Didn’t mean to over-react.
EM
No worries. I’m forgetting my manners. It’s really nice to have you join us. I hope you find it fun.
If you think about it I am sure you know quite well that like with the bodhran, the banjo or the accordeon, to pick a few instruments that get a lot of flak, it’s not as much the instrument as insensitive players that attract the attention and cast a shadow over the reputation of the instrument. Personally if i’d generalise about things I would say I don not fancy guitars with traditional music but I do realise this comes from players who have nothing to add, or at best a standard background noise. We have all sat playing with a few nice players and in comes the guy with the big case who sits down without looking at anybody and goes beserk turning your music into his take on what the Bothy Band were doing. Which usually means he has one, more often than not very hyped and excited, approach for all jigs, another one for all reels and etc. for the rest of types of tunes. But then again, sometimes someone sits down, opens the case and asks you if you mind him sitting in and ofcourse you don’t want to be rude and you say OK and he lifts you gently and carries you along and generally dds that bit of lift. It happens sometimes and it’s great when it does.
Peter, in truth I agree entirely and say almost exactly what you said in an earlier post on this thread. At the point in the discussion where you quote me, I was going a bit over the top.
The take I am getting on all this stuff like guitar/no guitar and the “tradition” is that there are definitely different sounds being generated in different settings. If you are not familiar with ITM, you may unwittingly walk into the wrong setting.
There is what is considered to be a “traditional” setting in some sessions. The music is unrehearsed, the musicians excellent, and the sound distinct. Everyone plays the melody. There is little or no harmonizing, as this is foreign to ITM, but there are lots of variations on the melodies and ornamentation. Guitars are not welcome here. Also, some of these do not welcome accordians or concertinas or banjos, depending on the make-up of the group and just how really “purist” they consider their traditional sound to be, i.e. no instruments newer to the tradition than around 1880.
Then there are the newer groups of people who were not raised in the “tradition”, have no idea what ITM is “supposed” to sound like, and have had their tastes more influenced by ceilidh bands, or modern North American popular acoustic music (sometimes mislabelled as “folk” music). These groups are more accepting of modern instruments and orchestrated arrangements. That’s why its important to try sessions with different groups of people to find out who you will fit in with.
There are harpers and pipers who refuse to join sessions or play along with anyone else, trying to maintain the “sanctity” of the historical solo nature of their instruments.
You just can’t please everyone. There is always the need for some people to be snooty about something or other.
djm
I had a very interesting discussion about this the other day. And I think it has to do with rhythmic subtlety. We were talking about reels and the fact that so many reels have such different rhythms. If you just take the Cup of Tea, for example (which got us started): the three parts have very different rhythms & flavors. That’s hard enough on a melody instrument. But on a rhythm instrument like the strummed guitar (or the bodhran), it really takes away from the tune if the accompanyment does not respect the different flavors of the parts.
It’s tough on the guitarists because just strumming the chords seems easier than playing all those melodies; but I am discovering that I the rhythmic subtles are very hard to grasp (for me, a klutz), and that I sort of have to work through the melody to get to the rhythm, if that makes sense. That is why I love guitar players that can pick the melody. I think it does absolute wonders for their ability to play chord accompanyment.
I actually don’t think a guitar player should attempt to accompany a tune unless he/she knows the melody. I’m not sure that it would be necessary to be able to pick it; perhaps the ability to lilt it is enough. But a very good backup guitarist knows when to play very spare, gentle, countermelodies and that requires the ability to pick a tune. But someone who really understands the rhythms can go a long way playing chords and arpeggios in the right places and accenting appropriately.
Sort of like those incredible klutzes vamping on piano in so many recordings from the first half of the twentieth century. So many great performances were totally ruined by those schmucks, banging away the same three chords regardless of the tune. Yes, a guitarist who can only chord, and doesn’t know the tunes can really wreck a session, and is the principle reason so many players have come to object to guitars. The same applies to bouzoukis, or mandocellos, or any other “accompaniment” instruments that chord throughout.
One session I was at had a bouzouki player who would go into all sorts of fancy new-age jazz chord progressions, maj7 this and dim4 that. He had never played with UPs, and didn’t know what to do when his fancy chords did not fit at all with the drones, and even worse with the regs. Instead of listening and adapting, he just kept banging away at the same few progressions he knew, whether it fit or not.
