can posh instruments play folk music?

Subject: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 04:05 PM

just seen a slide for guitar playing - two hundred and fifty quid. probably more than Robert Johnson ever got paid for his entire recorded output.....and you wonder, are you sure Hank done it this way?

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Musket
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 04:11 PM

£220.00 if you buy it direct from that egalitarian socialist Martin Simpson!

💰

Here's something for the tit trousered brigade, considering all the waffle about traditional music, and that guitars are a fairly recent idea in the grand scheme of things, some joker last year told me my carbon fibre guitar had no place in folk music.

Odd because being a very clear sound, (no bracing) it allows the voice to be the main component of the song.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 04:24 PM

Thought this was going to be thread about oboes, bassoons, flugelhorns and the like: seen them all used in folk music (notably Paul Sartin on oboe). And personally I love brass instruments in folk, e.g Brass Monkey.
Can you get those slides cheaper on Black Friday, I wonder?

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 04:35 PM

Well Martin Simpson can definitely play folk music, and he's got some very posh instruments indeed - far posher than any of mine - so I'd say "Yes, they can". 👍

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 05:42 PM

The last posh instrument I saw was in South Wales. It was a glam organ.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 05:47 PM

What isn't a posh instrument? Paper and comb?

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 06:08 PM

I reckon harps are dead posh.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Nov 14 - 06:22 PM

.. well.. in this mad sad world of bizarrely distorted values..

I rarely ever pay more than half retail price for any brand new music gear...

gotta love end of line clearance sales...


All 3 Korg Volca analog synths for total £225 - yeah.. now I finally got 'em...!!! 😍😎

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Musket
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 02:49 AM

Strawhead's big thing was using a French Horn. Went spanking with the Crimean War songs.

I mentioned on a different thread the other day that some of the clubs I go to, if the pub caught fire and we ran out leavig our instruments, the guitar bill alone would be eye watering.. At a club in South Yorkshire, with only eight of us playing, (some bringing more than one guitar) we had three Taylors (nothing less than a 5) a Martin, two Rainsongs, a Reiner, a Collings, a Lowden and a Gibson Hummingbird.

Can posh instruments etc? Appears so...

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 03:25 AM

All those guitars, and only three decent ones among them! 😃😃😃

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 03:44 AM

Touché, Topsie. Depends what you do with them, though.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 03:50 AM

Cecil Sharp's piano arrangements of folksongs have often been criticized. Some seem to work, some don't. But a year or so ago, in Hungary, I picked up a CD of Bela Bartok playing some of his own folkmusic arrangements. Now these I do like!

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 04:27 AM

yes, but in my opinion it is more important to have instruments well set up, so they are playing to their maximium potential.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw penurious gleaner
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 06:30 AM

Sorry, that was me cocking up. My poshest diatonic harmonica cost me £32.99. But, in my defence, I do have two of 'em.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: TheSnail
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 07:07 AM

That Italian import the violin seems to have caught on.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Musket
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 07:42 AM

Well, you've obviously clocked my Rainsong and Reiner from the list. What was the third? The Gibson?

😎

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 08:01 AM

Words like 'In', 'Your' and 'Dreams' spring to mind, but I wouldn't dream of saying them and risk spoiling a burgeoning friendship! 😜😎

The Martin(s), Lowden and Collings aren't too bad either, nor the one you omitted - Bob C's Fylde!

Mmmmm, Collings..........can anyone smell GAS? 😳

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Musket
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 08:31 AM

Ah, well... Wrong club, wrong night.. Bob Cosmic's Fylde by the way was going to be my Fylde up till me getting an Albert Special. I love Fyldes, hence my Reiner having a zero fret. If Carlsberg made guitars, every one would have a zero fret.... (Never knowingly drunk the stuff but their adverts obviously work.)

The Collings was the same one, as were mine but I was thinking of Tickhill Club. Same rules apply that night you refer to though, and throw in another Reiner...

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 04:00 PM

Tickhill....that used to be rough....!

lot of money in drug dealing though...

