Chords in Folk?

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 May 08 - 02:15 PM

...and half Snail's luck!!

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 08 May 08 - 02:47 PM

i) but, as you surely know, others have used very different tactics - not just in "the old days".

A classic example of WAVs racist dog-whistling. It's interesting that he picks me up for calling his work self-published, but doesn't bat an eye-lid when I mention his agenda for an ethnically-cleansed English National Culture.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: M.Ted
Date: 08 May 08 - 02:49 PM

I had been watching a documentary on Leonard Cohen, and it having ended, I am now looking at a large dead elephant. Since I am an American, I see absolutely no irony in this.

Notwithstanding that, I think we shall have to send those other three recorder players off to find comfort elsewhere, since Walka.. or is not going to reconsider those other lines on the score. Best, I think, to all kiss and make up.

For starters, I extend my hand to The Snail, who I seem to have slighted in some way that I still can't make out. Still, I have great respect for him, rooted in what I know of his commitment to Dwyle Flunking, and also tied to the inspiration I have taken from the Harvey's Beer struggle--

For the rest, life is too short--and now I'm off to sue someone, or eat cold cereal, or some other such American thing--

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: TheSnail
Date: 08 May 08 - 02:55 PM

Sorry, M.Ted, but you seemed to be calling on me to defend a position I didn't hold. I was merely suggesting you did a more careful reading of what I actually said.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 08 May 08 - 02:56 PM

"the stagnation of any tradition will kill it."

Got that right, problem is old weird WAV doesn't get it, and ya know, you can put up your
"Folk song is usually melodic, not harmonic" (The Hutchinson Encyclopedia); Folk "musical structure is the simple repitition of a tune (with or without chorus)" (Philip's Essential Encyclopedia)."
as many times as you want, no one is going to believe it. Mind you isn't that what propagandists do, repeat the same phrases over and over until the populous believes it? The imperialists of the British Empire did it, the Nazis did it and the communist regimes did it, and the idea carries on today with the Americans in Iraq...quite the lineage eh?

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 May 08 - 03:11 PM

"The imperialists of the British Empire did it, the Nazis did it", CR, again, because Sedayne insists on me responding to everything everytime - I hate imperialism, be it Nazi, Victorian, American, or any other. And why must you use those tactics, Sedayne, I repeat - racism is where someone says they are all like this or that, and I have never done suchlike on this or any other site; I genuinely love the world being multicultural (look here).

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 08 May 08 - 03:23 PM

I've said what I've said, I mean what I said, your own words condemn you for what you are.

Yes you do love a multicultural world....as long as it doesn't happen in England.

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: TheSnail
Date: 08 May 08 - 04:39 PM

...and talking of the Harvey's Beer struggle, we celebrated Restoration Day on April 26th.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: M.Ted
Date: 08 May 08 - 05:00 PM

I have already seen the lovely photos--The torch light parade was an elegant touch--and I am completely entertained by the fact that the pub has become world famous. I am pleased to know that the food has gotten better, as well, and the fact that music is alive and well there, well, that's what it's all about--

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 May 08 - 06:20 AM

It was heavily ornamented, chords/harmonies were included, and it was called not folk but "folk-fusion" (I'd say folk-classical) but, interestingly, such music did appear from the winner of last night's BBC Young Musician Percussion Comp. - and, thus, will probably be in the final. It involved a young classically-trained tune-percussionist playing marimba, with four mallets; and a bodhran.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 May 08 - 12:59 AM

An "Encyclopedia" is merely the personal opinion of those creating it.

And if you don't believe, try participating in 'Wikipedia'... I have... ROFL.... :-)

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 10 May 08 - 05:39 AM

..I accept, Foolestroupe, that Wiki. is more interactive, but remember some do bother to write into the publishers of bound encyclopedias, in a similar advisory way.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 10 May 08 - 10:10 AM

Encyclopedias present a very shallow overview of things. Very dangerous to base an opinion off of them. Read specialised literature.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 May 08 - 02:11 PM

Chords are now traditional. Without them for most people, the music sounds empty.
There are those who are antiquarians who want to live in the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
That's their choice.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 10 May 08 - 02:22 PM

Chords are now traditional. Without them for most people, the music sounds empty.
There are those who are antiquarians who want to live in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. (and to live in an England that has never existed, and thankfully never will exist)
That's their choice.

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 10 May 08 - 03:15 PM

"Traditions exist due to folks being impressed by how their forebears did things; and, accordingly, taking this attitude is, I feel, vital for the cause of maintaining a nice multicultural-world, against the
forces of globalisation/Americanisation – a cause which U.S. citizens themselves should support." (me)
Just the tune played and/or sung well sounds great - I'm impressed by this (not every) tradition of my English forebears. (Tractors replacing enslaved heavy-horses and bullocks is another matter.)

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 May 08 - 03:25 PM

For *some* songs chords are now traditional (mainly, for those songs written since chordal accompaniment became widely heard).

For Gaelic mouth music they sound pretty damn silly.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 10 May 08 - 03:58 PM

Why do you have to add your website to every other post?

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 10 May 08 - 05:28 PM

I'd written that before, Volgadon - I copy/pasted it from my site; as with ironing socks, very few bother, but it only takes a second to do the link, just in case anyone wants to read more.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprtentice
Date: 10 May 08 - 05:39 PM

"I feel, vital for the cause of maintaining a nice multicultural-world(other than in England, of course)"

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Stu
Date: 11 May 08 - 05:49 AM

"For Gaelic mouth music they sound pretty damn silly."

Er, except when the exceptional Julie Fowlis is singing with her excellent band, chords and all. Then they sound pretty damn good.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 May 08 - 05:51 AM

"Chords are now traditional. Without them for most people, the music sounds empty."

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

:-)

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 May 08 - 09:38 AM

There was, Foolestroupe, quite recently on the BBC a series on the history of sacred music, which , I think, said it was just the chanting of a single-line in churches until the 13th or 14th century, when Italian composers began to employ polyphony. (Must of been 13th, as Jack above mentioned "Summer is a Comin in" as 13th century sacred polyphony, here in England.)
I like a lot of Gaelic music, Stigweard - except the mimicing of Amerindian chants.

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: Stu
Date: 11 May 08 - 09:57 AM

"except the mimicing of Amerindian chants"

Forgive my ignorance, but like whom?

Subject: RE: Chords in Folk?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 May 08 - 10:12 AM

On BBC Gaelic radio, Stigweard, such chanting is played quite often - I think it derives from an old empathy with the plight of Amerindians.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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."

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.

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

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).

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'.

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.

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

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 ???

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..?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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....

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

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.

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).

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.