acoustic versus electric !!!???

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Musket
Date: 06 Sep 14 - 06:14 AM

I've got a Gretsch White Falcon, modelled on the Stephen Stills special. Sadly, I rarely get to play it live as it doesn't suit either my folk or rock playing. Stunning instrument though. It is on display in the study rather than in a case hidden away. Possibly the most I have ever paid for a guitar. Gretsch make excellent electrics, bloody good semis but in my experience awful acoustics.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Sep 14 - 05:35 AM

no I was on about Lesley Nielsen on boxing in one of the police file movies

all i know is, don't bet on the white guy...

actually a thing of beauty is a joy forever...creedence clearwater - the memory of that guy playing a gretsch white falcon..one of the good things in my life.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Sep 14 - 03:24 AM

Stim! Thanks for kind words on my Corbies - much appreciated!

*

White guitars? Black guitars? Y'all on about Les Paul Customs right? In the latest episode of Siblings (BBC3 - repeated ad infinitum through the week no doubt) Dan does something unspeakable to a WHITE one, but I dream of a BLACK one. In fact, the ideal electric guitar of my youth was a black CSL Les Paul Custom copy which had the best action of any guitar I've ever played. Wish I still had it...

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Mr Red
Date: 06 Sep 14 - 02:59 AM

speaking as an electronic engineer who values his ears


ACOUSTIC

thankyou

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: michaelr
Date: 06 Sep 14 - 01:14 AM

You're all being silly.

Everyone knows that folk music can only be played on acoustic guitars.

When you use an electric guitar, it's rock'n'roll.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 06 Sep 14 - 12:42 AM

As to you, Don Firth, I feel truly and profoundly sorry for you.

You've deprived yourself of the joys a multitude of sounds and expressions. No twang, no reverb, no echo or delay. No overdrive, no decay.

You've never experienced the clear snap of a Strat--never played clean, cascading melodies on a Les Paul. You've never shuffled through the circle of fifths on an ES-175, or played Scotty Moore licks through a couple of P-90s. Never played the into to "Mr. Tambourine Man" on a Rickenbacker 12, and never played "Johnny B-Good".

You haven't been able to be the lead instrumentalist in an ensemble, never been able to trade fours with a sax player or trumpeter, never vamped chords while the piano played a break, never traded off rhythms with a drummer.

Make all the excuses you want, but the fact is that you've shut yourself off from playing a lot of the great music of the last 75 years. And that's a pity, because it was all right there at your fingertips.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 06 Sep 14 - 12:04 AM

Jack Blandiver--I firmly and resolutely believe that if you keep your eyes,ears, and mind open then you will find something wonderful everyday--today, it was your "Twa Corbies"--the way you let those voices ring and melt into each other was a pure delight!

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 09:40 PM

for 15 years I only bought black guitars
so the wife wouln't notice the new ones...

which white guitar.. at 2.30 in the morning that's well intreguing...???

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 09:32 PM

acoustic vs electric....

All I know is, don't bet on the white guitar.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 08:51 PM

I'm gonna make a wild guess..

It's 50 years since the Dylan 'Judas' earthquake rocked the foundations of 'folk'.

I am guesstimating the USA now has a more mature appreciation of the symbotic relationship
between acoustic and electic,
than tight arse clenched cultural class ridden old blighty..

"an electric.. how dare the bounder... Smithers get me my shotgun !!!"

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 07:49 PM

Verily and forsooth!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: PHJim
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 07:34 PM

I was so tempted to make a smart ass comment here.

Why would anyone want to pit acoustic and electric against each other? I don't care if I ever hear ZZ Top unpugged and I don't have any desire to hear Doyle Lawson plugged in, but I enjoy listening to them both. You don't have to make a choice.

mandolin versus banjo, blues versus country, beets versus carrots, tea versus coffee, pants versus shirts, standard notation versus tab versus ear... Each has its use and some can even overlap, but this is a silly thread.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Leadfingers
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 07:29 PM

I personally prefer acoustic , but there are occasions when PA is a necessity . When I was in Fools Gold 30 plus years ago PA was the only way we could properly balance three voices and all the various
instruments

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Musket
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 06:47 PM

You expecting A grade material without buying a ticket at the concert venue Al ?

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 06:39 PM

I've played a variety of guitars over the years, mostly classics (nylon strings). I have found them perfectly adequate for my wants and needs, i.e., song accompaniment and some solo (classical) guitar.

I played an electric guitar once. I dropped into a tavern in the afternoon to meet a friend and I was early. The place had a band entertaining in the evenings, but the place was practically empty. I knew the bartender, and he asked me if I'd like to try the electric guitar. "The guy who owns it won't mind," he assured me, so I figured, "What the heck?"

I did a couple of songs with the electric, then a classic guitar solo, steel strings and narrow fingerboard notwithstanding. Then a couple of fingerpicking songs like "Freight Train."

I began to feel All Powerful!!! Godlike!!!

Then sanity re-emerged. I checked out all the gear sitting around me and thought dollar signs. Big amp with eleventy-fourteen knobs, and a couple of heavy-duty speakers. And the fact that I could not make full use of this beast unless I was with a cord's length of a couple of wall plugs. Not to mention lugging it around. No wonder the owner of the guitar left his gear here!

I had been doing fine as is with my favorite classic guitar and bare nekkid voice, rarely using a mic unless the place where I was singing supplied it (often an outdoor venue).

Okay, here's the "fang and claw" part:   My ego doesn't need all those watts and amps, thank you.

