This is not so much a question as a … a thought … musing …
I’ve played this music on fiddle for donkeys years - love it to bits. But, these days, you have to be so damn clean in your playing if you play fiddle. It’s gone way beyond ‘precise’. (Those who know me will know that my fiddle playing isn’t all that clean. )
And I think … well, maybe the reason I am now attracted to flute is that, judging from the players I’ve heard … well, flute hasn’t been ‘corrupted’, cleaned up, sanitised in the same way. Been listening avidly to sounds from the likes of Conal O’Grada, Harry Bradley, Fintan Valelly and others. Fantastic, wild sound. It’s just gorgeous. I wonder why we seem to have lost that on fiddle? I hope it never happens on flute.
Meanwhile, I can’t wait 'til I can handle this blessed thing, so I can make all those uncouth, profane … and totally beautiful, noises that Irish flute players make.
I disagree, Ben. I’d say the 3 players you mention there are the exceptions in flute-playing in the island of Ireland today rather than the norm. And long may they continue to play in the style they do.
One of my favorite Irish albums is Jack and Charlie Coen’s The Branch Line, which is about as rough as you can get, right down to the hose clamp on Jack’s flute.
I think this is the way much music is going; it’s so damned refined these days. Kind of Blue took, I think from conception to the completion of the recording, about two days. That’s including the decision to make an album, writing the music, and recording. John Kay muses that for Steppenwolf’s second album they had something like two weeks of studio time (AND an 8-track mixer), and he thinks that may have been too much, as the first album had taken, IIRC, 2-3 days. The Derek and the Dominoes album was recorded over the course of a month or more, but that still represented less than two weeks of studio time, and the reason it was spread out is that Duane Allman wasn’t even a member of the group for the original sessions. I don’t think recording of music has improved since then except for fidelity, and there are damn few albums that are better than any of those I’ve cited.
Nowadays it’s unusual for a band of much repute to spend less than a month, often as much as six months, in the studio. All to lose the roughness and quash any spontaneity that they might have had, and to line the pockets of record-company executives, who get a cut from the studio rental.
Arrrrrhh, Ben lad. We’re a rough old bunch alright, us tootlers and puffers, nearly as rough as them pipery types… Of course, playing with reeds is an excuse for roughness any time, and boy do they bellow about it. But I’m sure Irish fiddling can’t all have become quite that sanitised - there must be a few scrubbers left, equivalents of Gloucester’s finest (Floss Headford), and I’m sure I’ve seen a few cases of fiddler’s leg still in recent times - and not just yours!
It’s a shame if they are the exception. But I don’t think they are. I cited them - well-known recording artists - because people might see what I was getting at with some examples which they might identify with (or not). But I would go further - I go over to Ireland as often as I can, and I play in as many sessions here in the UK as I can as well. On this side of the water, fiddlers are rough right enough, but that’s mainly because they can’t actually play their instruments, not because they’re choosing to play robustly for artistic reasons. On the other hand, fluters over here tend, in my experience, to be a tad refined. But in Ireland …
As far as I can see, the majority of session fluters over the water in Ireland play an agressive, muscular type of fllute playing - almost percussive. It’s fantastic. Of course, they don’t all sound like Bradley, O’Grada or Valelly - be a shame if they did - but boy, do they belt hell out of those instruments! While the fiddlers sit around making pretty - and often pretty uninspiring - noises, and nice harmonies. Clearly there are exceptions to this as well, but the balance, to me, does seem to be the other way round with fiddlers.
I’m beginning to feel better already. Rough fiddle playing is my special talent. I have always felt that rough playing equalled bad playing.
Man, that was awful.
Not really awful, but maybe a little rough.
I’m thinking about some of the acts on “America’s got Talent”, which is playing now in the USA.
I don’t know about about that but I thought the general standard in fiddle competions seems higher than the general standard in flute, more competitors as well I think. My guess is your observation and mine could be down to more fiddle players having learned violin at school? Probably fewer pupils learn flute (ie Boehm) and it’s a different instrument unlike violin / fiddle. So fiddlers are moving from a classical training, fluters have less formal training?
The wild and aggressive sound you can make on the flute is one of the reasons i started playing it. But i find that a rough flute and a refined fiddle that play together sound fantastic…
All I can say , Ben, is that my experiences of flute-playing in sessions Ireland, and by that I mean mainly the Willie Clancy week, are very different from yours.
Folks who haven’t lived in Ireland, or at least spent a significant amount of time there, probably have no idea whatsoever about the real standard of flute-playing there. In truth, it’s off the charts - there are 12-year-olds who can play rings around us all, and with refinement and flair.
I’d say the 3 players you mention there are the exceptions in flute-playing in the island of Ireland today rather than the norm. And long may they continue to play in the style they do
‘Roughness’, love it, now I have an aesthetic justifcation for my ‘style’! But Rob’s sadly correct (at least from the perspective of my own beginner’s level of playing matched against a sample of 12-16 year olds). Still, onwards and upwards as they say, and off to Galway and Kinvara for more public humiliation in a week or two. Help!
PS…
Didn’t know there were any Irish people at pub sessions during Clancy week!
)
Clearly there are exceptions to this as well, but the balance, to me, does seem to be the other way round with fiddlers.
