This is specifically directed towards people who don’t play backing instruments in ITM.
Thanks…
Irish flute & whistle
I like accompaniment to be:
I play the harmonica.
Simple accompaniment is best. Leave out the fancy arpeggios and suspensions. You should know the tune very well. A light touch, springy rhythm and a rock-solid sense of tempo. You listen to me and I listen to you. We interact. And don’t come near me with your bloody dobro or twelve-string.
Arty McGlynn, Paul Brady, Daithi Sproule, Micheal O’Domhnaill, Alph Duggan. Anything with them on. Not Steven Cooney.
Flute, whistle, mandolin, tenor banjo, C#/D button accordion. I also play accompaniment on guitar and bouzouki, but I’m ignoring that for now.
The accompanist MUST NOT SUCK. By this I mean he/she must have sufficient command over her instrument, must be able to discern keys and modes by listening, be able to recover from mistakes gracefully and creatively, and all that. A basic level of musicianship is vital. Lameness in melody players is bad, but in accompanists it’s absolutely deadly. Being good at what you do is a duty.
The accompanist must KNOW THE TUNES.
The accompanist must LISTEN.
The accompanist must GROOVE HIS OR HER ASS OFF AT ALL TIMES. If all the above conditions apply, I want my accompanist to be strong and extroverted and able to play with me, not “back” me. No namby-pamby playing-quietly-and-hoping-nobody-notices crap. Be the big strong tree I grow the flowering melodic vine on. Anything less is just annoying.
I try to play pipes, whistle, flute, fiddle. Also guitars, keyboards.
Best is guitarist Dennis Cahill who backs Martin Hayes. Why? Because you barely notice he’s there, yet he’s always there. A true craftsman on guitar, he knows his stuff and when to apply it (versus some boob who only knows how to strum or pound out chords).
CDs - Any Martin Hayes CDs with Dennis Cahill.
djm
1.) Uilleann pipes & flute.
2.) A bit on the sparse side, I suppose. The accompanist should above all be sensitive to the way the melody player is playing the tune and not try to hijack it with a lot of choppy, syncopated chords…Unless perhaps the melody player is working on his/her Brian Finnegan impression…If the accompanist in question is really good, then a bit of counterpoint every now and then can be quite nice, although generally I think that kind of stuff sounds a bit better on bouzouki/cittern.
3.) Yvon Riou’s accompaniment of Jean-Michel Veillon’s playing is quite nice (okay, well, some of the tunes are Irish!). Some of Mícheál Ó Domhnaill’s playing with Kevin Burke was pretty good. Around here, we’ve got Nancy Conescu and she’s a lot of fun to play with.
Flute, whistle and sing.
I dont really like guitar accompaniment, please dont take any offence, but I much prefer bouzouki.
As for style in accompaniment, I like sympathetic playing that improves the music and gives it a lift, must be in tune and in time and shouldnt dominate, thats what the lead instruments are for. In saying that I do like Daithí Sproule and Paul Mc Sherry on guitar, and am rather fond of Gerdy Thompsons playing too. If I had a choice of accompanist it would have to be John Mc Greevy from Downpatrict, he’s a bouzouki player and is starting to get very well known in n.Ireland. 
Pipes and whistles
Sparseness, dynamic restraint (not playing as loud as one can all the time), absolutely deadly timing, “correct” chord choices for the scale/mode of the tune. I like bouzouki, mandola/octave mandolin, harp, and some guitarists, but do not think piano is appropriate for backing the pipes. It’s great for flutes, fiddles, and boxes though. Pianists need to have a sprightly, bouncy sense of timing, select appropriate chords, and play with dynamic restraint.
Bouzouki - Donal Lunny, Planxty, “After The Break” or with Paddy Keenan and Paddy Glackin, “Doublin”. Pat Broaders, any of the CDs he’s recorded with Bohola. Alec Finn, any of his work with De Danaan; I especially like his backing of Tommy Keane and Jacqueline McCarthy on their duet CD “The Wind in the Reeds”.
Guitar - Arty McGlynn is The Man. Cathal Hayden’s self-titled CD is a good example of what he can do. Denis Cahill’ backing of Martin Hayes is brilliant, too, so is Daithi Sproule’s work with Trian or Altan.
Harp - Brian Rooney’s backing of Michael O Raghallaigh on “The Nervous Man” is great. I also like Grainne Hambly’s backing of Brian MacNamara on both of his solo CDs - harp and pipes sound especially lovely played together.
Piano - Geraldine Cotter, “The Thing Itself” with Peadar O’Loughlin and Maeve Donnelly. Lovely playing.
Bad flute and worse whistle, so boy, do I know the value of good accompaniment!
Guitars, Zooks, etc: all of the above; I also like some of the things Ged Foley does on guitar, especially on Paul Smyth’s ‘Up and Away’ CD. Arty McGlynn is always great. I also like Paul Doyle and Noel Ryan; the little bit I’ve heard of them (John Wynne’s “With Every Breath” CD and a few other places) – they seem really tasteful. Anything Donal Lunny (Matt Molloy’s first album is perfect) and Pat Broaders do is golden.
