Most of the references I find on place the use of guitar in traditional music is regarding accompaniment. Do folks ever use it just on the melody?
I can see how more than one guitar in a session playing accompaniment could be annoying, specially if one player’s rhythm was slightly off or using different chords.
Is it considered acceptable to just play melody in a session?
Eddie
B573, some guitarists can do it and get away with it, but most can’t do it well enough, or fast enough. Some people object simply because guitar is not a traditional instrument. There’s a Mel Bay book/CD called the “Irish DADGAD Book” for guitar. The music is pretty, but played far too slow. Nonetheless, it can be done. Just listen to Irish guitarist Arty McGlynn.
If you try to pick (plectrum) your way through as a melody instrument, you will end up sounding like a banjo or mandolin. Some people find this sound objectionable as a melody instrument. If you really want to pull it off and give the guitar its full due, you must be able to fingerpick to get the full chordal accompaniment that a guitar is capable of.
Again, this is not always considered a traditional or acceptable sound, but if done well and at tempo, you should be able to hold your own. Guitarists make their own trouble by trying to force the music or change it to suit guitar rhythms or styles. If you want to be accepted you must maintain a traditional beat and tempo so as to fit into a session, instead of trying to dominate.
Hope that helps,
djm
[quote=“beowulf573”]Most of the references I find on place the use of guitar in traditional music is regarding accompaniment. Do folks ever use it just on the melody?
I play fingerstyle versions of Irish and Scottish tunes, as well as hymns, Motown and whatever else I think, rightly or wrongly, I can do. It is indeed very hard on fingerstyle guitar to capture the speed of the faster dance tunes, but we persevere. My new CD Dancing the Strings contains my take on four great jigs, and I’m pleased with the results–although it would have been nice if it hadn’t taken me 12-15 years to do these tunes justice!
Catch other guitarists, too, such as Tony McManus, Steve Baughman, John Sherman, who render the Irish and Scottish dance tunes very well, IMHO
.
The “Live at Matt Molloy’s” CD has a track w/ someone -I forget who- playing an impressive set of two jigs at a very respectable clip. If I can trust my ears, the guitarist was using a flatpick, no less.
There are plenty of guitarists who use the instrument just on the melody–and most of the ones that I can think of use a flatpick. I’m no expert, but it seems that many guitarists find the fingerstyle technique a tad laborious on many Scottish and Irish tunes. Several excellent guitarists have already been mentioned, such as Tony McManus and Arty McGlynn (he’s the one who plays those jigs on the “Live at Matt Molloy’s CD”). I would also include Seamus Egan (who prefers to use a nylon-string guitar) and Dick Gaughan (check out his classic CD “Coppers and Brass”).
There’s plenty of people playing guitar as a melody instrument, and some of them can do it very, very well indeed.
Mick Daly, guitar player from Cork (see Island To Island, new cd with Seamus Creagh and Aidan Coffey, and a host of Cape Breton musicians) combines melody with harmony - he’s incredibly good. If you can get a copy of that cd, you’ll see what he means. AFAIK, he uses a pick all the time.
Sorry I mentioned the pick. Some people seem to have gotten fixated on this. Many good players use a pick, but they don’t only use a pick. They also use fingers 3, 4 and sometimes 5, to pluck a chordal accompaniment along with the pick. I meant using a pick to only play a single note-line of a melody. The guitar’s strength is its ability to play harmony, and my suggestion was to use this to its full. The ITM repertoire is full of harp music, and that music is all eminently suitable to guitar, not just the dance music.
My absolute favourite guitar accompanist for ITM is Dennis Cahill, who backs up Martin Hayes. This guy is incredible. You hardly notice he is there, but you always know he is. IMHO this is the way guitar should be played in ITM, and I’m a guitarist first.
djm
Yes people certainly do play melody on guitar. Here’s](http://www.rogermillington.com/louis/clips/LouisMcManusSwedishJig1980Mulhallen.mp3%22%3EHere%27s) a little clip that will give you an idea of what can be done.
The player (both guitars) is Louis McManus, whom I wrote about in this forum a few months back - http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=9879. Not coincidentally he is Tony McManus’ older cousin.
John Doyle plays a couple of dance sets on his new solo CD. To hear him made me wonder why Seamus Egan got to play the solo guitar in Solas.
Richard Thompson has an instructional CD on Homespun with a beautiful version of Banish Misfortune amongst other things.
I can’t comment on how welcome either finger picking or flat picking of melody would be at a session, but I assume it depends on the session. Getting up to session speed would be no more of a challenge than playing good bluegrass or accoustic jazz (like Eddie Lang or Django Reinhardt) .. but no less of a challenge either.
