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Chords in Folk?

GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice 14 May 08 - 04:59 PM
WalkaboutsVerse 14 May 08 - 04:52 PM
GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice 14 May 08 - 04:28 PM
GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie 14 May 08 - 04:24 PM
Don Firth 14 May 08 - 04:15 PM
GUEST,The Mole Catcher's Unplugged Apprentice 14 May 08 - 03:51 PM
GUEST,Volgadon 14 May 08 - 02:23 PM
PoppaGator 14 May 08 - 01:49 PM
WalkaboutsVerse 14 May 08 - 01:41 PM
PoppaGator 14 May 08 - 01:13 PM
The Sandman 14 May 08 - 12:45 PM
WalkaboutsVerse 14 May 08 - 12:43 PM
Dave Hanson 14 May 08 - 10:16 AM
Jack Blandiver 14 May 08 - 07:53 AM
Jack Blandiver 14 May 08 - 07:20 AM
WalkaboutsVerse 14 May 08 - 06:16 AM
Don Firth 13 May 08 - 09:20 PM
Leadfingers 13 May 08 - 07:49 PM
Jack Campin 13 May 08 - 05:26 PM
GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice 13 May 08 - 02:00 PM
WalkaboutsVerse 13 May 08 - 12:42 PM
The Sandman 13 May 08 - 12:37 PM
PoppaGator 13 May 08 - 11:30 AM
Dave Hanson 13 May 08 - 10:10 AM
M.Ted 13 May 08 - 09:49 AM
GUEST,Volgadon 13 May 08 - 09:38 AM
WalkaboutsVerse 13 May 08 - 09:28 AM
Marje 13 May 08 - 08:08 AM
Darowyn 13 May 08 - 07:50 AM
The Fooles Troupe 13 May 08 - 07:15 AM
WalkaboutsVerse 13 May 08 - 05:12 AM
Jack Campin 12 May 08 - 07:00 PM
GUEST,The Mole catcher's unplugged Apprentice 12 May 08 - 05:32 PM
PoppaGator 12 May 08 - 05:20 PM
GUEST,Volgadon 12 May 08 - 05:12 PM
GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice 12 May 08 - 04:42 PM
WalkaboutsVerse 12 May 08 - 04:31 PM
GUEST,Nitten Regular 12 May 08 - 03:23 PM
GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice 12 May 08 - 03:13 PM
WalkaboutsVerse 12 May 08 - 08:22 AM
Stu 12 May 08 - 06:32 AM
Jack Campin 12 May 08 - 06:13 AM
GUEST,Volgadon 12 May 08 - 05:28 AM
Jack Blandiver 12 May 08 - 05:26 AM
WalkaboutsVerse 12 May 08 - 05:08 AM
WalkaboutsVerse 12 May 08 - 04:59 AM
Tootler 11 May 08 - 05:41 PM
Jack Campin 11 May 08 - 05:35 PM
WalkaboutsVerse 11 May 08 - 04:36 PM
GUEST,Volgadon 11 May 08 - 04:06 PM
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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 14 May 08 - 04:59 PM

"Ever been in a folk-club and heard the group/the majority voice the complaint - that's not the right tune!/that's not how it goes!"

I tend to ignore people like that, either that or "If you know how to sing it why aren't you up here?" Usually shuts'em up (if they're ignorant enough in the first place to commit such an action, which generally they're not. (We are civilized in the colonies you know *LOL*)

Charlotte R


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 May 08 - 04:52 PM

No, M., I agree with Don, and what he said fits with an early music programme presented by Charles Hazelwood a couple of years ago on the Beeb - except for what I said just a few posts ago: the difference between what folks are aware/capable of and what they choose to do. Ever been in a folk-club and heard the group/the majority voice the complaint - that's not the right tune!/that's not how it goes! That's tradition.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 14 May 08 - 04:28 PM

"Please don't try to tell me that peasants and serfs never heard any of this."


and WAV answers with a line from one of his earlier posts......

"these songs must have been PASSED DOWN" Of course thaey were, along with the song structures I wouldn't doubt. My feeling is that WAV firmly believes our ancestors were..ummm..ignorant peasants, so to speak, incapable of thought.

Charlotte R


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 14 May 08 - 04:24 PM

...I think walkabout verse is quite right, we should still be doin' it like it used to be done, no harmonies AND we all ought to wear breeches, pony tail periwigs and those natty shoes with the silver buckles like they used to wear back in those days!


