I've heard a lot of banjo players attempting to play music on the fiddle recently, with most outcomes being pretty aweful. It leads me to the question, does being a banjo player put you at a disposition to be a bad fiddle player? The two instruments have some common ground, left hand finger positions are somewhat similar, but this could possibly be the reason so many banjoists try to pick up fiddle with the idea that it'll be an easy switch. Chumps.
So what do all you think? And before you start responding with a list of banjo players you think are great fiddle players, remember I'm talking about decent traditional irish fiddle playing (producing good tone from the instrument, solid technique, tasteful choice of variations and ornamentations, evidence of stylisation, etc. music you could imagine people listening to in 50 years time), not flash-in-the-pan commercial releases or homosexual sauna music.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
FWIW:
Cathal Hayden plays ITM on both instruments quite acceptably, IMHO. Some of his work is available on Youtube for your assessment.
I have picked up a tenor 4-string for a tune or two on occasion myself, and did not find the instrument was an advantage or a disadvantage to the fiddle, any more than bouzouki or saz. How you would fare is up to you.
Clearly ornamentation and interpretation were very dissimilar challenges for two such different musical "voices".
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
"The two instruments have some common ground, left hand finger positions are somewhat similar, but this could possibly be the reason so many banjoists try to pick up fiddle with the idea that it'll be an easy switch."
I think that sums it up. A (tenor) banjo player could conceivably pick up a fiddle for the first time in their life and get a tune out of it. The chances are it would sound scratchy and out of tune, but they already have the basic know how (They know roughly where the notes are on the strings and as for bowing, what could be easier? You just scrape it back and forth). A flute or concertina or accordion player doesn't have this luxury - they'd have no choice but to start with the basics. So your are likely to come across a lot of banjo players who 'have a go' at the fiddle. Perhaps some of them, realising that they can get a tune out of it without too much difficulty, decide to start playing it in sessions regularly, thinking their tone, technique etc. will just get better with time (without any thought for those that have to suffer in the interim).
However, I think that ultimately it comes down to putting the work in. I can't think of any reason why, if a good banjo player puts as much efort into learning the fiddle as they did learning the banjo, they couldn't also become a good fiddler. Whatever small advantage a banjo player has, in terms of fingering, over players of other instruments switching to fiddle, is probably very quickly evened out. What is more important, I think, in learning any second instrument is that, through playing your first instrument, you have already developed an aural and kinaesthetic understanding of music - i.e. you re familiar with how tunes are held together and move from one bit to the next, and you are familiar with the process of playing a note, hearing it and knowing intitively how to play the next note.
"tasteful choice of variations and ornamentations, evidence of stylisation, etc."
If you already do it on the banjo, then why wouldn't you be able to do it on the fiddle? They might not necessarily be *the same* variations and ornaments, as different instruments lend themselves to different ways of treating a tune. But if you have managed to familiarise youself enough with the characteristics of the banjo to play tastefully on that instrument, why would you not be able to do so on the fiddle.
BTW, I speak as a mandolin player who plays the fiddle not nearly as well as the mandolin because:
1. I haven't been playing as long
2. I haven't put as much work into it
3. I don't play it as often, because my standards are higher than when I started on mandolin and it sounds awful.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
I've gone the other way... no not that way... I've recently switched from fiddle to banjo. Before the fiddle it was bouzouki to mandolin.
I'm not particularly hot on any of the instruments, but there is the big (and obvious) advantage that the LH fingering is similar.
The big problem with the fiddle is that it takes a lifetime to master so everyone's cr@p when they first start out. I hear plenty of awful fiddle players who've never been anywhere near a banjo.
How did you get to hear so much homo-sauna-music Worz?
re sacrificial banjos,immolation was the best thing that could have happened to it given the state of the neck.
fifths in tune or octaves in tune-but never both,lol.
i still have the pegs somewhere even though the ashes were last spotted floating down the Thames.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Homoesexual sauna music? A set comprised of The King of the Fairies with Hot Asphalt?
To answer the question, why can't they? I'm a fiddler who tortures a banjo periodically, and I know if I spent 10+ years playing banjo too, I might not stink at it, like I kinda don't stink on the fiddle.
The big different is the picking versus the bowing, obviously. The thing that gets me is this: "Why the heck do I have to make 47 different goofy little movements with the pick when I can just make ONE sweep with the bow?"
...and, armed with that logic, I put the banjo back down for a while...
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
"hey,granama - i think i know you but am not sure!"
