the tunes too, even though not following note for note fingerstyle on most tunes, but rather "accompanying" . Not all are as you describe. I do wonder if you started this thread (AGAIN, OH NO!) to just get the pot boiling! It's all been said before ad nauseum.
I would challenge any fiddler, mandolin, other string player to pick up a guitar and do what a good many of us do, and still try to tell us it's an easy thing to learn. Especially in fingerstyle playing that follows the tunes closely, you lucky melody string players get to play one note at a time in most cases... we fingerplayers have to pick a melody (or a complement to it for "accompaniment", which BTW many melody players Want, good ones, not the ones that need cover ups) while backing ourselves and the tune up in a secondary even more subtle layer with generally our thumb. If you don't like the sound or style, fair enough, but it's not easy, and many think you took it up because you couldn't cut it as a melody player.
Maybe we are useless to many who want to hear just plain melody, fine, don't have us play with you, have a no rhythm session. The rules of the music, though, do apply to guitar as well, and anyone attempting it needs to know the tunes, the structures of the tunes, have a good ear for the changes, just like any melody player. You should be hearing the same thing and coming from that same place.
The Folkie revival... yes, with chord charts, and the focus (pardon pun) on the songs, with three-six chords at most, does often carry over into ITM and turns up at sessions. You always know when somone is coming in from the folkie circles. They strum in the same patterns, three chords at most usually, and stress the off beat, especially, ahem... people in my age group who heard it all in the 60s. The problem there is that they are treating these tunes as a Folk Song, backing as if someone is singing...it just doesn't work that way, you have to know the tune and stay with it, not just strum along like it's a Bob Dylan song. Thank heavens they are generally not very strong or loud players, and are often very much in the background, and some of them do get it in time if they love the music and work at it.... the ones coming from a Rock background, those, many people want to kill.
IWhat we really need is for autoharps to come out to sessions to really get some dander up. Out of tune ones, rusted roller skate key hanging from a string.
Speaking of out of tune, why is it so many fiddlers' intonation is off? I know it's because it is a very hard instrument and is fretless, but why is is you so often get a roomful of them playing at a different speed, with 3/4 of them intoning poorly and no one speaks up. We mostly take this with a grain of salt, if especially at an open session, OK, we just focus on the fun of it all, the social aspects, who needs perfection anyway, if you want it have your favorite players at home.
There was a point in the game about 30 years back where I was deciding to focus fully on either guitar and backing and also fingerstyle melody... or mandolin. Used to play both. I opted for guitar, not because it was easier, in fact I found mandolin a lot easier, but liked the challenge of the guitar. Darn, though, a mandolin is so much easier to carry around. I felt, that I really wanted to go tunnel vision on guitar and put all the practice there instead of playing several instruments. Not because it was easy. Played to its full capacity, which would take a really long time to do, it is a very complex instrument capable of great sound and hopefully I am correct in believing that many melody player enjoy it and are not just putting up with us to be polite.
OK... outta here... I hope. Better to spend this time building the next guitar, backstrip just glued in.... talk about tunnel vision.
OK... I hope to try and not post again, LOL, this is getting tiring! If you don't want guitar around, don't have it. We understand and would not inflict ourselves on you.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Kennedy.... I haven't the faintest what a seventh flattened fifth is, but do you know what you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft?
A FLAT MINER
I for one never learned any of this technical stuff, I know things by sound/ear only. I have tried and tried to read music, learn some theory, and it all goes out the window when i hear a tune, hear what it's doing, hear its structure, hear its mood, it takes me where IT wants to go, where the melody goes, there I follow. Actually, not follow, you gotta be with them.
But a flattened seventh fifth....arghh... ???WHA????? When I am playing I have no time between notes or even tunes to think and analyze this stuff out. Before you know it , that part of the tune is gone. It just is not a thought process somehow, more an instinct. A different part of the brain takes over. I only wish i could be so instinctual in real life and in reading people..... that's something not to go into here, LOL!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Oh dear, this post is great. Yep, the guitar HAS ruined ALL music in the last 60 years or so. I mean, Woody Guthrie's songs would have had so much more power if he accompianed them on the hurdy gurdy. And blues was wrecked by the guitar. I mean, can you imagine how much more expressive BB King would have been if he played the Banjo? None of that nasty sustain. Plunk Plunk. And country music would have been better without it. "Hi, I'm Johnny Cash, and these are my bagpipes."
And Rock and Roll! Johnny B Good, Little Sister, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede shoes were all wrecked because of the guitar. A nice celtic harp or maybe the oboe would have been much nicer thank you very much.
And don't get me started on Jazz. Those no hoper chord whackers like Charlie Christian, Django, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow and Martin Taylor should really go and learn a melody. And those simple chords of George Van Epps. He should have taken the time to learn some theory!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
PS... OK Another slap...
Fap... On that other thread about the missing chord/note on Cooleys (couldn't get anyone to play Drowsy Maggie) was that right what I mentioned... did you find it? You went missing!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
... back on my half-hijack ... I've now found a website on "Ancient Irish Musical Instruments" which says there is documentary evidence for fiddles in Ireland in the EIGHTH century ... still don't understand where people got the idea it's a new introduction ...
btw Don't leave, Iris, this thread could do with some sanity ... (this time that's meant for an encouraging smiley emoticon)
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
As you said, it's not the same instrument. An instrument called the fiddle that played dance (fiddle) music was not the modern day violin. Even if so and so's whatever master piece was played in wherever, Ireland for the first time in 1742 (or whatever the date was), the violin was not a common people's dance instrument, and even if it was, that's a about as old as the United States, and it is considered a fairly new country. The violin IS a fairly new instrument, in the overall history of Irish music.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Sitting at the computer, looking at the almost-re-finished non-Fender tele, just needs the new switches wired in to give the humbucker/parallel/single coil variants on the Seymour Duncan and Kent Armstrong pickups, in front of the case for the Martin, in front of the case for the half-built tele ( DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan hotrails on a mahogany body, this one is going to ROCK ), and I think, yeah, when I want to go to a session I just pick up the 'zouk, because I know someone will always bring a guitar, and if they don't I can strum a chord on the 'zouk anyway.
PS does anyone know how to do "Traditional Irish Guitar" ? Can I learn it in 40 years, or will I have to go back and start again from the beginning ?
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
But they could afford pipes? And harps?!!!
Oh, and everyone in Ireland was " a common Irish farmer". Sheesh!
I *did* say the fiddle, or fidil, or whatever it happened to be called along the way was not the same, but you'd be surprised how similar it is. The Biran Boru harp is not the same as a modern concert harp. Medieval bagpipes are not the same as modern pipes. And it's documented fact that the modern type of instrument was being played for dancing in Ireland in the 1700s.
Also, what about all the Irish fiddle makers? They were all made in Italy, were they? Never mind the English, Welsh, Danish etc etc makers going way way back, and keeping pace with developments elsewhere.
Still, you've said so, so it must be true.
I don't suppose you've bothered to look any of this up, anywhere? Hmm?
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Well, show me. Or am I too believe that because you've said it, it must be accepted as fact? I can tell you must be well informed, doing your research on wikipedia (nice). And yes, the FOLK music of Ireland was passed on by the common people, maybe not all farmers but the majority I think. Commoners did not play the same music that people like O'Carolan did. So whatever... show me.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Pete... you might have an interest in the www.stewmac.com site, they have a current article (think it's still there) on how to make a not real pricey electric play and sound like a high end one... something along those lines. Anyway, they have good repair articles you may enjoy, they send them out weekly if you sign up, and keep the current one up for a week. Some are really good.
your non- Fender tele is welcome at our session for a blast...when are you coming to NJ???!!!!
