Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways

Subject: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 02:55 AM

In view of a comment made in a PM to me, [kitchen piper] said, "I'm a Scottish Smallpiper, but I don't play very much traditional stuff, so I find Scottish people dis my playing all the time. Ho hum!"

Which leads to think that this could be an intresting thread to discuss, if it hasn't been done to death before.

Robin

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: smallpiper
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 04:53 AM

Kitchen piper isn't exactly right .. some scottish people do dis her playing but lots of them like it as well. True she mostly plays tunes of her and her partners own composition but I would say they are definately written within the tradition - and bloody good they are too.

There is a movement within scottish piping, particularatily within the samllpiping community, to move away from what is considered traditional playing, to demilitarise the music - this movement is meeting with stiff resistance from the established piping community.   Taking a well known 6/8 march and turning it back into a jig is exciting and gives the music a complete new lease of life. I'm all in favour of this.

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: smallpiper
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 04:57 AM

For examples of Kitchen pipers work - go visit her website click here by the way just because her site is called smallpiper dosn't mean it has anything to do with me. :-)

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 05:07 AM

You spelled diss wrong"
Is it cos you is a piper? :-)

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: smallpiper
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 05:54 AM

No jOhn its because I think spelling is a convention that not everyone has to adhere to and I like being different thats why I'm a piper! :-)

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: JWB
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 12:42 PM

Rich Stearns, the banjo player with the Horseflies, frails a wicked traditional tune. He also puts the banjo through a wah-wah pedal and goes to town, taking the same tune and tranforming it into something that even most headbangers would get into.

The key to using trad instruments in non-trad ways is to be good at playing them. Once mastered, then exploration is upon a firm foundation.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: curmudgeon
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 01:00 PM

Then there are the instruments associated with one tradition that also work in others. See the thread on the O'Carolan Festival.

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Lanfranc
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 06:24 PM

My repertoire on bowed psaltery includes "Misty" and "Here's that Rainy Day" alongside Playford and O'Carolan tunes.

They usually go down well with audiences, give any guitarists who decide to join in a bit of a challenge and silence most free reed and bodhran players!

One of my favourite melodeon players does a killer version of "Telstar" coupled with a Swedish tune that bears more than a passing resemblance to Jim Croce's "Lover's Cross"

Alan

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Barbara
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 06:40 PM

I bought my autoharp from a guy who was playing it in a rock band.
(tho I suppose you could argue that autoharps aren't any kind of traditional)
He said he was selling it because, even miked, it wasn't loud enough.
I found what he didn't say even more interesting: He didn't say anything about how hard it is to tune, or to tune the other instruments to it.
Of course tuning isn't relevant to bagpipes either, right?

Sorry, couldn't resist.
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: smallpiper
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 07:21 PM

you must be kidding barbara. bagpipes are tuned very carefully (admittedly not by all who proport to be pipers) but then you'd bloody well know if they weren't because your ears would bleed!

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Kudzuman
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 08:29 PM

Ah! That must be like me playing thrash music with my electrified Mountain dulcimer!! It was a hoot! If anyone wants to hear just PM me and I'll give you my website where I have an MP3 of my moment of insanity. It was FUN!!

kudzuman

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Mark Ross
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 09:03 PM

I played some vaudeville shows this summer at the Oregon Country Fair with a fellow who played the glass armonica. He regularly played STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN(claiming it was the original version). For the finale we did Beethoven's ODE TO JOY as a duet on glass armonica and 5-string banjo.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: open mike
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 09:25 PM

this is a tradition of sorts, too,
but i hear there are some who play
(fiddle sticks) by rapping the strings
of a fiddle with sticks. thus the name.
must hve an interesting sound-kind of like
a hammer dulcimer?

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Ely
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 10:38 PM

I know of a guy who plays the lap dulcimer by bouncing a pencil on the strings (makes a staccato pattern); he can play the entire William Tell Overture that way. I'm not sure what the point of it is but it sure is amazing.

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: JWB
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 11:08 PM

My friend Curt played our college fight song on the banjo, rollerskating around the campus. He did not fall, and never missed a note.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: open mike
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 11:46 PM

i heard a group last year in minneapolis at the nordic roots festival
they played hurdy gurdys with electronic pick ups and effects .
they were called appropriately enough the Hurdy Grudy Project.
Pretty wild!