Yeah, you know me alright. I'm the one with the beard, the horns and the fish's tail.
If your banjo was really that bad, then perhaps I'm lucky I didn't know you back then, lest you had thought better of drowning it.
"the ashes were last spotted floating down the Thames."
I heard they got washed up near Skegness, where they formed a little ridge, thus preventing the North Sea from swallowing up the whole of Lincolnshire. You should really consider the consequences of your actions, Dave.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Playing a fiddle in a sauna? Gay, straight or bi, it's not going to sound right, is it, what with the humidity? Thats what they invented synthetic banjo skins for.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
I personally know three players that have successfully made the transition from banjo to fiddle. Two of them are some of the best fiddlers I know.
In talking to one of them the other day about this very fact, he said that it felt like it took him a few years to stop "picking with the bow". Not so much changing bow strokes every note (which i know some non-banjo player fiddlers that do that, and it drives me crazy), but learning how to use the bow to express himself.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
I play guitar, mandolin and banjo. I often joke with the fiddle player in the group that as soon as they put frets on a fiddle I'll learn that instrument too.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
"Ptarmigan" did it, very successfully, too. As Hugo C says above, so did Dermie Diamond. I could also add Nigel Boullier up in Belfast. John Carty was playing both fiddle and banjo, and I'm told , flute all very well, when he was about 16. Don't know which order they came in.
Gerry O'Connor ( from Tipperary, ) is another.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
P.S. - all the above are more than "decent" players on both instruments. Can't comment on the criteria of your last sentence. By the way, just what type om music do they play in these "homosexual saunas" you frequent. Just curious, you know.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Thanks "Hugo". By the way, I 've just remembered I have a copy of a photo which was put up on the internet a couple of years ago ( possibly by "kilfarboy" ) of a certain young M.Hayes as a member of the Tulla Ceili Band - holding a banjo !!!
Nice one "leoj"
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Kenny - have seen video of Tulla Ceili Band with M.Hayes playing banjo and from what I remember he was v good on it indeed. Think he was playing a Lange Challenger banjo on that recording, but could be wrong, only saw the clip the once and it was playing in a pub on small TV behind the bar.
For any of you wondering what I was referring to by 'homosexual sauna music' - was just a comment put up to see if it'd get a reaction, which it did!
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Oh, I got (unfortunately) the lyrics. I was just wondering who WorzelGrummidge really was, and why anybody that would listen to that garbage, let alone post it their profile, would be doing on this site. Unless somebody is masquerading.
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
or mixerading,even.
'For any of you wondering what I was referring to by 'homosexual sauna music' - was just a comment put up to see if it'd get a reaction, which it did!'
ah,that's ok then,sure,fine,ok-we all believe you,i'm certain.
no hint of protesting too much at all.
Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
I've heard a lot of banjo players attempting to play music on the fiddle recently, with most outcomes being pretty aweful. It leads me to the question, does being a banjo player put you at a disposition to be a bad fiddle player? The two instruments have some common ground, left hand finger positions are somewhat similar, but this could possibly be the reason so many banjoists try to pick up fiddle with the idea that it'll be an easy switch. Chumps.
So what do all you think? And before you start responding with a list of banjo players you think are great fiddle players, remember I'm talking about decent traditional irish fiddle playing (producing good tone from the instrument, solid technique, tasteful choice of variations and ornamentations, evidence of stylisation, etc. music you could imagine people listening to in 50 years time), not flash-in-the-pan commercial releases or homosexual sauna music.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by WorzelGummidge
Re: Kein Name,kein Bio,kein Pack Drill...
the one does not negate the other.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by biggus dave
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
The member Greenwiggle is equally as brilliant on fiddle as he is on banjo.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by camwebby
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
FWIW:
Cathal Hayden plays ITM on both instruments quite acceptably, IMHO. Some of his work is available on Youtube for your assessment.
I have picked up a tenor 4-string for a tune or two on occasion myself, and did not find the instrument was an advantage or a disadvantage to the fiddle, any more than bouzouki or saz. How you would fare is up to you.
Clearly ornamentation and interpretation were very dissimilar challenges for two such different musical "voices".
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by Rook
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
W G said: 'most outcomes being pretty aweful'
did you mean pretty bad or did you mean full of awe?
i'm also intrigued as to what 'homosexual sauna music' might sound like on the fiddle so could you give an example,please?
or indeed any music that fits into that niche.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by biggus dave
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
btw,did not John Carty turn his adept hand to the fiddle from the banjo?