As for melody musicians at sessions classing guitar with piano accordeon and bodhran, it really is up to the player to show that they are in tune with the feel of the session. But, since an unamplified, flat-picked, accoustic guitar is a poor match in volume for a fiddle, flute or button box, I don’t think reasonable people are likely to complain. Backing chords in bebop style or Celtic thrash is more likely to throw things out than well-phrased melody. Insensitive backing is where the prejudice comes from anyway.
Oh. And do yourself a favour: listen to Louis McManus.
A hearty welcome to you, El McMeen,
good to have you here on board.
Thanks for all the replies.
I was thinking about more of a flatpick style. While I love good fingerstyle and classical guitar, and El your stuff is fantastic, I’ve never thought it fit in that well with session music. It seems to deserve to be heard all by itself.
Since I’m not caffinated enough to put this better (I’ve written this three times and erased it!) here’s how the thought occurred to me…
I’ve been playing the flute for almost two years and am finally at the point where I’m (mostly) confortable playing at the local session. At that same time I’ve been so focused on flute that I’ve been neglectling my guitar. I saved up for too many years to buy the one I have and I need to play it!
So, I started looking around at how guitar fit into session music. Accompaniment seems to the primary use, usually badly locally. There’s one person who shows up regularily out of tune, playing the wrong chords and always in a march. I’d rather not be that person. However I never really developed my backing skills, finding which chords fits, etc, so I’m reading and rereading Chris Smith’s fine book right now. But it’s going to be a while before I’m at the level where I would want to play that in session.
But a few weeks ago I was sitting next to a great player and his cittern and it occurred to me that there wasn’t any reason the same flat pick style couldn’t be played on a guitar, albeit without the rich sound you get from the double strings.
I also remembered the track from the Matt Molloy live album someone mentioned before. I also recently picked up the Jack and Jimmy Cohen album, where he plays in unison with the flute, but I haven’t been able to listen to it for long as the CD players at the office and in the car are on the fritz.
So, where to go from here. At the very least I’m going to continue to play around with the flatpick style. It gives me something to play on the guitar, it probably reinforces my knowledge of the tune on the flute, and will help once I move into accompaniment.
If I ever get my right hand up to session speed I may talk to the local players and see if they mind my bring the guitar along.
Oh, and thanks for the Louis McManus link. Yet another CD to my ‘to buy’ list.
Eddie
Wow, that’s great playing. Very classical, though, very Seogovia-ish. There are other people who play in a more “trad” style. The problem with playing solo ITM in an acoustic guitar will always be one of power, though. The guitar with its single strings and low tension is not loud enough to hold its own in a session. But if you can get people to shut up long enough to play a solo, it sounds beautiful.
g
Wow. I didn’t know Segovia used a flat pick, and copious trebling! For me anyone less classical, or more trad, than Louis is hard to imagine. Check out the other clips on the site above…
Hi there elmcmeen,
You sent me a CD after hitting our web site, very nice and thank you for your generosity.
Since I wasn’t a string player, I passed it on to Stanley Widener (after a few months of listening), our guitar/bouzouki/banjo player.
I think he was familiar with you, possibly from some other genre as he came to our band with a classical/rock background.
As soon as I can get some web space, I want to post a recording of him doing Cooley’s reel (with plectrum) tuned DADGAD.
No other member of the band can keep up with him if he wants to notch it up a little…
It is possible and lovely to do tunes on guitar (except for me), plectrum or finger style.
As far as i know, Segovia used his fingers, not a flat pick. Not sure about the trebling, since i don’t know what the word means (he used tremolo a lot, but that’s probably something else).
Sorry if i caused any confusion.
Thanks for the kind welcomes, as I dipped my toe into the whistlin’ waters(hey, that sounds like a tune name!) of this fine forum run by a great man, Dale Wisely. I am a huge fan of whistle, having worked with Bob Pegritz on his great CD, Whistleworks, and on my 2001 release called The Lea Rig. I love the combination of the sustained and atmospheric notes of the whistle, and the steel-string guitar. The whistle, with its ancient and almost primal sound, and the guitar really complement each other, I think.
Anyhow, thanks for your thoughts, and good luck in your musical endeavors.
El McMeen
Shouldn’t that read: the guitar, with its ancient and almost primal sound, and the whistle really complement each other I think?
It’s OK, I play both.
Quoting:Shouldn’t that read: the guitar, with its ancient and almost primal sound, and the whistle really complement each other I think?
No… and from the context, there is anything but disrespect directed at the whistle.
EM
I realise that. I’m afraid this is just the kind of humour we go in for around here. Actually, guitar is my first instrument.
Frankly, I find the disrespect that guitar gets in some purist trad circles a bit mystifying, but, then again, I find extreme purism a bit mystifying quite generally. And I too, love whistle/guitar duets.