I just have to get some feedback on this because it really bugs me. Obviously, Martin is a great fiddle player. Sometimes his playing is out of this world. Really crisp and right there. But… I have three of Martin’s CDs and on most of the tracks he has this slow way of playing that slides into every other bar or so. With all of that sliding I can’t bring myself to try and learn a tune from him. Its also tends to get annoying. Could someone please explain his style and why he would play this way? Is it just a personal thing or from a particular region in Ireland?
Martin’s style is very personal, but I think the biggest Irish traditional influences in his playing are the music of his native East Clare and the music of the late great Dublin fiddler Tommy Potts. East Clare and East Galway fiddlers (e.g. Junior Crehan, Martin Rochford, Bobby Casey, Paddy Canny, PJ Hayes, Paddy Fahey) tend to use that sliding effect, though in most cases not as pronounced or drawn out as the way Martin does it, and the pace does tend to be slower than in other regional styles. Tunes are often played in unusual keys. There are echoes of Tommy Potts in some of Martin’s phrasing, variations, and the drawn-out slides, and he and Potts have a similar depth of emotion in their playing.
Martin is perfectly capable of playing “straight” in a more traditional East Clare style – he recorded a few tracks of tunes on a compilation of young fiddlers that was released in the early 1980s, called “An Fhidil,” and he played some of those same tunes on his first album for Green Linnet. The contrast between the two recordings is striking. In the intervening years Martin had moved to America, played in a celtic-rock band (Midnight Court) and broadened his musical horizons considerably. I think he has spent a lot of time developing his own personal style of playing.
Whether his style is “annoying” is a matter of personal taste. I enjoy his playing, there’s a lot of depth to it, a great blend of head and heart, although at times it feels too self-consciously individualistic. Because his style is so recognizeable, basing your setting of a tune closely on his playing of it is likely to label you as a “Martin Hayes wannabe,” of which there are many.
Martin Hayes is great, but I wouldn’t recommend learning tunes from him - like bradhurley said, his settings are very individual. You’d be better off learning the tunes from somewhere else and then listening to Hayes’ version to get ideas on how you could vary it.
Jo.
I think you could call it the “I need to pay my bills” style, he’s got a style that he puts on records which is lyrical to the point of annoyance. But I heard a tape of him out of the spotlight once & he played very nicely. He laid off the ooey-gooey & dripping with honey approach.
But hey - that sells him records & pays his mortgage.
You’re probably right Brad. In fact in the liner notes for his Live in Seattle CD he writes:
“Over the years I have struggled with a number of philosophical dilemas related to performance: If you play only what the audience wants, are you likely to dilute the quality of the music in order to satisfy perceived audience desires? If you play only what you want to hear; then you may alientate the audience and cut yourself off from any real communication, in which case you must ask yourself why perform a concert at all?”
Maybe that says it all in regards to tradition vs. sales.
But I don’t think he’s necessarily saying that the music that he would play for himself would be traditional and straightforward. He’d probably be playing something approaching jazz.
He’s undergone an evolution in his playing. He spent his early years solidly in the tradition, honing his skills well enough to earn him an All-Ireland title. Now he’s somewhere “beyond” that, creating his own brand of music. And it is kind of a brand – he has an M.B.A., after all. He has defined a niche for himself, a way of playing that sets him apart from the crowd. All successful performers do that. There are a bazillion brilliant fiddlers out there who all sound similar to the untrained ear. And then there’s Martin Hayes, who doesn’t sound like anyone else. He’s kind of like the Glenn Gould of traditional music. I’m sure he didn’t develop his style as a purely commercial effort, he’s too much of a real musician for that, but he obviously noticed that people were responding to it, and like any professional musician he has taken advantage of that. Just look at his tour schedule (well, not so busy this year, but his calendar for the last couple of years made me tired just looking at it).
edited due to outspoken opinion
Forget the whole thing… :roll: sorry
You VERY obviously have not heard all the people he learned his music from, he sounds VERY MUCH like someone else in many respects.
And fair play to him, he has taken in all sorts of elements and worked them into a thought through music. He does what he does with integrity and conviction. Though I too must say his second CD put me completely off, for a while at least allthgouh there are also elements in his playing and philosophy I very much appreciate.
I meant he doesn’t sound like any of the other Irish fiddlers out there performing and recording today. I mentioned some of his influences up above, and those influences are obvious in his playing. His father PJ Hayes, his uncle Paddy Canny, Martin Rochford, the influence of Tommy Potts, etc., etc. My point is that he has a unique voice among his current peers, and that uniqueness is part of what makes him so successful.
Peter
Which one are you talking about? Just curious
I posted you a few mp3s, let us know if you think Hayes is close to that or not 
Sure that’d be great
Some of these old time Clare fiddlers had some strong idiosyncracies in their playing, you should hear Junior Crehan (I think it was him! Ceol an Clare record) play Sean O’Dwyer of the Glens, for instance. Really choppy bowing in places. From a background like that nothing Martin does would sound quite so jarring.
That was John Kelly actually
Where? 
Actually I sent them to the e-mail address you list with your posts
Sorry, I never rc’d them. I use a free email service so anything over 2megs would get bounced. You could just tell me whose playing your talking about, couldn’t you? Pretty please 
I think Martin Rochford would be a fairly safe guess.
Hotmail’s spamgaurd placed your email in the garbage folder.
I listened to the MP3’s - Martin Rochford has something rustic & wild in his music, it does remind me of those “out of the spotlight” tapes I’ve heard of Martin Hayes. Peter, I think that you’ll agree that Martin’s stage-schtick is a different thing altogether though. 
I definitely think Hayes’ tone and phrasing are very similiar to Rochford’s. The rhymic approach is only slightly different, Hayes is a little less “exagerated”. Of course, he doesn’t take quite the same approach to tunes, not on stage anyway.
To be quite honest, though, I’ve only heard one mp3 of Rochford(hint hint Peter), so maybe I’ve formed my opinions prematurely.