Who knows what Traditional Irish Guitar is after all this! 40 years, ha ha!! You're Almost as old as I am!! We'll still be learning when we're back in nappies. Ugh...sorry.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
And benhall.1, the referance to the "Italian" violin was supposed to be taken as an example, just like the reference to the farmer. No Sh*t, but it was probably imported.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Actually benhall.1, if you want to take this up further, I would LOVE to argue with you some more. But I'm going to take fidkid's sage advice and skip over the rest of this discussion, since you and I are no longer anywhere near to being on topic. But feel free to email me with your "evidence".
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Ben... can't help posting. Trying to ignore this though.
BTW... can you date the five string fiddles like Oisin McCauley and Tony DeMarco play sometimes? Is that a modern thing or have they been around for a while?
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
"A Collection Of The Most Celebrated Irish Tunes" proper for the VIOLIN, German Flute or Hautboy Plearakeh na Rough set in the different divisions Bass and Corus as performed at the Subscription Concert by Senior Lorenzo Bocci, John and William Neal, Dublin, 1724.
The violin was there. The dance tunes were there. Not the medieval 'fiedel', but the Italianate designed violin.
Of course when you see guitar references in historical collections... it might have been a citterny-like-English guitar.. hmm..
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
As topics go, is this one-
1. a pathetic whining diatribe
2. a close minded, parochial screed
3. puffed-up, inane but vitriolic tripe
4. all of the above
If you don't like guitars, don't play music with guitarists! I'm sure they'd appreciate your going off into some pretected haven for the pure drop and leaving them alone.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
hey, love that insightful commentary on the blues. as one who has been nailed to the wood around this joint for allegedly knocking itm players---having actually knocked, never players, but ornamental styles (in admittedly polemic phraseology)---it is a kick to read this, because the originator of this thread HAS knocked players, along with not a mere ornamental style, but an entire musical tradition, and no one seems to have their panties in a twist about that.
what is being called "the dreadful BlooZ," here, is much like ITM in being a wonderful culture's centuries-old musical tradition, a deep well of heritage that like ITM expresses its people's suffering as well as their urge to jump for joy and shake their booties on saturday nights. like in ITM, sincere and gifted players of the blues, whether they originally come from that culture or not, open your heart when your hear them.
though it may come as news to the brilliant ethnomusicologist who began this thread, not a few of ireland's finest ITM musicians are reverent and deeply knowledgeable devotees of the blues in general and blues guitar in particular.
the silliness about music theory and sight-reading, and one instrument drowning out others, isn't really worth addressing.....there are lame players that know theory and lame players that do it all by ear. there are great players that know theory, and great players that do it all by ear. and a knucklehead on any instrument can wreck an ensemble.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yhaalhouse has his/her opinion as regards guitarists ruining
music, and we have to respect it.
Of course there’s no doubt there are a lot of guitarists ruining
music (not guitars, guitarists)
If you’re bad at the fiddle, the sound is so unbearable that
you’ll be stopped.
Guitarists seem to get away with more.
And lets’ be honest you’re going to come across a lot more
guitarists playing along to tunes they don’t know than say a
fiddler or piper.
But that should be the gripe – not guitars themselves which in
the right hands are wonderful.
Now of course the exact same problems would exist for some
who…I dunno…regularly plays ukulele for backing at
sessions !
However this thing about the "BlooZ", - I am very suspicious of
someone who rights off a whole genre of music,
it makes me take their views with a pinch of salt – to make
them less distasteful.
Why would you pick on an instrument with such venom – this
must be a backlashstemmed from years of sniggers, name-
calling or eyes to heaven when the ukulele presented itself
from yhaalhouse’s bag of tricks.
That would get to you eventually, especially if from your point of
view guitarists were been accepted – and then they in turn
made some snidish comment about your childish looking
plinky plonky instrument (not my view, but you know, some
people can be so cruel!)
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
"As for the merits of guitar playing there are many examples such as Andy Irvine, Steve Cooney, Dennis Cahill - I rest my case." by Bannerman
I haven't read all the posts on this thread but add Dick Gaughan to your list. Btw, I think Steve Cooney's an excellent guitarist and not bad on mandolin either.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yhaal... I think you're missing the point of why we play music... isn't it to give us some sort of intrinsic sense of worth and satisfaction? Ok, it's clear that many don't know how to resolve a German, Italian or French Augmented 6th chord, or what the heck a tritone is... but it is equally clear that everyone that plays in a session, string quartet, rock band, etc. is truely enjoying the experience. I really can't accept the attitude that any one instrument is destroying music as a whole. Anyone is permitted to dislike the sound of an instrument, but I don't think you can scapegoat one group of instruments/players for a genre of music that has gone stale for you... I think the Nazi's tried something like that about 70 years ago... By the way, the augmented 6th chords mentioned above usually resolve to the dominant. That bears no weight when talking about the sociology of perpetuating a cultural tradition...
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I *really* maybe need to go back to drinking coffee... and here I thought "the Dreadful BlooZ" was some sort of rock band! Good name though for a punk band or something.
This has got to be a for fun wind up, though I do believe you really hate guitars... if not, it sure has become one. I am often criticized by non ITM friends for being so tunnel visioned on ITM, I don't listen to much else at all, other Celtic sorts of music, yes that too, but not much out of that range. I sure wouldn't condemn a whole genre though that way. No one is forcing you to listen to it. Unless you have a teenage kid in the car with you.
When I step out of character and listen to other music, it tends towards old country (USA..... give me the Carter Family any day, Maybelle Carter was a great guitarist, and even the autoharp sounded good backing the guitar melody, and the pure, unaffected singing is heartrending) Old Blues and early jazz bands. I like the Andrews Sisters type sound too... funny, nothing modern at all. The most modern I seem to get is.... Motown, but that's a nostalgia thing from my teen years, school dances etc. I don't own any CDs or anything. If it comes on the radio I will enjoy it a while is all.
I stay in my comfort zone as far as music goes, and continue to "not broaden my horizons" much, but won't knock the rest of it or any instrument in particular. The reason for the 90% focus on Celtic listening.... it's not a passive activity for me, it's an active one, it's not just background music, I am taking it in on many levels and thinking about how to play this or that part of it or a new tune.... in fact while listening, learning them in my head (again.... total ear player) so to be able to play them later on. It is nearly impossible for me to listen to it as background music, even at a party or something, I won't focus on the chatter or people, but on the tunes. Maybe it's a form of obsessive compulsive disorder.... I worry sometimes, LOL!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I agree with yhaalhouse, those albums Paul Brady recorded in the 70s would be really good if it wasn't for all that plinkety plonk stuff he does with that horrible six-stringed instrument. He definitely sent ITM back into the dark ages with all that revival stuff. It was really alive and well until people like him, and Arty McGlynn, and Daithi Sproule, came along and started ruining the tradition. It should have stayed where it belonged, accompanied by a snare drum, and an untuned piano being beaten into submission by wild-eyed Ceili musicians. Let's face it, the moronic bashing on the Peoples/Brady album, the McGann/Brady album, the albums with Andy Irvine, Matt Molloy, Paddy Glackin, Liam O'Flynn et. al. is vastly inferior to the sensitive, subtle accompaniment of those Ceili musicians of the 1960s.
Likewise, all those talentless American gobsh*tes like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, and Lightnin' Hopkins, playing away on their cheap, home-repaired, begged, borrowed and stolen guitars in the 20s and 30s were just Satan's slaves, sent into the world to destroy the heaven-sent glory of the music-hall song and the searing beauty of psalms sung to the sound of the organ. In fact, the only truly traditional instrument in Irish music is the organ. It was only because the English made it a hanging offence to play Bach in Irish churches that ITM as we know it developed, and it was a sad day when the English left Ireland (almost), and stopped hanging guitarists and bouzouki players from the treetops. Bring back the English, I say, and let them regulate sessions . We are crying out for the snare drum, and the untuned piano once again. Please visit my website: https://musicmustbecontrolledbysmallmindedpeoplewholiketoapplymeaninglessgeneralisations.org, and sign the petition.
