Chords in Folk?

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--

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

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

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.

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.)

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

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).

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 ?

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

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).

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!

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.

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

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

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

in the style of Mcgonagle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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

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.

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

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 14 May 08 - 05:25 PM

That's not tradition so much as personal bias.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 May 08 - 05:25 PM

...on the contrary, off the top of my head, M., I've sung "Tommy's Gone to Hilo" (E.trad.) and had the pace of the 2nd and 4th lines changed by the group/chorus - yes, most of whom would have attended a lot more folk-clubs than me; it didn't bother me as it was a folk club not a jazz club. And this traditional way of singing verses with, mostly, just the tune (in a manner quite different from what is now called "Pop") is what remained popular, in England, e.g., for centuries; and I like it.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 May 08 - 06:21 PM

WAV-I bring this up with slight bit of trepidation, but the fact is that "Lingua Franca" was not Latin, nor was it even a full blown language--it has been described as the original "pidgin", and seems to have consisted of words borrowed chiefly from the Romance languages, mostly Italian or possibly Catalan/Provencal/Occitan, with a simple grammar that was apparently drawn from Arabic.

The term "lingua franca" is a metaphorical usage, and is used to describe languages that to function in as an overarching language--but for the most part, these are full scale languages capable of expressing the full range of human experience-

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 14 May 08 - 06:38 PM

" is what remained popular, in England, e.g., for centuries"

and you have historical evidence for such a statement?
Persnally I doubt it (that you have any evidence)

"That's not tradition so much as personal bias. "

It certainly is... :-D

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 May 08 - 06:06 AM

In the above poem, I didn't say "lingua franca" was Latin, M. Ted. Let me put it another way: practiSe (English spelling)/practiCe (American spelling); licenCe (English spelling)/licenSe (American spelling)!...it's fine/good for different nationals to pronounce English with different accents, but why not just stick with the one English way of spelling it, and the one Spanish way of spelling Spanish, etc.? (At uni., in Aus., we had the choice of either English or American spelling in our essays - I've decided that's silly, and even recalcitrant.) I'm NOT saying I'm the world's greatest speller - far from it - but, when I look up a word, I always choose the English spelling of the English word!

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 15 May 08 - 06:14 AM

Is now the world's lingua franca,
    Where, it seems, it once was Latin;

This kind of suggests the opposite?

With regard to American spelling - I thought you celebrated diversity?

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 15 May 08 - 06:25 AM

Diversity, as long as it's the English way.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 May 08 - 06:36 AM

As an American, the American spellings seem like the right ones to me--be that as it may, my point about Lingua Franca stands--

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 May 08 - 06:41 AM

I said "bogues are a good thing" (above). And I said "English - to use Italian - is now the world's lingua franca" (above).

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 May 08 - 07:15 AM

Which spelling of English words is used/preferred in Isreal, Volgadon? And, in the USA, M. Ted, are you allowed to use English spelling if you wish to?

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 May 08 - 07:41 AM

If Americans want to use English spellings, they go up to Canada--I think there are bus tours in the Fall, and the fares are reasonable--

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 May 08 - 07:57 AM

But is there a school in the USA, Ted, that agrees with me - i.e., accents are fine but English should only be spelt the one English way, French the one French way, Spanish the one Spanish way, etc?

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 15 May 08 - 08:02 AM

Israel, not Isreal. Both American and British spellings are perfectly acceptable, what's wrong with that?

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 15 May 08 - 08:15 AM

Whats wrong with that? Crossed-cultures is whats wrong.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 May 08 - 08:20 AM

But have the powers-that-be in the USA decided that enough is enough, or are there plans to make it "enuf"? Are you starting to see what I mean - it is silly/recalcitrant.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 15 May 08 - 08:35 AM

Powers-that-be? WHAT??? Have there been any new spelling conventions in the past 30 years? I do think you have a phantom fear, as well as intolerance. Who cares if it is colour or color?

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 May 08 - 08:38 AM

So why change it from colour to color, Volgadon?!

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 May 08 - 08:45 AM

For the same reason it was changed from the Old French Coulour, I suppose....

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 15 May 08 - 08:48 AM

Why not? Whatis the problem with regional variation?

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 May 08 - 08:59 AM

Have a look a this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English and note that it is only since 1755 that there has been anything like standardised English spelling. Changes occur constantly - I know several people, for example, who still put the largely anachronistic hyphen in to-day.

One would have thought, WAV, that your love of a multi-cultural world could accommodate a few spelling differences which in all probability evolved quite naturally, the way that language tends to.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 15 May 08 - 09:01 AM

I think you'll find that it was due to Webster trying to approach English on it's own terms, rejecting the French conventions favoured at the time.
English spelling was hardly monolithic for most of it's history and most of the American variations were also used in Britain.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 May 08 - 09:11 AM

Yes, that's it Sedayne - I do love the world being multicultural but stand by what I said above; some UN laws/regulations/standards, for another example, do and should apply to all nationals.
Night follows day in England, e.g. - anyone agree with me?!

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 May 08 - 09:20 AM

WAV - I think you've lost the plot here somewhat. You can't regulate culture nor any aspect of it. And BTW - not sure now it is in Australia, but here in Britain, day follows night!

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 May 08 - 09:22 AM

And just for the hell of it...

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 May 08 - 09:22 AM

300!