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 May 08 - 04:15 PM

Just because one may find only a melody line written down does not mean there were not other things going on.

Many early music groups these days are concerned with the matter of authenticity, and want to perform the music with the same sound and in the same style in which it was originally performed. One aspect of this is using actual instruments of the period or the most accurate modern replicas they can find. Beyond this, they have the music itself to work from. And wherever possible, facsimiles of the music manuscripts in the composer's own hand, sometimes (although rarely) complete with dynamic markings and marginal notes.

However—much of this is left up to the individual musicians. Many works were written with melody line only, sometimes accompanied by a number or a couple of numbers under the staff and beneath each melody note. This is what is called a "figured bass," and suggests chords or chord inversions to the musicians who are not carrying the melody line, but playing in "parts."

Oftentimes the instruments themselves were not specified. You could use whatever instruments you had at hand, and pieces of early music may not always be played twice in a row with the same instruments or the same harmony lines. There was an improvisational quality to this kind of playing. Different in style, but not in approach to jazz, in which one starts with a melody line, then the musicians improvise around it.

A group of friends getting together to play—whatever instruments they happened to have, be it a "case of viols," and/or a lute or two, and/or a flute or "case of recorders," and/or a virginal (a small, portable harpsichord-like keyboard instrument that could be set on a table top). This sort of playing was an early form of what later became known as "chamber music."

This is not speculation on my part, folks. You can look this up in any good text on the history of music.

I cannot imagine that "the folk" were so isolated that occasional members of the class never heard music of this kind. Or that they were so unimaginative that it never occurred to them to try part-singing. After all, in churches and monasteries sometime in the 1100s, a bass line was added to plainchant. This was partly to accommodate singers with lower voices (basses and some baritones) who had trouble reaching the melody notes sung by the higher voices (light baritones, tenors).

Please don't try to tell me that peasants and serfs never heard any of this.

Don Firth


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's Unplugged Apprentice
Date: 14 May 08 - 03:51 PM

"in the style of Mcgonagle"


cringe -worthy is a term that immediatly comes to mind.....

and with that in mind I present the gathered august company with this

McGonagall Online

Charlotte R


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 14 May 08 - 02:23 PM

OUCH< I didn't think he could do worse than to rhyme situ with view, but the rhythm of that last one is painful, let alone how the rhymes seem to have been hammered in.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 14 May 08 - 01:49 PM

My point exactly ~ real musical traditions have always been passed down by ear, but the "evidence" you offer to support the claim that no one ever sang in harmony is all based upon written history and records of written music.

I realize that I can't prove that people understood, sang, and played harmony though the ages, and certainly before the delopment of musical notation. That's just my opinion; and while I truly believe this option is absolutely commonsensical, there's no way I can change the mind of someone whose opinion is different.

But, conversely, it is just as impossible (perhaps moreso, if there can be degrees of impossibility) to prove that human beings were somehow incapable of conceiving musical harmonies during any past era.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 May 08 - 01:41 PM

To CB - THE WEEKLY WALKABOUT, E.G. is NOT the GEM OF THE DAY!
To PG - they use common sense NOT "paranormal ability": many sailors, farmers, miners, etc. could neither read nor write English/Latin let alone music; thus, these songs must have been PASSED DOWN BY EAR.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 14 May 08 - 01:13 PM

"Traditions exist due to folks being impressed by how their forebears did things."

Naaaah ~ traditions exist because music and other folklore have long been passed from one living generation to the next, normally with absolutely no self-consciousness, no consciousness of "correctness" or conformity to any set of rules, and no pretense that anyone knew precisely how the long-dead members of earlier generations might have sounded, or what techniques they might have employed.

Young singers and musicians learning the old songs would normally, of course, be aware of following along as part of a local/clan/family tradition, but I seriously doubt that any felt the least need to scrupulously avoid adding of any element of their own style to what they learned from their elders. And I'm quite sure that no one back in the days of real traditions ~ as opposed to artificial academic constructs ~ ever cared the least about whether they were conforming to musical approaches or styles of earlier generations of "forebearers."

And as I've tried to point out on countless occasions, no one has ever known the actual sound of music made prior to the invention of recording technology. The unsophisticated "folk" of past eras, of course, took this for granted, and probably never gave a thought to the task of imitating some long-ago approach to performance.