Down with the revival! Ban guitars and bouzoukis! Snare drums rock!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
It's a vastly democratic instrument. Pretty much anyone can afford one and learn a few basic chords to try and sing along to (and a busker doing justice to the vocals of early Dylan or Dubliners stuff can sound good doing just that). It's just wearing when someone plays it in the wrong way in the wrong place.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Curvy - you have my thanks for a good laugh and for introducing Godwin's Law to me as well.
Did anyone make any Nazi comparisons in the Dose/Bodran thread, I wonder?........ or the entertaining-of -the-punters yea or nay thread?
Thank God for super-nerds and guitarists!
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
No it's not ruined all music-just trad for the last 10yrs! But we need to keep the guitar in Trad - otherwise what are all those wannabe musicians who don't have the work ethic to actually learn loads of tunes going to do? (I'm a guitarist and think we should be banned from "accompanying" trad-if we can't play the tunes don't let us sit down!)
www.hakanozel.com
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
My "So that is a yes then" relates to a question I asked of hakanozel in another thread rather than any kind of affirmation of the ludicrous notions in this thread which I was glad to see the back of the last time it was commented on.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Some of us lowly guitar strummers would indeed like to learn to accompany ITM. Can someone suggest where we would find suggested chord patterns for specific tunes? This would be a place for us to start, as it seems from some of the comments above that we would NOT be welcome to come to some sessions with our guitars and begin to learn by listening to/watching/learning from more experienced guitarists.
As an aside, what is Irish Tradtional Music? Let's say a singer is singing 'Spancil Hill ' while accompanying herself with faily baisc chords on her guitar . Is this irish Traditional music? I believe 'Spancil Hill' is a popular IRISH song, I think it's 'TRADITIONAL' ( a very poorly defined term of course), and is she is any way musical, then it is indeed MUSIC? I heard the director of the Irish Traditionl Music Archive on TV recently saying that the said archive included recordings of Heavy Metal groups playng traditonal tunes. Is that ITM?
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
We've had people b*tching about the people doing all the b*tching. So I'm going to b*tch about the people who b*tch about the people who are doing all the b*tching. You're all just b*tches. Now if someone b*tches about me, they'll be b*tching about the people who b*tch about the people who b*tch about the people who are doing all the b*tching. See how pointless and never-ending it is?
Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I seriously think that guitar playing has ruined all music over the last sixty years or so. It is a combination of (i), (ii) and (iii).
(i) It is mostly used for playing chords on and accompanying the voice or other instruments actually playing a tune (not just ITM by the way!). Because one will often learn chords first, many never get on to learning scales and tunes. Because of this, the majority of guitarists (unlike the generation of musicians before- including guitarists) have failed to learn “dots” and basic theory. Most can barely read a chord chart proficiently, let alone explain the function of a minor seventh flattened fifth. (And computer based composing/ recording does not help!)
(ii) It is very good and easy for playing the dreadful BLooZ, encouraging even the player who has being strumming and "licking" for years to endlessly churn out old hat and clichés and never progress onto other more challenging, grown-up or melodic forms.
(iii) The amplified version caused all other instruments and voices to become inaudible in concert for nearly a generation (or until half decent fold back was invented), leading to a preponderance of tuneless over-loud guitar based nonsense and a relative dearth of other instrumentalists and forms.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by yhaalhouse
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
You lost me on the function of a minor seventh flattened fifth...
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by kennedy
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I am sort of in your camp. However, I have worked with a couple of really good people who play acoustic and really add to the spirit of the play for the musicians and the folks listening.
But they are also good finger pickers and know how not to overwhelm things.
The 'box-bangers' get on my nerves.
What I am more troubled though is the influx of piano players who think the piano should be a 'lead' instrument all the time and play really loud. Worse yet, alot of them fancy themselves as singers.
Only the snifter on the piano is missing.
enough complaining.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by zippydw
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
you had me at hello
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Conán McDonnell
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
kennedy
you forgot the suspended 13th on the up strum
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by zippydw
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I agree that in the earlier years guitars didn't do much for trad (the conventional style of accompaniment, to me anyway, tended to make the music sound jazzy or blue grassy). However, with the advent of the groups in the sixties and seventies this all seemed to change with guitarists actually complementing the music by following the melody lines / tune structures. Just one example of how a guitar can enhance a recording is Steve Cooney along with Séamus Begley on their Meitheal album with those driving slides and polkas. BTW I'm not a guitarist!
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Bannerman
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
And something tells me you haven't heard *real* blues, the kind they play in blues clubs and backyard parties. It's very expressive stuff, very soulful. It's only when you take it out of its original context that it loses its bite.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by kennedy
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I must admit that I concerts full of singers/guitarists usually fill me with dread. One problem with the guitars is their ubiquity but I'd have a similar problem with everyone playing fiddle or box for example. Also, they're easy to strum accompaniament on so it all (well nearly) ends up sounding the same
. Not there aren't wonderful guitar playing singers but most seem to blend into one another in mediocrity.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Compo
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Not completely and not all. Giving an ear to Lenny Breau or countless other luminous guitarists (happily) frees the instrument from blanket indictment. At any rate, if you pick one up, you can make some approximately nice sounds early on. And, because the masses often don't have the demented single-mindedness that characterizes instrumentalists (ITM definitely included), it's nice to think that they could make their own, well... folk music.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by drone
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Eh?
Another thread bashing guitar players.
I suppose that is because there are so many people who try to play guitar. And, yes, a lot of them aren't much good, but then the same could be said of players of any other instrument. And there are also some very good guitar players who are GREAT musicians (e.g., Martin Taylor).
So a lot of guitar players can't read dots. The same could be said of fiddle players (as opposed to violinists, who also aren't restricted to first position). And anyway, what has reading dots got to do with playing an instrument, especially in traditional music? I am a guitar player and I read dots (probably better than most) but to be honest dots don't work too well for the guitar where you are often trying to notate two octave intervals on a single stave. You need the staves really wide apart.
The guitar is a great instrument in the right hands and despite what you say about it ruining music it does nevertheless seem to be very popular with the masses. Perhaps yours is a minority opinion.
So what is the function of a seventh flattened fifth? Go on, enlighten us!
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by DonaldK
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Well, that's a harsh assessment! On the flip side of your title, several forms of music (most notably rock) likely wouldn't exist without the guitar. (Maybe that's OK with you...)
A few thoughts on your three points:
(i) This is not just the guitar's fault. Poor musicianship is possible on any instrument. Of course, the guitar is readily available, sexy, and easy to learn at a basic level, so maybe there are more poor guitar players than poor basoon players. And it does seem that public acceptance of mediocre guitar playing is broad.
However, I think there's nothing wrong with an instrument used for easy accompaniment or playing simple songs and such. This is not a new phenomenon...think of the autoharp. Satisfying music can be achieved without great complexity or virtuosity.
(ii) Yes. My own guitar playing is much as you describe. (But then the flute is my passion.)
(By the way, blues isn't the problem--real blues is hard to play. Pentatonic noodlings--or BLooZ, as you put it--is another matter...)
(iii) Maybe, although the quest for loudness already began in the 19th century as orchestras got bigger and louder, requiring louder instruments. I'll agree, though, that the dominance of guitar-based/amplified pop music over the past 50 or so years has left the commercially/popularly perceived musical landscape a bit dry.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by mcswiss
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Wow! I looked and went off to write up a quick reply and suddenly there were ten replies already!
Well... As a guitar player, I have to agree with you, except for the part about ruining all (or any) music. The popularity and virulent spread of the guitar over the past sixty years has certainly increased the amount of garbage music, but it's also increased the amount of good music. I don't have to listen to the garbage . And I don't.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
The guitar and Mel Bay chord chart enabled two or three generations to participate in music instead of just consuming the commodity, and it enabled the great revival of traditional music that we benefit from now. In a very real sense, it gave music back to The People. Obviously, some (most?) of The People had barely a clue what to do with it and that's your i, ii and iii.