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 29 Nov 14 - 05:55 PM

Stockbroker belt now Al. 👍

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 01:36 AM

Or are you confusing Tickhill with Maltby? Maltby is the pit-town two or three miles along the road from Bawtry to Rotherham.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 03:39 AM

Simple difference.

Tickhill.
They aren't burying their dead, they prop them up at bus stops.

Maltby
They aren't burying their dead, they're eating 'em.

Funny how a thread about being posh ends up with us discussing Maltby? Is there something we are missing here?

(For the uninitiated, Open All Hours was set in Maltby.)

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 03:48 AM

that explains a lot. all those buggers playing bingo at the WMC were stockbrokers. no wonder they didn't run a flyer.....

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 03:50 AM

you can explain that last witticism to Jim Carroll and all the other experts in working class music....

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 04:13 AM

ROTFLMAO, Musket - couldn't put it better! 😄

When they were filming Open All Hours one time, I saw Ronnie Barker going in to one of our local antique shops. I don't think he recognised me though. 😳

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Johnny J
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 04:40 AM

What a ridiculous conversation.

There are no "posher" instruments than the harp, violin etc and quite a few others which are regularly used for the performance of traditional music. They are just as likely to found within a grand concert hall as down the pub.

Some of the examples above could be more accurately described as "modern" as opposed to "posh".

Are we talking about folk music or traditional music here, as a matter of interest? Many of us us make a distinction.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Johnny J
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 04:45 AM

"Some of the examples above could be more accurately described as "modern" as opposed to "posh".   "

Or is the suggestion that "posh"= "expensive"?
This doesn't mean that something is classy.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: G-Force
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 05:11 AM

I certainly like to keep my concertina away from strong sunlight and extreme temperatures. So if I was on a slow boat to China, it would have to be 'port out, starboard home'.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 06:44 AM

all this makes me a pleb. I would be happy to be insulted by a politician though.
2 Bodhrans (2 red), 6 spoons (2 red), 3 sugar tongs (spoons turned 360), shaky egg (red and like a skull) - oh and a voice of some sort (red and raw).
Posh? Well the bodhran beaters I had made specially were an eye-watering cost. They are in walnut (I only bring them for the crack).

I'll get my coat.........

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,MikeL2
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 06:56 AM

Hi

Posh is certainly NOT classy....David Mellor and Andrew Mitchell !!!

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 07:00 AM

Eddie Pickford once said that our old mate Jim Irvine's percussive instruments of paper & comb and spoons meant that he was the only one in the folk world who could replace all his instruments at WILKINSON's

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 07:16 AM

Hurdy-gurdy is an odd one. They must always have been fabulously expensive, given how complicated they are to make. But apart from their representations in mediaeval churches, they are usually depicted as being played by blind ragged beggars who couldn't even have afforded to keep them in strings. Something doesn't add up.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 07:40 AM

A violin can't play folk.

A fiddle, otoh...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 09:21 AM

A cynical view might be that teaming up with a blind ragged beggar would be a way for a hurdy-gurdy owner to get a better return on his investment.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 03:09 PM

A busker is not a beggar. Until about 1900, the expenses of an instrument (or dish, etc.) were mainly due to the material, not the work (unless wealthy customers insisted on the very best craftsmen, as in northern Italy).

There have always been fans of folk music among wealthy people, who could afford expensive and showy instruments - to be played by employees or freelance musicians. On the other hand, it would not be wise to play an expensive instrument in a pub.

Performers of the present-day Folk scene should choose their instruments according to their "message". As we observed many times, Cecil Sharp played on a Steinway conveys an image not to all listeners' taste. This problem is about sound and cultural history, not primarily about money and "poshness".

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,Ripov
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 03:58 PM

No instrument is specific (though it may be traditional) to folk or any other music unless deliberately specified by the composer (and even this is often honoured in the breach rather than the observance)- musicians play various types of music on whatever instrument they are capable of playing and have to hand. And a violin is a fiddle, just as a double bass, nykelharpa, rebec, viol or anything played with a bow is (possibly excepting the "musical" saw).
Does "traditional" furniture need to be made with a pole lathe and stone knives?