Today, we have people who claim to know all about how people did and did not make music in past eras. Perhaps they're confused ~ we do know how some folks' music sounded as long ago as about one century, and perhaps these delusional souls figure that this means that they have some kind of additional paranormal ability to know how people sang and played ~ and that they NEVER sang or played in harmony ~ in the long-gone eras even before any music could be recorded.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 May 08 - 12:45 PM

in the style of Mcgonagle.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 May 08 - 12:43 PM

Eric the Who?!

Poem 149 of 230: FOR BETTER OR WORSE

Largely due to America,
    English - to use Italian -
Is now the world's lingua franca,
    Where, it seems, it once was Latin;
But, while brogues are a good thing,
    I doubt American spelling.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 14 May 08 - 10:16 AM

He keeps saying it in order to believe it, it's like the English attitude to learning foreign languages, we don't need to, if we shout at people they will understand us.

Keep shouting WAV

eric


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 May 08 - 07:53 AM

This just added to Folk vs Folk:

To quote WalkaboutsVerse on the Chords in Folk thread: Traditions exist due to folks being impressed by how their forebears did things, a notion which would at least have the appearance of plausibility about it. However the caveat must be that traditions only exist in the imaginations of the impressed, and that their forebears (or more likely not their forebears at all...) had no concept of tradition as we understand it today, much less The Tradition.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 May 08 - 07:20 AM

Traditions exist due to folks being impressed by how their forebears did things

But to what extent did this tradition actually exist in the first place? Was it perceived as such by the singers themselves? Or by objective outsiders seeing something that wasn't actually there?

In this context have a look at the Folk vs Folk thread which makes for sobering reading!


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 May 08 - 06:16 AM

By getting off my "arse", Jack I was already aware of everything you said in your last post - when I get back around to that lady's myspace, I shall re-read her blurb and let you know (she's a singer not an instumentalist).
To Leadfingers - you agree that there can be a difference between what folks are capable of and what they choose to do; E.g., many singers and musicians, in many genres, work things out on some kind of keyboard - that they may never play in public. Of course, folkies in England, e.g., would have known other possibilities but it seems they did love this unaccompanied singing of verses. I'll say it again - "Traditions exist due to folks being impressed by how their forebears did things" (here).


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 May 08 - 09:20 PM

Well, you see, it works like this:   when Cecil Sharp went around getting people to sing their old songs for him so he could write them down, the people he collected from didn't know for sure that he wasn't from the folk police. If he had been, and he'd caught a couple of people singing in harmony, or someone accompanying himself or herself on an old home-made banjo, or a guitar they bought from the Sears-Roebuck catalog, he might have issued them a ticket and they would have had to pay a heavy fine, which they could ill afford.

Don Firth


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 13 May 08 - 07:49 PM

I have been trying NOT to get involved in this thread , but WAV keeps on about the early collectors only collecting top line melodies and NOT harmonies ! For God's Sake - they were collecting from old men and women , sometimes residents of Workhouses ! WAV , do
you seriously think that IF there were more than one person in any one location who knew the same song as another , that they might possibly have sung together ? And possibly even tried to harmonise ?


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 May 08 - 05:26 PM

I'm coming round to M.Ted's point of view - trying to beat any sense into the head of someone who will only think in soundbites is a waste of time and continuing with it is in poor taste.

But I will make a final comment on this:

"a post-grad. folk-degree student from one of the Scandinavian countries (Norway, I think), who said on her blurb that their tradition was a soloistic one of unaccompanied singing"

Almost all Scandinavian cultures have many different coexisting folk genres. If WAV would get off his arse and go look for it, there is some utterly beautiful folk harmony there. At its most basic the soundworld of harmonic-spectrum instruments like the straight-tube no-holes whistle of Norway; at its most sophisticated the fiddle duet music of Sweden (with a harmonic system like nothing else in the world); the subtle sympathetic resonances you get with the Swedish nyckelharpa; and the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, perhaps the most technically sophisticated folk instrument any culture has produced.

These are not simply oddities that make a dialectical point, they are wonderful and moving sounds, and you'd be a fool not to look for a chance to hear them. (Something like them was the norm in British music in the late Middle Ages, when the crwth was heard everywhere).