Besides, one of my nephews has that department covered. He plays in a Canadian rock group that, over the years, has practically cornered the market on Junos. The Tragically Hip. Rob Baker, the tall galoot with the long hair.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 06:35 PM

not that funny Musket...!!

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Musket
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 06:03 PM

I wonder which are the best continence products?

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 05:55 PM

And I still maintain that oranges are morally superior to tomatoes...

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 05:50 PM

Sounds good! Anything we can listen to, PFR???

*

For listening pleasure I sit fairly close to my old JVC Mini-monitors hooked up to a THIRD SPEAKER that runs from the POSITIVE terminals of the L&R. Thanks to ENO for this ambient answer to quadrophonica - great for viol consorts & Daphne Oram at levels low enough not to piss off the neighbours.

If we want LOUD, we go out in the car. It's all Metronomy just now...

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 05:42 PM

Jack Blandiver - terraced house, headphones -- DITTO !!!

I've even gone to great lengths and expenditure to find the best compromise solutions
to take a direct feed from the speaker output of valve amps
so I can attenuate the volume to sensible levels that won't disturb neighbours
or the wife when she's in bed sleeping...

Heres's another reprint from a recent thread 'elseswhere'..

"Punkfolkrocker's very serious Mission Statement © [2014]:

"To perform Traditional Folk songs with respect and empathy
using vintage mid 20th Century electronic instruments and amplification technology;
as if, in earlier centuries in an alternative dimension and timeline,
this technology, and not acoustic instruments,
had been commonplace
at the moments these songs were originally created and perfomed in public.""

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 04:58 PM

In a folk club, absolutely! Something very WEIRD happens to people once they get behind a microphone, and these feckers DARE complain about my electronic shruti box...

I owe my current dependency on electronica to the fact that over the last 14 years we've lived in a series of old terraced houses that weren't built with crwths & fiddles in mind, so most everything I do here is through headphones which opens up all sorts of impossibilities. I used to use computers (I'm a confirmed Ableton freak!) but am now utterly hooked on Revival Analogue Synthesis c/o Korg; the MS-20 Mini redefined my musical thinking when it arrived back in May last year & the Volcas are just too much, though I've just acquired my SECOND Monotribe for stereo sequencing! Having tried and (mostly) failed with an electric violin, back in November I bought a baritone Fender telecaster which I play mostly with an ebow; in terms of Folk Song it sounds like this (which I'd NEVER do in a folk club, with or without a PA:

THE TWA CORBIES (Tidal Leavings) - 12.12.13

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 04:18 PM

Well, I love it in a UK folk club when everything is acoustic! Nothing - even a mic - is plugged in.
Of course, ideally, the situation depends on the size and acoustics of the room.
And, if the room is free from outside noise.. And without a bar with a till that clangs!
Thankfully, I've known lots of situations like that.
I love my telecaster, but really love the idea of a totally acoustic folk music club.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 01:46 PM

That said, I think ELECTRIC is the more NATURAL of the two & has the greater potential to be effective in terms of sonic procedure and process.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 01:30 PM

ELECTRIC

ACOUSTIC

What's to choose as long it's a joyful noise?

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: selby
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 12:55 PM

I hear Dylan was booed and called judas when he first appeared with elec guitar and band. I guess they thought it cannot be folk if its electric. And Florence and Zededee never forgave him

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 12:45 PM

Sticking to acoustic may seem retrograde and unimaginative, but it's so hard to get good pickups for your concertina.

(A friend of mine sometimes plays an electronic melodeon, but that's another story.)

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 12:37 PM

Jack, when I said "No sitting on the fence mates.. go for it full tooth and claw..."....

what I meant was... oh well... never mind.....

even your response is good contextual material regarding the topic under discussion...

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 12:27 PM

a new generation of young kids are still being brought up with the smug propaganda that Acoustic is morally superior to Electric...???

They aren't, except in the imagination of a dimwitted troll with an incomprehensible grudge.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Musket
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 12:12 PM

Style more than anything. Even with an electro acoustic plugged in, I am playing an acoustic style, finger picking, frailing etc, whilst once the Gretsch is plugged in, out comes the pleccy and an electric "style."

A song is a song. Whether it's an elderly lady sat in a pub singing it unaccompanied or Led Zeppelin having Jimmy Page with a Les Paul, it's still Gallows Pole.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 11:58 AM

I hear Dylan was booed and called judas when he first appeared with elec guitar and band. I guess they thought it cannot be folk if its electric. me... I think, horses for courses..

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 11:34 AM

Acoustic, you don't need to hike a load of heavy electric gismos along, you don't need an electricity supply, audience can usually hear the lyrics. I wasn't aware they were in competition with each other anyway.

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,bonzo3legs on holiday
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 11:23 AM

You could hardly have Home Service playing acoustic!!!

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: Leadfingers
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 11:09 AM

Acoustic = Difficult to deafen an audience

Electric = FAR too easy to deafen an audience

Subject: RE: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 10:55 AM

Of course that one is morally superior to the other one:

just as next Tuesday morning is morally superior to a jar of marmalade,

or Arsenal v Tottenham to the Milky Way,

or shoes and ships and sealing-wax to cabbages and kings.

≈M≈

Subject: acoustic versus electric !!!???
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 05 Sep 14 - 10:43 AM

I posted this 'elsewhere' today, then thought it might be be about right time again to sound out opinions..........???


"Ok.. now that we've finally defined "Folk"..................
[yes .. that's right.. sarcasm...]

Can we now have a go at analysing why a new generation of young kids
are still being brought up with the smug propaganda
that Acoustic is morally superior to Electric...???"


No sitting on the fence mates.. go for it full tooth and claw...