What *really* ruined music was the *electric* guitar! (Tongue only partly in cheek)
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yhaalhouse, Would you explain the function of a minor seventh flattened fifth for me?
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by fap
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I don't accept the electric guitar as a variety of guitar. It's a different instrument, no more a guitar than a pipe organ is a piano.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Talking of suspended thirteenths or 13sus chords I suppose the G version would be the most popular, usually played as 3x3210 - it's just Fmaj7 with a G bass. But it was the aforementioned Lenny Breau, I believe, who came up with the movable version so that, for instance to play Bb13sus he played 6x6543, playing the two highest notes (the Eb and the G) with his index finger by turning it sideways so that the G on the top string was played with the flesh between the last two knuckles. Hard to describe, I know.
My God! Don't tell me I'm a chord geek!
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by DonaldK
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
A guitar chord chart enabled the great revival of traditional music ??? Come come now. You mean it enabled the invention of the fashion clique, Folkie. It's got nothing to do with traditional music
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
We have done this topic to death, without much meaningful discussion ever ensuing. One way to help some of the problems described in this thread is offering helpful guidance to guitarists who wander onto this website, instead of bashing them out of hand as soon as they show up. Just a thought......
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by AlBrown
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Fap,
I'll field that question, although it's been some time since I thought about playing guitar. But back when I did, though, I used m7b5 chords in a couple of different ways. Most often, I used it just as a minor chord. I seem to remember thinking that using a m7b5 as a ii chord went nicely into a "V7b9" in minor keys. Lots of times people frame this chord in modal terms. In the Ionian mode, for example, it would be the chord built on the seventh note of the key (so, if you stack a seventh chord starting on B in the key of C, you get a m7b5). if it's the one, you're in the locrian mode (I don't think that thinking modally is particularly helpful, but you can get a sense of it's possible functions if you want to go there).
I also used to think of a m7B5 chord as just a V9 chord without its root. A gm7b5 is spelled G, Bb, Db, F; an Eb9 is spelled Eb, G, Bb, Db, F. If you're playing with a bass player, say, and s/he's playing the root of the dominant, you can go without it.
It'll have other uses too, though...I just can't think of them at the moment.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Upsetter
Re: as if anyone cares
The minor 7th chord with a flat 5th, aka the half diminished chord, composed of the tones: I -III bV -VII , commonly works as the transition chord in a II -V - I progression
(ie: B-7b5 - E7 - Amin), but has many other mysterious uses, including the support of statements denigrating the noble guitar, or intellectually intimidating dolts. As if anyone cares about dolts. Now dullards... another kettle of frogs.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by drone
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Guitar ruined it ALL?
My, my. Horrible. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Janek
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Ah, a minor seventh flattened fifth is a *chord*! It's so easy to get lost in these discussions when you're a fiddle player...
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by kennedy
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I would never ler the dreadful scratchy out of tune fiddlers I've heard make me condemn all fiddlers. I just try to avoid the bad ones and play with the good ones.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Plunkett.mi
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
yhaalhouse, yhaalhouse..............
you need to get out more!
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by morning star
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Man, I've NEVER seen so much whining, moaning and complaining as there is on this website. Somebody always has something to b**ch about. Who cares! If you don't like guitar music, then don't listen to it and don't play with them. But all that this whining about instruments and people who play them does is exclude people (many of them young people) from feeling like they can be a part of something that they really enjoy. Who the hell cares if someone jumps in for a session with their guitar or their bodhran or box or dulcimer or whatever else. Let them play their music. I believe there are no rules to folk music (sorry, this IS folk music),and that's the beauty of it. Anything goes. The ugly side is the people who endlessly complain about everything that they don't like.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Personally, I'm all for the guitar, if it's done right. Ah, yeah. I know a certain someone that has definitely ruined the music for me when I was in high school a couple o' years back. ::Cracks knuckles::
Although knowing some theory and scales would be helpful, it's not like everyone is a serious musician, some people just do it on the side..
Cheers,
Armand
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by armandale
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Sorry Marty, and I'm not being flipant here but there are rules for this kind of music. We discuss them endlessly.
And hands up who does care when someone jumps in for a session with their guitar or their bodhran or box or dulcimer or whatever else and plays "their" music?
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Windup much? *yawns*
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Crysania
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I know you discuss it endlessly and I can't stand it. But if people like you guys who constantly b**ch about this were the ones making the rules, the music would have died out long ago. I disagree 100 percent about the "rules". I think you guys like to just to think that you're important and that your whining actually makes a difference. Guess what? Banjos (not trad.) guitars (not trad.) and everything else that p*sses you off are here to stay and no amount of your complaining will ever change it. They ARE a part of ITM now, whether you like it or not. If people like you whiners had your way, the music would either be gone from the face of the Earth or it would be stuck in limbo forever with only harps, pipes and bodhrans "allowed" to play the music.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Bodhrans wouldn't be allowed to play the music either, Marty. It would probably be harps, pipes, and fiddle.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Crysania
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yeah, your right. We could go out hunting the hare playing the drum, but no accompaniment. Sorry, scatch the drum too.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
But NO violins either. That's a relatively new addition.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Just read that opening statement, and I think it is possibly the most idiotic thing I have ever heard.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by t byrne
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Ah well...anyone for hare hunting?
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Crysania
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Alright, I owe an apology to everyone who is unhappy with instruments and their players that don't always fit in. My intention was NOT to add to this tension brought on by new or un-traditional instruments (I know, I did a poor job). I just very strongly feel that if someone has the music in them, let them play. It doesn't hurt and most of the time you only have to put up with it for a short time. I believe that you're only making yourself miserable by taking the stance that these things don't belong in ITM. Maybe they don't, but they are here.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Michael, that "fashion clique, Folkie" was a big part of the wave upon which the revival of more authentic trad music surfed. Oh man, I'm in goofy metaphor mode!
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Hmm,
Having just watched the Geantraí DVD I'm inclined to answer the original question in the affirmative (Jim Murray excepted).
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yes, this has been discussed here before, but so what? These topics have endlessly gone round in homes and pubs long before the ‘net was invented, much less as a thread on thesession.org, and will continue to be a subject of interest for many years to come. I hope.
I enjoy reading peoples’ opinions. And if I think what they’re writing is total gobsh*te, I shrug it off or I skip it. And I hope any guitarists take this discussion with a grain of salt and don’t get discouraged. Angry, maybe, but not discouraged. But maybe it allows them to realize how some people feel, and help them become more savvy players. And, some of humanity’s best humor comes in the form of complaining, I think.
As to topic: No, of course not. You haven't been listening to the right guitar.
Guitars don’t kill music. People kill music.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by fidkid
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
It is the hypocracy that gets me. In yhaalhouse's biog s/he says s/he only learns aurally (no dots) and hates "purist pillocks". Is there not a contadiction going on here?
I would agree that it is important for guitarists, just like any musicians, to learn some of the theory if they are to progress. The more you understand how the chord structures to given keys work the more you can vary the chords you choose and thereby avoid constant use of I - VI - V - VII which I personally fed up seeing used by some folk ALL the time.
I would not choose to come on a forum and slag off people with a lack of knowledge in a given subject if I was, likewise, completely inept, ignorant and stupid.
Anyway fidkid you are dead right - guns don't kill people - people kill people and I am feeling particularly bloodthirsty tonight!!!
*Angry smiley with devil horns*
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
"My intention was NOT to add to this tension brought on by new or un-traditional instruments"
Let me clarify my poor choice of words, it should have read something more like this: "It was dumb of me to add to this tension".