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 13 May 08 - 02:00 PM

I do have a problem with people who don't have the guts to put their own names to what they write"

and there are a fair number of those aren't there.....?

and please WAV don't use me or any links I provide as any sort of "proof" of your bogus claims. Thank You

Charlotte R


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 May 08 - 12:42 PM

Parts 2 & 3 of "England, Whose England?" (which Mole., I think, mentioned on this, or the Pop Goes the Folk-Singer, thread) is quite relevant to the last few posts, I feel. - note what Sharp actually recorded and what he did with it.
(As for the sad evets in Myanmar, Ted, let's hope for a better universal respect for the UN in future, so that such suffering is at least reduced.)


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 May 08 - 12:37 PM

wav.I just heard two cuckoos,at the same time,they werent singing the same intervals.Harmonic Cuckoos.
you need to get out there and put them right.instruct them to do it in unison.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 13 May 08 - 11:30 AM

M. Ted, amen.

I suppose I should be embarrassed to have taken part at all, given how ridiculous some of the assertions have been and, more to the point, how completely unimportant the outcome could possibly be (if there ever is an outcome ~ that is, if anyone at all ever changes their mind!)

It just annoys me no end when anyone asserts, with such certainty, how the human race, since time immemorial, always and everywhere, did NOT express themselves musically.

But you're right, expressing my frustration at this kind of pedantry is nothing more than a waste of my time and yours, and in the grand scheme of things, matters not at all.

In my own defense, I have studiously avoided this thread for days at a time, but since it never seems to disappear off the bottom of the page, I have been periodiclly tempted to weigh in again and again, as though there were any possibility that, by rephrasing my arguments, I could actually have an impact on anyone's understanding


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 13 May 08 - 10:10 AM

WAV as any musician will tell you when playing any instrument, if you accidently hit two notes at once and it sounds ok, this is called ' harmony ' so you keep on doing it, this has gone on as long as there has been an instrument capable of playing more than one note at once, the same applies to singing, if two people are singing in unison accidental harmonys often happen.

eric


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: M.Ted
Date: 13 May 08 - 09:49 AM

For the record, since this discussion began, perhaps as many as 100,000 souls have perished as a result from the Myanmar catastrophe, and the lives and cultures of perhaps another million or two have been changed forever. Add to that the tolls from yesterday's earthquake (10,000 or more declared dead already) and we might be inclined to feel that the end of the world might really be drawing toward us (at least, if the victims had been native English-speakers), and yet this argument, continues unabated.

By what miracle it is sustained, in the face of catastrophe, in the face of disaster, in the face of overwhelming and incomprehensible human misery, we can only guess, as it no longer even has a discernable subject--


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 13 May 08 - 09:38 AM

How does bragging about the amount of myspace friends do anything for the argument? It does leave a bad taste in the mouth. Poppagator didn't say that the collectors were incapable of notating more than a single line, but that many didn't WANT to.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 May 08 - 09:28 AM

...the price of fish was sometimes, in England, an unaccompanied folk-song sung in situ (see Isaac Walton, The Complete Angler, 1653).


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Marje
Date: 13 May 08 - 08:08 AM

A friend of mine taught young children in Africa for a while. If she tried to teach them a tune, they harmonised spontaneously, and found it impossible to sing in unison. They were so used to hearing harmonies in their traditional music that the ides of a single-line melody was foreign to them.

This does not prove that harmony is a part of every musical tradition in the world , but it does suggest that it arises naturally and spontaneously when singing is part of a communal culture.

This contrasts with the view that somehow the common people of Europe wouldn't have used harmony until it was developed in church music or noted down by the musically literate. Church music may at times lead the trend in certain musical fashions and developments, but in other ways the Church has, over the centuries, imposed strict controls and limitations on the ways in which music has been used for religious purposes. It's unlikely, I'd have thought, for the whole range of musical expression in a given culture to be reflected in the church music of the time - I don't suppose medieval peasants working in the fields used to chant plainsong as they worked.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Darowyn
Date: 13 May 08 - 07:50 AM

This is a crazy argument. So the shepherds that you see on classical Greek Vases- the ones who played the double pipes, never played two notes at once?
So Pythagoras, who explained the mathematical basis of harmony, had never heard a lyre player hit two or three strings at the same time?
Tomb paintings of Egyptians playing shoulder harps with both hands were only playing single note lines?
I cannot believe that musicians have changed so much. the phrase "Hey these two sound great together!" must have been heard long before the dawn of written music history- in every language on the planet.
I'd suspect that finding harmonies was discovered long before the phrase "that's not folk" was first uttered.(probably in Sanscrit)
Cheers
Dave