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 04:51 PM

I think most instruments can be posh but take the harp as an example- from Lyres and zithers to full sized pedal harp is a wide range. Historically the harp family was among the earliest documented instruments. I think the only thing posh about most harp varieties is today's prices.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 05:03 PM

Until about 1900, the expenses of an instrument (or dish, etc.) were mainly due to the material, not the work

An instrument that takes a month's work to make is going to cost at least a month's wages to buy.

The material is often chosen simply because if you're putting weeks of work into something your customers are going to want it to last. Hence boxwood for most woodwinds and blackwood for others. There is no surviving fragment of any early Highland pipe chanter made out of native timber; they were all made of imported African timbers, back to around 1500. (And probably none was ever made in the Highlands, either).

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: TheSnail
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 06:00 PM

A violin can't play folk.

A fiddle, otoh...

I once heard tell of an American fiddler who was aked the difference between a violin and a fiddle. He replied, "The nut on the end of the bow.". The enquirer went away contented.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 06:09 PM

An instrument that takes a month's work to make is going to cost at least a month's wages to buy.

Wages were very low in relation to property. Owners of land, ships, and similar resources could easily afford hosts of artisans, servants etc.

The sort of buskers who were considered "beggars" may have hired their instruments, or received them as donations when dismissed from the military.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,ripov
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 07:08 PM

I just googled "Guitar prices". The first two in the list were
Harley Benton CG-45 NS £ 38.04
Gibson J 250 Monarch £13,382.48

So if folk music is best played on "not posh" instruments........hands up those who would buy the £38 instrument to play down the pub.

Mind, it'd be good to have six months wages to spend on an old fiddle!

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 30 Nov 14 - 07:41 PM

My hand is up, Ripov. Then I could tell people I own a Harley, and they'd think it was a pricey Harley-Davidson Motorcycle.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 12:45 AM

My friend plays folk music on an EWI, electronic wind instrument. Surely folk music can be played on anything, since anything othere than a bone flute is not a traditional instrument, most instruments postdating the Childe ballads?

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Musket
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 05:52 AM

My violin teacher used to say that "only uncouth common people" play fiddles. What the hell she was doing teaching in a school in a mining town stuffed with us "common" people, I never did work out. Still, she had nice legs and taught me to love Vivaldi, so it wasn't all bad.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 07:24 AM

Ever heard of the Court of Miracles? The place where the blind can see and the lame walk.
Elena from Sedrenn was a copy-typist when she came to Jack Hayward's harp class in the 1980s. Jack was out chatting to his missus, who ran the place, and I was holding forth as you know I can on summat, when Elena walked in wanting a taster. There was a spare harp, so I sat her down, and showed her hand position. She rented the harp that evening, took it home, and had trouble the next day because her flatmates needed to concentrate when she wanted to practice - so she took it out down onto the street. Robin Adair iirc. After her practice, she looked up and discovered more money in front of her than she had earned that day. Within a week she had six tunes, and had given up typing in favour of busking. Within a year she'd gone pro.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,Ripov
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 08:39 AM

@Leeneia - then someone would blame you for the dent in their Fender!

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 09:37 AM

Good one, Ripov!

It's a coincidence, but my 75-year-old brother just bought himself a Fender Stratocaster, an instrument he has been wanting for years. I gather I'm supposed to bow down and worship.

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 06:38 PM

it could explain why these instruments are so hard to play. they resent the lowly task they have been set. not to mention the lowly practicioners of folk music

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: GUEST,rripov
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 06:52 PM

My fiddle loves me!!! (except it sometimes sulks if I play another one)

Subject: RE: can posh instruments play folk music?
From: AlbertsLion
Date: 01 Dec 14 - 07:17 PM

My sousaphone (Suzy) frequently accompanies me to folk sessions - she's not posh, in fact "she's loud and she's big and she's brassy, the music goes round and around,I bought her on impulse off e bay, and she cost a lot more than a pound"