yes, this could have been interesting ... if it wasn't for that twat.

So, for the record, what I said was:

"Of course accompaniment can lift the music, in many ways. But the only way it can lift the actual tune is by lifting the tune player i.e. indirectly. What accompaniment will always do, however, is obscure the tune. So it's a trade off. Can the accompanist lift the tune player enough to outweigh the obscuring? It's a big ask."


Anyway, I know it's just semantics, but the distinction between what the OCDM calls a chord and a "broken" chord interests me. One of the enduring qualities of tradition Irish dance tunes is their often harmonic ambiguity. I've never thought of it this way, but it's as if the harmony is broken.

So the accompanist must be aware of the ways they obscure the tune. Firstly, and most obviously, by simply making noises that aren't the tune. Secondly, and more subtly yet more damaging, by "fixing" the broken harmony. I use the word "fixing" as two of its definitions:
Fixing as in "mending". A tune's harmonic ambiguity does not ask to be mended. If you mend it , you loose a lot of it's beauty.
Fixing as in sticking. for example, fixing a bracket to a wall. A players ability to play harmonic and rhythmic variations is severely hindered when the tune is fixed to a wall.



listen to this fella.
A "must buy" CD for anyone who likes diddley music. Especially strummers.

http://macdara.bandcamp.com/album/ego-trip