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 13 May 08 - 07:15 AM

"their tradition "

yep THEIR....
~~~~~~~~

"harmony did not exist until "Western musicians" devised a way to write it down "

What you thought I said was not what I thought you thought it meant.... :-)

"Mustn't there have been something to be transcribed in order for the need to develop written notation (including a way to notate two or more notes being sonded simultaneously) to arise?"

I did not deny that - if you HAD studied 'classical Music Theory' you would not have needed to call my misunderstood words 'hogwash'. Read up on 'Gregorian Chant', mate! I repeat "there was a series of horizontal melodies" which became transformed over time in to "Formal Theories of (Western) Vertical Harmony"...


"Singing and playing came first, long before the written transcription of same could possibly have developed"

Where did I say ANYTHING that denied that?


IMO WAV's "single-melody chants" is musical gibberish. Read up on 'Gregorian Chant', mate!

This thread is starting to remind me of a comedy skit - can't remember who did it - about two characters who know nothing about anything trying to talk seriously about profound subjects....

"Did you know that the sun is ah - an incredibly long distance away? If you put motor cars end to end, oh, it would take an enormous amount of them to stretch there. And that light, well even though it moves at er, tremendously fast speed - the fastest thing in the universe, you know, when it leaves the sun takes, oh, ah, quite a while to get to the earth"

... I do love such rigours informative discussions...

:-)



and on it goes....


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 May 08 - 05:12 AM

"Asserting anything else is an insult to our forebearers" (PoppaGator)...how about some respect for the collectors, many of whom would have been classically-trained and quite capable of notating more than one line of melody - if that's what they had heard/recorded, rather than a single-line of playing/singing.
Also, somewhere in among my myspace Friends (?after 5000, we can't do internal searches) is a post-grad. folk-degree student from one of the Scandinavian countries (Norway, I think), who said on her blurb that their tradition was a soloistic one of unaccompanied singing.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 May 08 - 07:00 PM

I have no problem with the language either.

I do have a problem with people who don't have the guts to put their own names to what they write. At least Walkaboutsverse has never made any secret of his identity.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:32 PM

The language doesn't seem to bother the operators of this site (Joe Offer would have already said something, I think), so I don't feel the need to be any different...and re-iterate no compulsory logging in...

On Friday me and a couple of musicians started singing in harmony, well I almost lost it, because what should pop into my mind, at the most inopportune moment, was this thread... *LOL*

Charlotte R


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:20 PM

"Well, that reflects a severe lack of expression of understanding of music history.

Briefly, Western Music USED to be similar to 'Eastern Music' - there was a series of horizontal melodies, in counterpoint (not in exactly the strict musical definition though). Then Western musicians, after the discovery of the 'staff notation' way of writing it down, began to have named 'composers' of musical works, who discovered various forms of 'vertical' stuff called 'Harmony'. This took a long time to gradually 'corrupt' people (some musical styles remained mostly immune!)... :-P


Let me get this straight: harmony did not exist until "Western musicians" devised a way to write it down ~??!!?!

What a load of hogwash! Mustn't there have been something to be transcribed in order for the need to develop written notation (including a way to notate two or more notes being sonded simultaneously) to arise?

Of course, this quality of thought is basic to almost all the arguments put forward by those who insist that music does not have natiral or intrinsic harmony, and that no true "folk" of ages past could ever possibly have imagined how to sing in harmony.

I think it's ridiculously presumptuous to assume that, if there's no scholarly written record of a musical style or approach, then it could never have possibly existed. Singing and playing came first, long before the written transcription of same could possibly have developed, and we simply cannot know for sure how and what people sang and did not sing on their own and for their own enjoyment, in the absense of historians, collectors, recording devices, etc.

Also, of course, as several folks have noted above, many "source" singers tailored their performances to what they believed was expected of them. So, if a given scholar/collector was know to have a bias against harmony, or instrumental accompanmiment, etc., the collectees might very understandably give him whatever he seemed to want.

I believe that human nature and the nature of music and people have both always been pretty much the same. Harmony is an aspect of music that many people enjoy, and some know how to produce, and it has probably been with us for a very long time. Asserting anything else is an insult to our forebearers.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:12 PM