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by biggus dave
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
How long have these banjo players been learning fiddle? It takes a while, you know.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by kennedy
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
"The two instruments have some common ground, left hand finger positions are somewhat similar, but this could possibly be the reason so many banjoists try to pick up fiddle with the idea that it'll be an easy switch."
I think that sums it up. A (tenor) banjo player could conceivably pick up a fiddle for the first time in their life and get a tune out of it. The chances are it would sound scratchy and out of tune, but they already have the basic know how (They know roughly where the notes are on the strings and as for bowing, what could be easier? You just scrape it back and forth). A flute or concertina or accordion player doesn't have this luxury - they'd have no choice but to start with the basics. So your are likely to come across a lot of banjo players who 'have a go' at the fiddle. Perhaps some of them, realising that they can get a tune out of it without too much difficulty, decide to start playing it in sessions regularly, thinking their tone, technique etc. will just get better with time (without any thought for those that have to suffer in the interim).
However, I think that ultimately it comes down to putting the work in. I can't think of any reason why, if a good banjo player puts as much efort into learning the fiddle as they did learning the banjo, they couldn't also become a good fiddler. Whatever small advantage a banjo player has, in terms of fingering, over players of other instruments switching to fiddle, is probably very quickly evened out. What is more important, I think, in learning any second instrument is that, through playing your first instrument, you have already developed an aural and kinaesthetic understanding of music - i.e. you re familiar with how tunes are held together and move from one bit to the next, and you are familiar with the process of playing a note, hearing it and knowing intitively how to play the next note.
"tasteful choice of variations and ornamentations, evidence of stylisation, etc."
If you already do it on the banjo, then why wouldn't you be able to do it on the fiddle? They might not necessarily be *the same* variations and ornaments, as different instruments lend themselves to different ways of treating a tune. But if you have managed to familiarise youself enough with the characteristics of the banjo to play tastefully on that instrument, why would you not be able to do so on the fiddle.
BTW, I speak as a mandolin player who plays the fiddle not nearly as well as the mandolin because:
1. I haven't been playing as long
2. I haven't put as much work into it
3. I don't play it as often, because my standards are higher than when I started on mandolin and it sounds awful.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by granama
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Biggus Dave - I'm still p****d off that you didn't give that banjo to me instead of sacrificing it to the gods.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by granama
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
>homosexual sauna music
What's that supposed to mean?
I take it that is meant to be derogatory
"bagno music"?
In this kind of sauna:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xd1eo_au-sauna_ads
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
I've gone the other way... no not that way... I've recently switched from fiddle to banjo. Before the fiddle it was bouzouki to mandolin.
I'm not particularly hot on any of the instruments, but there is the big (and obvious) advantage that the LH fingering is similar.
The big problem with the fiddle is that it takes a lifetime to master so everyone's cr@p when they first start out. I hear plenty of awful fiddle players who've never been anywhere near a banjo.
How did you get to hear so much homo-sauna-music Worz?
HBM
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by Horrace Bampton-Morris
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
John Carty..
some interesting articles here..
http://www.johncartymusic.com/press.asp
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Yes, undoubtedly, but it takes an awful lot of work!
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by jig
Re: burning banjos
hey,granama - i think i know you but am not sure!
re sacrificial banjos,immolation was the best thing that could have happened to it given the state of the neck.
fifths in tune or octaves in tune-but never both,lol.
i still have the pegs somewhere even though the ashes were last spotted floating down the Thames.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by biggus dave
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Homoesexual sauna music? A set comprised of The King of the Fairies with Hot Asphalt?
To answer the question, why can't they? I'm a fiddler who tortures a banjo periodically, and I know if I spent 10+ years playing banjo too, I might not stink at it, like I kinda don't stink on the fiddle.
The big different is the picking versus the bowing, obviously. The thing that gets me is this: "Why the heck do I have to make 47 different goofy little movements with the pick when I can just make ONE sweep with the bow?"
...and, armed with that logic, I put the banjo back down for a while...
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
"hey,granama - i think i know you but am not sure!"
Yeah, you know me alright. I'm the one with the beard, the horns and the fish's tail.
If your banjo was really that bad, then perhaps I'm lucky I didn't know you back then, lest you had thought better of drowning it.
"the ashes were last spotted floating down the Thames."
