Recordings to learn songs from?

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 03:55 AM

Don't forget the 'Veteran' label (www.veteran.co.uk). Particularly fine is, 'Good Order!: Traditional singing and music from The Eel's Foot' (VT140CD). These are some extraordinary recordings, made in the legendary Suffolk folk singing pub in the 1930s and 40s. I'm particularly fond of Jumbo Brightwell's song, 'False Hearted Knight' - a version of 'The Outlandish Knight'.

If you want more classic Bert Lloyd try 'England and Her Traditional Songs' (Fellside FECD173) - which I mentioned in one of the 'Bert' threads.

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 03:28 AM

Cantaria, hope this helps

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 03:20 AM

Sue,
At CSH and and National Sound Archive at British Library - listening only.
The facilities at CSH used to be fairly basic; no idea of how it works at BL, though there an numerous collections at the latter - see Bright Golden Store on their website.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 07:21 PM

Jim

Are those 2 collections accessible at CSH or whereabouts?

Thanks
Sue

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Dave Hunt
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 09:09 AM

Sedayne wrote above -
The one I tend go for is The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, a unique an invaluable resource of 1600 songs, including many unique takes on the Child Ballads. The entire archive in free, on line & downloadable as mp3s.

http://maxhunter.missouristate.edu/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is some wonderful stuff on here - but the first four or five I played all had minor errors in transcription! just the odd word, but one needs to be aware of it.
DAVE

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 08:42 AM

Hooray - the real audio works on this computer. I have several on my home network.

This one also has cookies on so I can PM you Jim and will, immediately.

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 08:39 AM

Forgot BBC collection - (shame on me!) which I understand is now digitised - is that right?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 08:37 AM

Gosh, many thanks Malcolm.

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 07:56 AM

I'm still running 98SE (more or less), and the RA files at Max Hunter work for me on RealPlayer 6.0.9.584. The AIFF files are better quality, though.

There is no English equivalent to online resources like the Max Hunter or John Quincy Wolf collections, or the various 'American Memory' recordings, because none of our academic or governmental institutions are prepared to stump up the money. There are sound recordings scattered about in various places, though. Some are at FARNE (mostly instrumental music from the NE, though I think some songs), but it's designed to look good rather than for ease of use. Closest stable url:

http://www.asaplive.com/Archive/browse_by_collection.asp

Far easier to use, though as yet quite small, is the 'Yorkshire Garland' site, with recordings of traditional singers from the region. More files are to be added soon.

http://www.yorkshirefolksong.net/

Hidden away quite deep in a sub-site of the British Library is a set of cylinder recordings belonging to EFDSS. Most are songs in Scottish Gaelic recorded by Lucy Broadwood, but there are some English and Welsh singers to be heard. There doesn't seem to be any way of providing a stable url for a direct link, so you will need to go to this page:

http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/wax/

...and enter EFDSS in the search window. This will produce a list of the 57 items, spread over six pages. The recordings are available as streaming audio (WMA) only.

Beside the material Jim mentioned, the VWML sound archive also includes copies of the BBC recordings made in the 1950s, together with many commercial releases. Unfortunately I've never had time on my visits there to use the sound library. You should phone in advance to book an appointment; contact details are at

http://efdss.org/library.htm.

Note that for legal reasons the VWML can't provide copies of its audio holdings.

Finally, there is a list of links to website collections of print and audio resources at

http://www.folk-network.com/directory/links/song-collections_web.html

It is in need of an update, but provides plenty to be going on with.

The Carpenter recordings will eventually be available online in new transcriptions, cleaned up and played at the correct speed; this due to American funding. It's a long-term project, though, and will take some time yet to complete.

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 07:38 AM

Richard,
Can't get your PM to work - PM me.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 07:37 AM

Richard,
The Grainger collection is made up of (poor quality 1908) recordings - not sure if they come with transcripts - ask Malcolm. Hard work, but some beautiful versions.
Carpenter is a massive (14 microfesch) collection of manuscripts accompanied by recorded versions (again poor quality) of usually 2 verses of each song. The most valuable element of the collection is the ballads. Carpenter's original aim was to assemble the largest collection of field recordings of classic ballads - he succeeded.
I know the collection is being worked on at Aberdeen - no idea of progress, but there was a Folk Music journal devoted to the project some time ago.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: GUEST, Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 05:51 AM

Hmm - slight problem there Sedayne. I have got Real Audio installed (albeit an old version since I run W98SE) and the Max Bunter real audio files do not play for me. I get a message saying that they are not real audio files. I'll try a different computer on my network.

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: GUEST, Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 05:45 AM

Thank you all.

Jim, I live in North Kent, so I am not far from London although C# House is one of the less convenient bits to get to.

Am I right the collections you mention are housed there? Are there sound archives, or is it all dots? My dot reading is really really bad, particularly for timings and a dots archive is going to be almost no use to me - although it sounds fascinating.

Sedayne - I'm going to ahve a look right now... Why is there no English equivalent?

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: GUEST,Sedayne (Astray)
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 05:39 AM

The one I tend go for is The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, a unique an invaluable resource of 1600 songs, including many unique takes on the Child Ballads. The entire archive in free, on line & downloadable as mp3s.

http://maxhunter.missouristate.edu/

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 05:39 AM

Richard
If you lived in London... big if - there's the relatively unworked Grainger and Carpenter collections virtually untouched.
Worth re-looking at the Folk Songs of Britain series - plenty of food for repertoires there.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: GUEST,Mary Humphreys
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 05:39 AM

Anything from Veteran and lots from the Topic labels.
That should keep you busy for a while.

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: GUEST,Ian cookieless
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 05:29 AM

There's the 20 CD series from Topic, Voice of the People. There's also a 1 CD sampler of the set.

Subject: RE: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: the button
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 04:30 AM

Rod Stradling's MT Records CDs of "source singers" have been a bit of a revelation for me. You can get the sampler for a tenner, and it's well over an hour long. Be warned, though -- if you get the bug, you'll end up buying a lot more.

The version of "The trees they do grow high" on Walter Pardon's "A world without horses" (Topic) completely changed the way I think about (and perform) that song. He's probably the traditional singer that I love the most (rather than admire).

Subject: Recordings to learn songs from?
From: GUEST, Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 03:27 AM

I have not been feeling the muse, the impulse to learn further songs, in concentrated and specific form for a bit, but the "Bertsongs" thread has got my enthusiasm trickling a bit.


Since my reading of dots is so poor, if I were to start adding to the repertoire of old songs that I can do, with which recordings available from where should I start?

I have just ordered the Brian Peters "Child" CD. Should I go to recordings of Lloyd? If so which, and where can I get it?

Or would something else be better?