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 03:51 AM

I'd like to put in a plug for Harmonious Wail of Madison, Wisconsin. They do swing music with bluegrass instruments.
Good stuff.
And I've known Sims Delany-Potthoff, the leader of the band, since he was eight. He studied mandolin under Jethro Burns.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 03:57 AM

There was (is?) a guy in the UK who played jazz on the bagpipes but of course I can't remember his name (damn CRS!). Humphrey Lyttleton claims one of his worst musical moments was at a jazz festival trying to play "The Saints" with the Dutch equivalent of the Dagenham Girl Pipers.

RtS

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: smallpiper
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:28 AM

RtS Hamish Moore and Dick Lee put out a CD (Called the Bees Knees)which is essentially a folk/Jazz fusion on Bagpipes and Sax - its brilliant.

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:33 AM

Holy Cow!
What have I started!

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Mr Happy
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:38 AM

I can play a recognizable solo rendition of 'Duelling Banjos' on D/G melodeon.

I play each part alternately on treble & bass buttons.

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:38 AM

Was going to post this from another thread but lost the connection...
QUOTE
One year at the Woodford Folk Festival, there was this young guy with a didj, a car battery, an amp, and a pile of techno boxes cross linked with all sorts of effects.

Very interesting range of sounds. But of course, it was what he was doing that was gathering the crowds around. (No, you disgusting creatures, it was the sort of music he was making!)

Native traditional players of the didj used it to "talk", almost, they can create a wide range of sound effects, some so natural sounding that it is stunning, and other sounds that symbolically represent animals behaviour. Some of these aren't obvious when you first hear them, but they are played to accompany certain physical actions of the dancers.
UNQUOTE

Robin

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: weerover
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 06:10 AM

I once read an essay ("Morning yet on creation day") by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in which he responded to criticism of the fact that he had chosen to write in English rather than one of the many languages native to Nigeria. He drew the comparison with what black musicians in America had done using western instruments, i.e. the creation of jazz.

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Leadfingers
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 07:39 AM

Being a fully paid up Poseur,I play Jazz and Blues on Tin Whistle, as well as things like The William Tell Overture (Mostly Spike Jones arrangement)and Bliss's Elizabethan Serenade.And of course Scott Joplin's The Entertainer with the key change.And to keep it traditional I do 'Down By the Sally Gardens 'on a C whistle in A,D,G,C,F and Bflat.

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 09:04 AM

open mike,
Fiddle sticks is a traditional way of playing a traditional instrument.

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: GUEST,JohnB
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 10:33 AM

The Welsh group Crasdant did an end of set number of Tom Jones "It's Not Unusual" with a pair of traditional "pibgorn's" (it's a reeded cow horn instrument) playing the horn section backup. It was truly amazing after an evening of trad Welsh music.
JohnB

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Pied Piper
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 11:46 AM

I've made a bit of a career of this sort of thing.
I play in the Roach Twins Blues Band doing Blues on Bombard and GHB (not at the same time), and also in the Suns Of Arqa, that fuses Dub reggae with Indian classical Ragas.
I play a lot of non "Trad" tunes at sessions and in my Ceilidh Band.
The older I get the more I want to own MY tradition of music I got by means traditional to lots of people round here the Radio, Television, and Record Player. If "purists" don't approve, tough titty, I'm being honest to my roots music.

TTFN
PP

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: JWB
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 11:54 AM

Speaking of jazz on the tinwhistle, there's an old recording of Guy van Duser and Billy Novic on which Billy plays 'Sweet Georgia Brown' on the whistle, taking lightning-fast breaks (involving half-holing bunches of notes), and modulating to a different key in the middle. Tremenjus!

Jerry

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: GUEST,LynnT
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 01:00 PM

And then there's the Washington DC group Hesperus, that plays woooonderful blues and old-timey music on medieval instruments. You haven't lived until you've heard them do blues slides on alto recorder and viola da gamba.

LynnT

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: mike the knife
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:18 PM

I've used my lap mountain dulcimer to prop open a door...

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 05:49 PM

Last Sunday we heard a recording on the radio of Bela Fleck playing Chopin on his banjo.

Several years ago we heard (and taped) a recording of the Concerto for Jews Harp and Orchestra.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Trad Instruments used in Non-Trad Ways
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 01:18 PM

I used to play jazz/blues on my Low Whistles, but The Cloth Ear Sub-Committe didn't like it...

Robin