And fidkid, I like your attitude about this. Much better than my initial response.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Marty - what was wrong with your first post? You were moaning about something you don't like - that is common here as you pointed out yourself. Don't worry about it. Essentially you were right.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
This Post is probably the most stupid post I have read since joining this site. Long live the guitar! Long Live Keith Richards!
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Jon_bailey
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Take five people who've just discovered ITM and give one a guitar, the other a fiddle, another a concertina, the next guy a flute, and the other an accordion. Tell them to learn to play in 6 months. Bring them all back together and have them play a session together. Then figure out which one is "ruining the music." My point is that until people learn to play them right, any instrument is capable of ruining the music, or making it sound bad.
If the guitar was really ruining the music it wouldn't be so widespread. If the guitar wasn't perceived as being an easy access to sessions it wouldn't be played by people who haven't taken the necessary time to learn it and join sessions prematurely.
Regarding style: each instrument is capable of playing ITM in different styles, and we choose the one we like best. The guitar can be played in different styles as well. One style of ITM is no accompaniment; but that's just one style, and if that's what you prefer -- great, but that doesn't mean everyone else who likes guitar accompaniment is "ruining the music."
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
My goodness Jack - I am positively moved. God bless you and all your fellow colonists.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Marty was right, although a bit restrained. How the hell can someone just classify the majotity of guitarists as useless, for all types of music. So John Williams is out the door, ITM electric guitar such as Johnny Fean and Richard Thompson are out, great accoustic players, Thompson, Drake, and about 10 youngsters in the small town in which I live, all useless. What a load of codswallop, for want of a better word. And there are some great dadgad players, a thousand times better than the old piano "vamp" accompaniment.
And so many people do little but bitch. There are no rules, American banjos, Italian mandolin, Greek bouzoukis, where is the violin from?, there would be NO Irish music if some people had their way.
So Martin, you are right, never mind apologising.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
“Take five people who've just discovered ITM and give one a guitar, the other a fiddle, another a concertina, the next guy a flute, and the other an accordion. Tell them to learn to play in 6 months. Bring them all back together and have them play a session together. Then figure out which one is "ruining the music."”
Interesting. Would there even *be* any music? Meaning would there be melody? The fiddle player would have his instrument on his lap. The guitar player would know chords, but no melody. I'm pretty sure the flute takes longer than 6 months to learn. Can you learn the concertina or accordion in that time?
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by kennedy
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
A good guitar adds more to this music than words can express, imho.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Nathan G
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
"Long Live Keith Richards!"
Already happened.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
A close freind says it takes most people a year to figure out how to hold the box, much less get sound out of it.
I have several guitar freinds who say no matter how many years of practice on the box, it still doesn't make acceptable sound. Frosts me.....but they make the same comments about the whistle (screechy) and the fiddle (squeeky)
Maybe that's the problem. We all seem to know good guitar players. But there are a bunch of arrogant ones who manage to get on everyone's nerves.
I suppose same could be said for most other instruments though. Have you ever tried to discuss musical diversity with high church pipe organist. A few nice folks...but alot more grunt or make quizical looks like your underwear is being worn over your pants.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by zippydw
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I'm not apologizing for what I said, just the way I said it. One of my pet peeves (big understatement) is all the intolerance and seclusion that people bring to the table. Everyone will always have opinions about the music played at the pub, as well as how it should be played. My stance is I try to be open to (almost) everything. Some people suck, but that's no reason to exclude them from playing. Sometimes it is infuriating. But the most valuable lessons I ever got from experienced players was when I was learning and sucky. People tend to step in more and give friendly, helpful "advice" to the budding young musician than to someone who thinks they have all the "rules" down and never deviate (the best way I can think of to just stay right where you're at forever). The absolute best way to learn is to do it, and if you can do it with people who know what they're doing, then all the better for you. I know it doesn't always work that way. Maybe in a utopia-esque (esq?...esc?... whatever) society.
But still, the name calling was a bit out of line.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
It seems that yhaalhouse is talking about popular music in general "over the last sixty years", and his/her dislike for "six string devil players" (see bio)
is not new.
Perhaps the previous 60/120 years were dominated by the piano; being the commonly available instrument. I am confident that millions of people also tortured pianos over the years, as well as anyone in earshot. There were/are also a number of musicians who can delight with a bit of Chopin, Bach, ragtime, jazz, and sundry other genres.
The difference may be that pianists didn't tend to carry their instruments uninvited into other peoples spaces.
The guitar is simply the current popular instrument. Would-be musicians who haven't been introduced to anything else will naturally gravitate to the guitar and, as mentioned above, will get some early satisfaction as soon as their fingers stop hurting.
I don't suppose that yhaalhouse or anyone else is objecting to individuals strumming a few chords in the privacy of their own homes; but to upstarts in public showing more volume than skill.
As for traditional music, if most pubs still had an out-of-tune piano in the corner, and some one always turned up at a session to pound out their impression of what was appropriate, what then?
My first heroes were Andres Segovia and Barney Kessel, and yes, I played guitar and taught folksong accompaniment on them, and saw many people discover the pleasure of making their own music.
I dislike the majority of guitar playing I hear, but that does not reflect on the instrument; only its ubiquitousness and available amplification.
The portable 'keyboard' can be equally obnoxious and inappropriate.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by oldstrings
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Surely it's all a matter of personal preference and no one has the right to pontificate and say this is the only way. Sometimes it's good to listen to the unspoilt solo instrumentalist but equally the colour of ensemble playing may sometimes be more entertaining. Neither is right nor wrong, it's just part of the great mosaic of the Irish tradition which is so appealing to people throughout the world. As for the merits of guitar playing there are many examples such as Andy Irvine, Steve Cooney, Dennis Cahill - I rest my case.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Bannerman
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
"But NO violins either. That's a relatively new addition."
I'm always puzzled by where this fallacy comes from. The latest estimates of when relatively modern "fiddles" (actually, if you look up 'history of the fiddle' sites, more like a modern violin than was present at the time in England and Wales) were routinely played in Ireland are the eleventh century.
See, the thing is, I don't call that "new".
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by ethical blend
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yup, guitars are evil.
Let's replace all the session guitarists, rock guitarists, folk guitarists, etc. with Ukelelists, as would seem to be the proper thing to do from our 1st poster's bio.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by wormdiet
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Wow! That's really early! If only it were true.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
With some of the nonsense written before the rugby match last Saturday, you could have thought the 11th century was last week
And they played about six anthems so it was musical.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not start ripping on ukes, now. The most innocuous of instruments. A ukulele never hurt anyone, mate.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by fidkid
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I am trying not to post,I am trying not to post, I am trying not to post,I am trying not to post, I am trying not to post,I am trying not to post,
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I bet irisnevins knows what a minor seventh flattened fifth chord is!
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by kennedy
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Thank god nobody resorted to generalizations or stereotypes.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by TaoCat
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Pontifical nit-picking alert!
It's not "flattened fifth". It's "flatted fifth". Notes are not flattened or sharpened. They are flatted or sharped. And strings are not dampened (not intentionally, anyway). They are damped.
Harumpf!
Sorry, sometimes I get like this.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Hmmm ... I've been trying desperately to find the site I found before which had a quote like this on it (from memory):
"The fiddle came to Europe around the turn of the 9th century from Asia, and rapidly spread to cover the whole of Europe, including England and Wales, and Ireland. By the 11th century the instrument was widely used, particularly as an instrument for dance."
(I'm aware, btw, that the 'fiddle' is not *exactly* the same as a modern violin). I'm not making the above up - there are two phrases which struck me especially: "England and Wales, and Ireland", which struck a chord because it seemed an unusual linguistic construction; and "particularly as an instrument for dance".
And this is where vague memory from way back kicks in, because I have always understood that the fiddle spread BACK from Ireland to Wales, where it was taken up as a dance instrument, before being eventually condemned by the sweeping tide of Chapel-like Christianity as 'the Devil's instrument'.