I heard they got washed up near Skegness, where they formed a little ridge, thus preventing the North Sea from swallowing up the whole of Lincolnshire. You should really consider the consequences of your actions, Dave.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by granama
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Playing a fiddle in a sauna? Gay, straight or bi, it's not going to sound right, is it, what with the humidity? Thats what they invented synthetic banjo skins for.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by granama
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
+so many banjoists try to pick up fiddle with the idea that it'll be an easy switch. Chumps+
I've known a few banjo and mandolin -ists who've gone on to learn fiddle but none who thought it would be easy.
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by Bren
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
I personally know three players that have successfully made the transition from banjo to fiddle. Two of them are some of the best fiddlers I know.
In talking to one of them the other day about this very fact, he said that it felt like it took him a few years to stop "picking with the bow". Not so much changing bow strokes every note (which i know some non-banjo player fiddlers that do that, and it drives me crazy), but learning how to use the bow to express himself.
But it can be done!
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by Reverend
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
That's exactly my problem but in reverse. I can't stop trying to bow with the pick!
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Sauna you than me...
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by maxF
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Dermie Diamond...
# Posted on April 30th 2008 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
I play guitar, mandolin and banjo. I often joke with the fiddle player in the group that as soon as they put frets on a fiddle I'll learn that instrument too.
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by CleverName
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
What a curious profile....
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by TaoCat
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Hey Clevertime,
You can start now...
http://www.frettedfiddle.com/
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by Duijera Dubh
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
"Ptarmigan" did it, very successfully, too. As Hugo C says above, so did Dermie Diamond. I could also add Nigel Boullier up in Belfast. John Carty was playing both fiddle and banjo, and I'm told , flute all very well, when he was about 16. Don't know which order they came in.
Gerry O'Connor ( from Tipperary, ) is another.
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by Kenny
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
P.S. - all the above are more than "decent" players on both instruments. Can't comment on the criteria of your last sentence. By the way, just what type om music do they play in these "homosexual saunas" you frequent. Just curious, you know.
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by Kenny
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
for TaoCat,here's a link to those lyrics...
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sirmixalot/babygotback.html
i think the clue might be in sirmixalot
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by biggus dave
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Kenny,
Banjo first.
I have some old tapes someone gave to me of him playing as a young fella.
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
The Killlarney Boys of Pleasure, perhaps?
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by leoj
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Thanks "Hugo". By the way, I 've just remembered I have a copy of a photo which was put up on the internet a couple of years ago ( possibly by "kilfarboy" ) of a certain young M.Hayes as a member of the Tulla Ceili Band - holding a banjo !!!
Nice one "leoj"
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by Kenny
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Yes - I had a vague recollection of hearing about Martin H's being a banjo player in a past life.
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by granama
Martin Hayes on the banjo
http://www.setdancingnews.net/news/bands.lp#Tulla
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by cferrie
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Ha - Deadly.
All this has given me an idea...
Now, all I need is a decent high res picture of Tansey, Photoshop, and an image of a banjo mandolin.....
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Kenny - have seen video of Tulla Ceili Band with M.Hayes playing banjo and from what I remember he was v good on it indeed. Think he was playing a Lange Challenger banjo on that recording, but could be wrong, only saw the clip the once and it was playing in a pub on small TV behind the bar.
For any of you wondering what I was referring to by 'homosexual sauna music' - was just a comment put up to see if it'd get a reaction, which it did!
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by WorzelGummidge
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Oh, I got (unfortunately) the lyrics. I was just wondering who WorzelGrummidge really was, and why anybody that would listen to that garbage, let alone post it their profile, would be doing on this site. Unless somebody is masquerading.
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by TaoCat
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
or mixerading,even.
'For any of you wondering what I was referring to by 'homosexual sauna music' - was just a comment put up to see if it'd get a reaction, which it did!'
ah,that's ok then,sure,fine,ok-we all believe you,i'm certain.
no hint of protesting too much at all.
# Posted on May 1st 2008 by biggus dave
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
Hugo - you'd want to give Tansey a melodeon, surely !
# Posted on May 2nd 2008 by Kenny
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
I am completely convinced. Nothing more than a chance off-hand comment. Nothing Freudian about that, nope, uh-uh.
Right.
# Posted on May 2nd 2008 by Rook
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
i have issues.
# Posted on May 2nd 2008 by WorzelGummidge
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
you should get some tissues then...
# Posted on May 2nd 2008 by biggus dave
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
# Posted on May 3rd 2008 by WorzelGummidge
Re: Can ITM banjo players make the switch to fiddle?
ABSOLUTELY NO !!!
It's too late,, don't even try.
# Posted on May 6th 2008 by hauke