Charlotte, he is right, well about the language, that is.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 12 May 08 - 04:42 PM

"Log-in and mind your language, you two"

please mind your own business. this is not YOUR personal forum.

"should that be compulsory, all..? "

no

Charlotte R


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 May 08 - 04:31 PM

Log-in and mind your language, you two - and should that be compulsory, all..?


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Nitten Regular
Date: 12 May 08 - 03:23 PM

I see Jack Campin is now boring the shit out of everybody on the internet, after having accomplished the same feat in real life at Sandy Bells and Newtongrange.

Tomorrow, the world ???


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 12 May 08 - 03:13 PM

""except the mimicing of Amerindian chants"

that's North American First Nations to you, (racist) sunshine.

Charlotte R


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 May 08 - 08:22 AM

Well, Jack, the Renaissance did, of course, invlove a looking back, as well as forward; but, either way, it seems that these single-melody chants did (and still do, of course) go on for several centuries before polyphony came into European churches. And that, over these centuries, traditional music remained, mostly, about the single melody.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Stu
Date: 12 May 08 - 06:32 AM

It is in our house.

You should hear me accompanying myself on my multi-tracked version of 'Chicken on a Raft'.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 May 08 - 06:13 AM

It has been suggested (I forget by who) that Georgian sacred polyohony is directly ancestral to the Western tradition (and hence that pre-Christian Georgian secular polyphony is ultimately behind it all).


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:28 AM

Ah, yes, wikipedia, reliable source, isn't it? If you've seen it on a beeb docu, it must be true.
http://www.polyphony.ge/en/chpolyphony/history.php
http://www.geocities.com/papandrew/outlines/grout03.html


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:26 AM

i) Please read this: Organum

ii) According to the latest Private Eye the BBC4 series Sacred Music was scuppered by a complete lack of budget, reducing it to four parts from the intended eight, and having The Sixteen singing in (say) 'A Lutheran-style Church in London' rather than on location in the church where the music was actually written, as was the intention. Not so in the case of Rome, where the Vatican has black-listed the BBC because it's covered Priestly Sex-Scandals with Unnecessary Vigour.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:08 AM

I did that Jack, and Wiki. ends with: "Over time, composers began to write added parts that were not just simple transpositions, and thus true polyphony was born." Then, by clicking on the "polyphony" link, we get: "Within the context of Western music tradition the term is usually used in reference to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance."


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 May 08 - 04:59 AM

Did anyone else here see that BBC4 series on the history of sacred music - sorry I'm not sure if that's the actual title but I'm quite sure they presented things much as I've said above..?
Also, interesting that, on last night's Young Musician of the Year final, the into. showed FOUR neon lines moving across the screen; I still say that, despite occasional cases of polyphony (above), for a folkie-final it would be just the ONE. And I like such DIFFERENCES in the genres of music.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Tootler
Date: 11 May 08 - 05:41 PM

Maybe, Volgadon, but in what is now Italy, it was plain song/Gregorian Chant of single melody until the Renaissance, when polyphony was developed and quickly spread throughout Europe, I think.

Wrong!

I quote from the Concise Oxford History of Music By Gerald Abraham,

"The earliest unmistakable mention of Western polyphony ... occurs in a Treatise De Institutione Harmonica by Hucbald (c 840 - 930), a monk of St. Amand in the diocese of Tournai"

Three things

The years given, approx 900 AD are a good deal earlier than the renaissance - about 500 years (give or take a few decades).

Tournai is not in Italy, it is in what is now Belgium.

Conscious use of harmony has been in use in Western music for at least 1000 years. Although it started in the church and was subsequently taken up by the aristocracy, I find it hard to believe that it did not seep out into popular music at some point.

Geoff


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 May 08 - 05:35 PM

Look up "organum".

First written about in a Western European source at the end of the ninth century.

I think you'll find that's a bit before the Renaissance.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 May 08 - 04:36 PM

Maybe, Volgadon, but in what is now Italy, it was plain song/Gregorian Chant of single melody until the Renaissance, when polyphony was developed and quickly spread throughout Europe, I think.


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Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 11 May 08 - 04:06 PM

Umm, there was a tradition of polyphony in Eastern liturgy way before the 13th century. I think even as early as the 4th.


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