But now, the best I can find is a violin history site saying that the fiddle did indeed come to Europe from Asia at the turn of the ninth century; and Wikipedia saying that the Donegal fiddle tradition is "at least 200 years old".
But we know that there were violins in Ireland a long time before that - after all, where was the world premier of Handel's Messiah? Temple Bar, Dublin in 1742, that's both where and when.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by ethical blend
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Actually, Bob himself, I think that may be another example of the way we are 'divided by a common language'. Over here, notes are 'flattened' or 'sharpened'.
Sorry to all for my partial hijack above.
Guitars are great!
- better?)
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by ethical blend
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
OK... it didn't work, so I am posting, LOL.
What if the guitarist took the trouble to spend many decades learning the tunes, dots or no dots. Then what. Are we allowed in? If you hate the sound of the thing, we won't come to your session. No problem, fair enough.
I don't like guitar bashing either, and right, it can sure ruin the music, alternating two chords and hoping to get them right about 50% of the time (can you believe someone once told me that's what he does.... he quickly stopped coming to that or any other session as far as I can tell).
Anyway, please don't lump us all together. I know I could not care less about chords, just about the right key of course, and when I do use chords they are used almost as an accent or a stress, for the briefest moment, and often are just partial chords, not a full one. I know others that know the tunes too, even though not following note for note fingerstyle on most tunes, but rather "accompanying" . Not all are as you describe. I do wonder if you started this thread (AGAIN, OH NO!) to just get the pot boiling! It's all been said before ad nauseum.
I would challenge any fiddler, mandolin, other string player to pick up a guitar and do what a good many of us do, and still try to tell us it's an easy thing to learn. Especially in fingerstyle playing that follows the tunes closely, you lucky melody string players get to play one note at a time in most cases... we fingerplayers have to pick a melody (or a complement to it for "accompaniment", which BTW many melody players Want, good ones, not the ones that need cover ups) while backing ourselves and the tune up in a secondary even more subtle layer with generally our thumb. If you don't like the sound or style, fair enough, but it's not easy, and many think you took it up because you couldn't cut it as a melody player.
Maybe we are useless to many who want to hear just plain melody, fine, don't have us play with you, have a no rhythm session. The rules of the music, though, do apply to guitar as well, and anyone attempting it needs to know the tunes, the structures of the tunes, have a good ear for the changes, just like any melody player. You should be hearing the same thing and coming from that same place.
The Folkie revival... yes, with chord charts, and the focus (pardon pun) on the songs, with three-six chords at most, does often carry over into ITM and turns up at sessions. You always know when somone is coming in from the folkie circles. They strum in the same patterns, three chords at most usually, and stress the off beat, especially, ahem... people in my age group who heard it all in the 60s. The problem there is that they are treating these tunes as a Folk Song, backing as if someone is singing...it just doesn't work that way, you have to know the tune and stay with it, not just strum along like it's a Bob Dylan song. Thank heavens they are generally not very strong or loud players, and are often very much in the background, and some of them do get it in time if they love the music and work at it.... the ones coming from a Rock background, those, many people want to kill.
IWhat we really need is for autoharps to come out to sessions to really get some dander up. Out of tune ones, rusted roller skate key hanging from a string.
Speaking of out of tune, why is it so many fiddlers' intonation is off? I know it's because it is a very hard instrument and is fretless, but why is is you so often get a roomful of them playing at a different speed, with 3/4 of them intoning poorly and no one speaks up. We mostly take this with a grain of salt, if especially at an open session, OK, we just focus on the fun of it all, the social aspects, who needs perfection anyway, if you want it have your favorite players at home.
There was a point in the game about 30 years back where I was deciding to focus fully on either guitar and backing and also fingerstyle melody... or mandolin. Used to play both. I opted for guitar, not because it was easier, in fact I found mandolin a lot easier, but liked the challenge of the guitar. Darn, though, a mandolin is so much easier to carry around. I felt, that I really wanted to go tunnel vision on guitar and put all the practice there instead of playing several instruments. Not because it was easy. Played to its full capacity, which would take a really long time to do, it is a very complex instrument capable of great sound and hopefully I am correct in believing that many melody player enjoy it and are not just putting up with us to be polite.
OK... outta here... I hope. Better to spend this time building the next guitar, backstrip just glued in.... talk about tunnel vision.
OK... I hope to try and not post again, LOL, this is getting tiring! If you don't want guitar around, don't have it. We understand and would not inflict ourselves on you.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Kennedy.... I haven't the faintest what a seventh flattened fifth is, but do you know what you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft?
A FLAT MINER
I for one never learned any of this technical stuff, I know things by sound/ear only. I have tried and tried to read music, learn some theory, and it all goes out the window when i hear a tune, hear what it's doing, hear its structure, hear its mood, it takes me where IT wants to go, where the melody goes, there I follow. Actually, not follow, you gotta be with them.
But a flattened seventh fifth....arghh... ???WHA????? When I am playing I have no time between notes or even tunes to think and analyze this stuff out. Before you know it , that part of the tune is gone. It just is not a thought process somehow, more an instinct. A different part of the brain takes over. I only wish i could be so instinctual in real life and in reading people..... that's something not to go into here, LOL!
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
You tell 'em irisnevins!
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by AlBrown
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Let's start a holy crusade against melody players. Down with the infidels.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Oh dear, this post is great. Yep, the guitar HAS ruined ALL music in the last 60 years or so. I mean, Woody Guthrie's songs would have had so much more power if he accompianed them on the hurdy gurdy. And blues was wrecked by the guitar. I mean, can you imagine how much more expressive BB King would have been if he played the Banjo? None of that nasty sustain. Plunk Plunk. And country music would have been better without it. "Hi, I'm Johnny Cash, and these are my bagpipes."
And Rock and Roll! Johnny B Good, Little Sister, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede shoes were all wrecked because of the guitar. A nice celtic harp or maybe the oboe would have been much nicer thank you very much.
And don't get me started on Jazz. Those no hoper chord whackers like Charlie Christian, Django, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow and Martin Taylor should really go and learn a melody. And those simple chords of George Van Epps. He should have taken the time to learn some theory!
Ho Ho Ho. Great windup.
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by woops
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Django? Now there was a musician, a genius. But not welcome at sessions?
# Posted on February 27th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
There should be a rule abou making postings which you don't respond to. Where is the comeback yhaalhouse?
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Sinocal
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Django was the worst of all them guitar tossers. He couldn't even use all his fingers properly.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Janek
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
But quite 'armless in a way.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by oldstrings
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Hey Bodhran Bliss.. did you mean "down with the IN-FIDDLES?"
I swear, I am going to slap myself silly each time I post to this nonsense anymore.
OUCH!
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
PS... OK Another slap...
Fap... On that other thread about the missing chord/note on Cooleys (couldn't get anyone to play Drowsy Maggie) was that right what I mentioned... did you find it? You went missing!
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
If any of you guitarists want some serious discussions, go sign onto Celtic Guitar Talk.
people like Tony McManus and Donal Clancy and El McMeen, others there, talking nicely to people.
Ouch again... leaving.....
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I like the in-fiddles, not my fault I can't spell.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
... back on my half-hijack ... I've now found a website on "Ancient Irish Musical Instruments" which says there is documentary evidence for fiddles in Ireland in the EIGHTH century ... still don't understand where people got the idea it's a new introduction ...
(this time that's meant for an encouraging smiley emoticon)
btw Don't leave, Iris, this thread could do with some sanity ...