Other instruments like mandolas, etc … every time I give a close listen to Dervish’s backing accompaniment I’m amazed at the creativity and invention there.
Piano: Ditto on Geraldine Cotter. I also like both Dolans, they have a nice wit and sense of humor.
As for style: Taste, creativity combined with simplicity, sympathy for the music & other players, rock-solid rhythm with flexibility, and a good ear – basically, anything that helps the tune! (And of course, most paramount – the ability to bail my bum out when necessary)
I don’t want to interrupt the responses, but I wanted to make a few comments…
Dennis Cahill. I do really like his playing, but it’s important to note that the way he plays with Martin Hayes only works because he’s playing with Martin Hayes. I think his biggest strength is his ability to compliment whomever he’s playing with individually. For example, listen to him playing with John Creavan. I doubt anyone would have guessed it was the same guy.
I fully agree about Geraldine Cotter on “The Thing Itself.” I used to hate piano accompaniment, but this album has converted me.
I’m a guitarist who dislikes most guitar accompaniment, including my own. However, I am good enough that I can’t get any feedback from anyone other than that they like what I do, which is nice but unhelpful. I think the main problem with guitar accompaniment is that it tends to fall into two camps… An 8th note based camp and a quarternote based camp. The 8th note thing generally sounds too rock-like to me, and tends to lock the melody players into a single kind of groove. The quarternote thing is usually a clunky-sounding boomchuck thing (Cahill being a noteable exception) which just doesn’t sound good to me on guitar. Anyway, the point of this exercise is I’m hoping to find example that don’t fit into these camps.
I find bouzouki to be too jangly for my taste and the way it’s usually played is very very busy. What is it that people like about it?
I actually have grown to like Mick O’Connor’s banjo backup on Paddy Carty’s CD, but he seems to be basically just pretending it’s a portable piano.
Well, I am a guitarist as well but I also know how I like to hear accompaniment when I am not doing it:
1.) Mandolin, Tenor Banjer, Whistle (and guitar)
2.) The number one thing I like to see in accompaniment is a good sense of rhythm and making a musical bond with the person(s) being accompanied. I don’t think there is a one size fits all style and that the guitarist (or zouk or whatever) needs to be able to adapt to the people they are playing with. Like was mentioned before about Dennis Cahill, his brilliance is his ability to adapt.
Another thing I like to see is somebody who can take a tune and give it a whole different meaning with their accompaniment (without taking over the tune itself). A good accompanist can play a different set of chords under the exact same melody a second time and make it feel like a brand new tune.
3.) Liz Carroll and John Doyle - In Play: John Doyle knows when to be driving and when to lay back. The second track on the CD gave me goose bumps the first time I heard it. A wonderful example of a melody and accompaniment playing off each other as opposed to one playing off the othere
Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill - The Lonesome Touch: Just like Liz and John, these two are like one. The thing I like about Dennis Cahill is that, he shows his greatness with subtlety. It’s not always complex but it is always tasteful. That’s the mark of a great one.
Lunasa - The Kinnitty Sessions: Donogh (guitar) and Trevor (bass) are both brilliant (If I ever could build a fantasy band, they are top on my list) but what really makes Lunasa great is that everybody in the band plays accompaniment. The background whistles during “Michael Kennedy’s” is just classic. (Specially since it is the result of Kevin Crawford playing with 2 whistles in his mouth at once) … Everybody in this band is brilliant.
I think part of the reason is that bouzouki/cittern players tend to be a bit sparser in their accompaniment. Less chunky chords and more droning and countermelody (which does, admittedly, get too busy sometimes). John Doyle is very good at what he does and it works well when he’s playing with people who like what he does like Liz Carroll, but the legions of guitarists now trying to copy what he does tend to do lots of loud, choppy, syncopated chords that, rather than driving the tune along, just downright get in the way and are really annoying.
Define “sparse.” If (per Pat) Artie McGlynn’s playing is sparse, then I think I don’t understand the word.
I think it means light, beautifully-sprung, plenty of air, not filled with repressive, full chords all the time when single notes will do, nice drone effect skillfully-used. Not loud. Sensitive. Pat will tell me I have this all wrong. 
Clever 
I have heard Paul’s “instructional” CD that comes with his “Traditional Irish Guitar” book. In spite of the electric guitars and stuff, I do enjoy it quite a bit even though there are notions in the book that I disagree with (I have loads of recordings of real irish music in which the ‘quavers’ are of equal length).
In your ideal world, well, pretending for a minute that your ideal world includes a guitarist, what are some ways the “harmonic indeterminacy” could be preserved? Fewer chords? Thinner chords? A different chord the next time a passage comes around?
Out of all the accompanist I have encountered I must say Paul de Grae was one of the most gentle and least intrusive, carrying the music rather than pushing it in some direction or other, complementing it very nicely. Also: out of a fair amount of playing time Paul only picked up the guitar every now and again, just listening in the rest of the time.
Well, not supplying notes that are omitted from a tune with a gapped scale goes a long way, I think, although there are exceptions, of course. I particularly dislike it when a third is supplied, so that a tune suddenly becomes major or minor. There’s lots more, of course.
Grokking modes and things beyond typical major or minor – and being able to play in them – is also nice.