Rhythm is a good point, Bloomfield. Not only must the guitarist (et al) be on the same page as everyone else melodically (sp?) but has to be able to change the rhythm of their strumming to match the intricacies of the tempo, something that learning James Taylor songs just won’t prepare you for. 
djm
I was going to post another reply along the same lines as Bloomfiled and Wombat, it is indeed very important the guitar [bouzouki or whatever] player knows the tunes intimately and works with that knowledge to add something rather than superimpose a standard ‘reel in D’ drone noise pattern onto each tune. That’s all been said by you guys so I’ll leave that alone.
The worst problem with bad guitar [bodhran, bouzouki] players is offcourse that they don’t stop, a bad fiddleplayer will run out of tuens and will sit waiting until a tune he knows comes along. Not accompanists, they just keep going.
I have yet to encounter a session like DJM seems to know, the one that wants to stay pure and won’t allow certain instruments. Never have I encountered that.
Last sunday I went out to see Mick O Brien and Caiomhin O Raghallaigh play with Gerry Harrington and Nancy Conescu. Now, I have played with them all during the summer and had some very nice evenings with Caoimhin and Gerry [and Nancy] during the summer. They play lovely music, multilayered and multitextured. Nancy is a lovely guitarplayer but I couldn’t help thinking that I would actually have been just as happy listening to the pipes and the two fiddles, the guitar was just an extra layer that was, I wouldn’t say out of place because she did a lovely job and had something to add but I wouldn’t have missed it.
The music didn’t need it and I think you’d be wrong mistaking that for purism, I think a lot of traditional musicians are quite happy to listen to the music without the strings attached.
I think that the main function of guitar accompanyment is making the music more accessible to those not (yet) that familiar with it. Putting that guitar layer connects the Irish stuff to what everybody else has grown up hearing. I know that ten years ago I couldn’t have gotten through a solo-piping CD. Of course, ten years ago I didn’t hear a 10th of what I hear in the music today: I appreciated what guitar or other accompanyment there was and I didn’t miss what it covered up in the music.
We’ve all been there ofcourse, I was thinking that this afternoon, twenty years or more ago I would have been waiting for the guitar to come in but your ear changes. I am not sure I’d say the guitar’s primary function is to introduce people to the music, I’d agree it can make it more accessible.
Like any instrument, in the hands of a sensitive musician it can be a joy to hear or to play with.
That is so true. We had a piano accordion player at our session a few times. Brilliant musician, Ph.D. in music, teaches, directs choir, and a nice guy. But has never played Irish trad. Of course he can read like the blazes. I’d even say that he was musical enough to listen to what was going on in the music that he wasn’t unbearable on the tunes he knew. He really did listen.
But then he started playing chords on the tunes he didn’t know. We exchanged a few glances, and then we told him to stop it.
In my experience the other unfortunate thing about guitar & PA players is that unless they are good and experienced in ITM, they can’t resist the temptation to pull out their non-ITM party pieces or songs at some point or other during the session. I have yet to meet a beginning fiddler who tried to sing a song at a session he attended for the first time…
Too right, Bloom. This kind of nonsense (clueless guitarists, hack singers, and bodhrani) got so bad at one local session I attend that certain people had to be told to shape up or get lost. They didn’t, so they got lost. Anyway, things seem to be working much better now, we’ll see whether that continues.
I happened just now to catch a Tony McManus tune on RadioCelt–Sliabh Gal Cua / Kishor’s Tune, off the Ceol More album. It was really lovely! Very simple, guitar and bodhran, and beautifully done. 
~Andrea
-Branching out from ITM into flatpicking old-timey Scottish/Irish/African rooted American music-give a listen to Norman Blake, my particular flatpicking idol, though not purely a melodic/fingerstyle player. Country star George Strait is a ferocious flatpicker when provoked- energized like surf guitarists, but much faster, FWIW. I swear one live show recorded him on extended licks probably melting picks, and conclude his offerings are just the limited spectrum of his stuff which sell in the C/W world. Nice to know there’s a hell of a musician behind it all.
I can do a reasonable job flat picking DADGAD guitar, particularly if I tune to DADGAE, gives me a D-AE on the top four strings, which correspond to the top three strings of the tenor banjo, my primary stringed instrument.
However, I rarely do it in sessions mostly because my guitar, a Martin OOO model, isn’t very loud, so I’ll flat pick sometimes if I’m backing to get a set going, then switch to backing once the melody is established.
Cheers,
Michael