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by ethical blend
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
As you said, it's not the same instrument. An instrument called the fiddle that played dance (fiddle) music was not the modern day violin. Even if so and so's whatever master piece was played in wherever, Ireland for the first time in 1742 (or whatever the date was), the violin was not a common people's dance instrument, and even if it was, that's a about as old as the United States, and it is considered a fairly new country. The violin IS a fairly new instrument, in the overall history of Irish music.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I highly doubt that your common Irish farmer who spends his nights playing music could afford an Italian made violin.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Back in the 1700s I mean.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Sitting at the computer, looking at the almost-re-finished non-Fender tele, just needs the new switches wired in to give the humbucker/parallel/single coil variants on the Seymour Duncan and Kent Armstrong pickups, in front of the case for the Martin, in front of the case for the half-built tele ( DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan hotrails on a mahogany body, this one is going to ROCK ), and I think, yeah, when I want to go to a session I just pick up the 'zouk, because I know someone will always bring a guitar, and if they don't I can strum a chord on the 'zouk anyway.
PS does anyone know how to do "Traditional Irish Guitar" ? Can I learn it in 40 years, or will I have to go back and start again from the beginning ?
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
But they could afford pipes? And harps?!!!
Oh, and everyone in Ireland was " a common Irish farmer". Sheesh!
I *did* say the fiddle, or fidil, or whatever it happened to be called along the way was not the same, but you'd be surprised how similar it is. The Biran Boru harp is not the same as a modern concert harp. Medieval bagpipes are not the same as modern pipes. And it's documented fact that the modern type of instrument was being played for dancing in Ireland in the 1700s.
Also, what about all the Irish fiddle makers? They were all made in Italy, were they? Never mind the English, Welsh, Danish etc etc makers going way way back, and keeping pace with developments elsewhere.
Still, you've said so, so it must be true.
I don't suppose you've bothered to look any of this up, anywhere? Hmm?
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by ethical blend
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Well, show me. Or am I too believe that because you've said it, it must be accepted as fact? I can tell you must be well informed, doing your research on wikipedia (nice). And yes, the FOLK music of Ireland was passed on by the common people, maybe not all farmers but the majority I think. Commoners did not play the same music that people like O'Carolan did. So whatever... show me.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Pete... you might have an interest in the www.stewmac.com site, they have a current article (think it's still there) on how to make a not real pricey electric play and sound like a high end one... something along those lines. Anyway, they have good repair articles you may enjoy, they send them out weekly if you sign up, and keep the current one up for a week. Some are really good.
your non- Fender tele is welcome at our session for a blast...when are you coming to NJ???!!!!
Who knows what Traditional Irish Guitar is after all this! 40 years, ha ha!! You're Almost as old as I am!! We'll still be learning when we're back in nappies. Ugh...sorry.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
And benhall.1, the referance to the "Italian" violin was supposed to be taken as an example, just like the reference to the farmer. No Sh*t, but it was probably imported.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Actually benhall.1, if you want to take this up further, I would LOVE to argue with you some more. But I'm going to take fidkid's sage advice and skip over the rest of this discussion, since you and I are no longer anywhere near to being on topic. But feel free to email me with your "evidence".
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by MR.
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Ben... can't help posting. Trying to ignore this though.
BTW... can you date the five string fiddles like Oisin McCauley and Tony DeMarco play sometimes? Is that a modern thing or have they been around for a while?
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Hmmm...why does the antiquity matter?
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by TaoCat
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I dated a fiddle once. I don't want to talk about it though.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
"A Collection Of The Most Celebrated Irish Tunes" proper for the VIOLIN, German Flute or Hautboy Plearakeh na Rough set in the different divisions Bass and Corus as performed at the Subscription Concert by Senior Lorenzo Bocci, John and William Neal, Dublin, 1724.
The violin was there. The dance tunes were there. Not the medieval 'fiedel', but the Italianate designed violin.
Of course when you see guitar references in historical collections... it might have been a citterny-like-English guitar.. hmm..
RWM
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by WireHarp
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
As topics go, is this one-
1. a pathetic whining diatribe
2. a close minded, parochial screed
3. puffed-up, inane but vitriolic tripe
4. all of the above
If you don't like guitars, don't play music with guitarists! I'm sure they'd appreciate your going off into some pretected haven for the pure drop and leaving them alone.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Snakefingers
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
hey, love that insightful commentary on the blues. as one who has been nailed to the wood around this joint for allegedly knocking itm players---having actually knocked, never players, but ornamental styles (in admittedly polemic phraseology)---it is a kick to read this, because the originator of this thread HAS knocked players, along with not a mere ornamental style, but an entire musical tradition, and no one seems to have their panties in a twist about that.
what is being called "the dreadful BlooZ," here, is much like ITM in being a wonderful culture's centuries-old musical tradition, a deep well of heritage that like ITM expresses its people's suffering as well as their urge to jump for joy and shake their booties on saturday nights. like in ITM, sincere and gifted players of the blues, whether they originally come from that culture or not, open your heart when your hear them.
though it may come as news to the brilliant ethnomusicologist who began this thread, not a few of ireland's finest ITM musicians are reverent and deeply knowledgeable devotees of the blues in general and blues guitar in particular.
the silliness about music theory and sight-reading, and one instrument drowning out others, isn't really worth addressing.....there are lame players that know theory and lame players that do it all by ear. there are great players that know theory, and great players that do it all by ear. and a knucklehead on any instrument can wreck an ensemble.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by ceemonster
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I got a few notes out of a potato last night. ;(
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Lint - upon - Tweed
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
No, it hasn't.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by ocarolan
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yhaalhouse has his/her opinion as regards guitarists ruining
music, and we have to respect it.
Of course there’s no doubt there are a lot of guitarists ruining
music (not guitars, guitarists)
If you’re bad at the fiddle, the sound is so unbearable that
you’ll be stopped.
Guitarists seem to get away with more.
And lets’ be honest you’re going to come across a lot more
guitarists playing along to tunes they don’t know than say a
fiddler or piper.
But that should be the gripe – not guitars themselves which in
the right hands are wonderful.
Now of course the exact same problems would exist for some
who…I dunno…regularly plays ukulele for backing at
sessions !
However this thing about the "BlooZ", - I am very suspicious of
someone who rights off a whole genre of music,
it makes me take their views with a pinch of salt – to make
them less distasteful.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by BegF
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Bonjour yhaalhouse
shook 'em up didn't you?
(the strings are on me)
ukestrum
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by ukestrum
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yhaalhouse’s motif for this has just become clear to me from
reading this thread.
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/12792/comments#comment263278
Why would you pick on an instrument with such venom – this
must be a backlashstemmed from years of sniggers, name-
calling or eyes to heaven when the ukulele presented itself
from yhaalhouse’s bag of tricks.
That would get to you eventually, especially if from your point of
view guitarists were been accepted – and then they in turn
made some snidish comment about your childish looking
plinky plonky instrument (not my view, but you know, some
people can be so cruel!)
A few years of this and it would get to me too !
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by BegF
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
"As for the merits of guitar playing there are many examples such as Andy Irvine, Steve Cooney, Dennis Cahill - I rest my case." by Bannerman
I haven't read all the posts on this thread but add Dick Gaughan to your list. Btw, I think Steve Cooney's an excellent guitarist and not bad on mandolin either.
This thread has got to be a wind-up !
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Strathfoyle
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Yhaal... I think you're missing the point of why we play music... isn't it to give us some sort of intrinsic sense of worth and satisfaction? Ok, it's clear that many don't know how to resolve a German, Italian or French Augmented 6th chord, or what the heck a tritone is... but it is equally clear that everyone that plays in a session, string quartet, rock band, etc. is truely enjoying the experience. I really can't accept the attitude that any one instrument is destroying music as a whole. Anyone is permitted to dislike the sound of an instrument, but I don't think you can scapegoat one group of instruments/players for a genre of music that has gone stale for you... I think the Nazi's tried something like that about 70 years ago... By the way, the augmented 6th chords mentioned above usually resolve to the dominant. That bears no weight when talking about the sociology of perpetuating a cultural tradition...
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by pastrings
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Is a chord augmented when both a guitar and a zouk play it at the same time? Or is it diminished?
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by AlBrown
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
100 postings! Not bad!!!
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by yhaalhouse
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
So yhaalhouse, are you going to participate in this discussion you started? Or just gloat about how long it is?
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by AlBrown
The Joy of South London Restaurant Cuisine...
Plunka! Plunka!
Plonkety Plonk!
Plunka! Plunka!
Plonk! Plonk!
altogether now...
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by yhaalhouse
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Ah – I was right so.
Someone’s hurt your feelings before Yhaalhouse – haven’t they.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by BegF
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I *really* maybe need to go back to drinking coffee... and here I thought "the Dreadful BlooZ" was some sort of rock band! Good name though for a punk band or something.
This has got to be a for fun wind up, though I do believe you really hate guitars... if not, it sure has become one. I am often criticized by non ITM friends for being so tunnel visioned on ITM, I don't listen to much else at all, other Celtic sorts of music, yes that too, but not much out of that range. I sure wouldn't condemn a whole genre though that way. No one is forcing you to listen to it. Unless you have a teenage kid in the car with you.
When I step out of character and listen to other music, it tends towards old country (USA..... give me the Carter Family any day, Maybelle Carter was a great guitarist, and even the autoharp sounded good backing the guitar melody, and the pure, unaffected singing is heartrending) Old Blues and early jazz bands. I like the Andrews Sisters type sound too... funny, nothing modern at all. The most modern I seem to get is.... Motown, but that's a nostalgia thing from my teen years, school dances etc. I don't own any CDs or anything. If it comes on the radio I will enjoy it a while is all.
I stay in my comfort zone as far as music goes, and continue to "not broaden my horizons" much, but won't knock the rest of it or any instrument in particular. The reason for the 90% focus on Celtic listening.... it's not a passive activity for me, it's an active one, it's not just background music, I am taking it in on many levels and thinking about how to play this or that part of it or a new tune.... in fact while listening, learning them in my head (again.... total ear player) so to be able to play them later on. It is nearly impossible for me to listen to it as background music, even at a party or something, I won't focus on the chatter or people, but on the tunes. Maybe it's a form of obsessive compulsive disorder.... I worry sometimes, LOL!
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
What instrument do you play, yhaalhouse?
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by AlBrown
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
I agree with yhaalhouse, those albums Paul Brady recorded in the 70s would be really good if it wasn't for all that plinkety plonk stuff he does with that horrible six-stringed instrument. He definitely sent ITM back into the dark ages with all that revival stuff. It was really alive and well until people like him, and Arty McGlynn, and Daithi Sproule, came along and started ruining the tradition. It should have stayed where it belonged, accompanied by a snare drum, and an untuned piano being beaten into submission by wild-eyed Ceili musicians. Let's face it, the moronic bashing on the Peoples/Brady album, the McGann/Brady album, the albums with Andy Irvine, Matt Molloy, Paddy Glackin, Liam O'Flynn et. al. is vastly inferior to the sensitive, subtle accompaniment of those Ceili musicians of the 1960s.
Likewise, all those talentless American gobsh*tes like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, and Lightnin' Hopkins, playing away on their cheap, home-repaired, begged, borrowed and stolen guitars in the 20s and 30s were just Satan's slaves, sent into the world to destroy the heaven-sent glory of the music-hall song and the searing beauty of psalms sung to the sound of the organ. In fact, the only truly traditional instrument in Irish music is the organ. It was only because the English made it a hanging offence to play Bach in Irish churches that ITM as we know it developed, and it was a sad day when the English left Ireland (almost), and stopped hanging guitarists and bouzouki players from the treetops. Bring back the English, I say, and let them regulate sessions . We are crying out for the snare drum, and the untuned piano once again. Please visit my website: https://musicmustbecontrolledbysmallmindedpeoplewholiketoapplymeaninglessgeneralisations.org, and sign the petition.
Down with the revival! Ban guitars and bouzoukis! Snare drums rock!
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Dragut Reis
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Oh yeah, and Django Reinhardt: what a tosser! F**king noodlers, eh?
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Dragut Reis
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
"I think the Nazis tried something like that about 70 years ago."
yhaalhouse wins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by wormdiet
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Touché.
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by Dragut Reis
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
You're right, worm... bad form on my part... but the point was made
# Posted on February 28th 2007 by pastrings
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
It's a vastly democratic instrument. Pretty much anyone can afford one and learn a few basic chords to try and sing along to (and a busker doing justice to the vocals of early Dylan or Dubliners stuff can sound good doing just that). It's just wearing when someone plays it in the wrong way in the wrong place.
# Posted on March 1st 2007 by nicholas
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Isn't there some other super-nerd law that says the posting of anything invoking Godwins Law automatically revokes it?
# Posted on March 1st 2007 by FiddleFancy
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Curvy - you have my thanks for a good laugh and for introducing Godwin's Law to me as well.
Did anyone make any Nazi comparisons in the Dose/Bodran thread, I wonder?........ or the entertaining-of -the-punters yea or nay thread?
Thank God for super-nerds and guitarists!
# Posted on March 3rd 2007 by morning star
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
No it's not ruined all music-just trad for the last 10yrs! But we need to keep the guitar in Trad - otherwise what are all those wannabe musicians who don't have the work ethic to actually learn loads of tunes going to do? (I'm a guitarist and think we should be banned from "accompanying" trad-if we can't play the tunes don't let us sit down!)
www.hakanozel.com
# Posted on June 24th 2007 by hakanozel
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
So that is a yes then!
# Posted on June 24th 2007 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
It hasn't ruined music, it's just ruined the generation.
# Posted on June 24th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Can't believe I just wasted a few minutes of my life reading this thread. I want those moments back again.
# Posted on June 24th 2007 by Dr. Dow
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
My "So that is a yes then" relates to a question I asked of hakanozel in another thread rather than any kind of affirmation of the ludicrous notions in this thread which I was glad to see the back of the last time it was commented on.
# Posted on June 24th 2007 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Why was this thread resurrected? It's not the guitar that's to blame but the guitarists!
# Posted on June 25th 2007 by Bannerman
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Some of us lowly guitar strummers would indeed like to learn to accompany ITM. Can someone suggest where we would find suggested chord patterns for specific tunes? This would be a place for us to start, as it seems from some of the comments above that we would NOT be welcome to come to some sessions with our guitars and begin to learn by listening to/watching/learning from more experienced guitarists.
As an aside, what is Irish Tradtional Music? Let's say a singer is singing 'Spancil Hill ' while accompanying herself with faily baisc chords on her guitar . Is this irish Traditional music? I believe 'Spancil Hill' is a popular IRISH song, I think it's 'TRADITIONAL' ( a very poorly defined term of course), and is she is any way musical, then it is indeed MUSIC? I heard the director of the Irish Traditionl Music Archive on TV recently saying that the said archive included recordings of Heavy Metal groups playng traditonal tunes. Is that ITM?
# Posted on September 26th 2007 by harmonic miner
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
It has ruined music for snobs that can't stand any kind of music but their own. Get a life!
# Posted on November 10th 2007 by flyingace
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
flying grace--
saliency...musicians are musicians...their instruments are only conduits or mediums...too much elitism on this site per typical
# Posted on February 9th 2011 by jasbas
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
We've had people b*tching about the people doing all the b*tching. So I'm going to b*tch about the people who b*tch about the people who are doing all the b*tching. You're all just b*tches. Now if someone b*tches about me, they'll be b*tching about the people who b*tch about the people who b*tch about the people who are doing all the b*tching. See how pointless and never-ending it is?
# Posted on February 9th 2011 by Dr. Dow
Re: Guitar- has it ruined all music for over a generation now?
Hmm, must remember to log off if I use thesession.org at my workplace
# Posted on February 9th 2011 by Dr. Dow