I got a bug in me today when I finally re-strung the 5-string banjo I haven’t played much since beginning to play whistle. I remember seeing, not too long ago, a video of old-time clawhammer style banjo played with uilleann pipes and loving it. There’s also been discussions in the past of why the whistle and flute didn’t make a bigger impact on American old-time music.
So, I got the bug in me to try it out a bit for myself. I thought that, had the whistle played a bigger role over here, that the typical Irish ornamentations would likely have evolved to fit the style more. One of my uneducated guesses would be that tonguing and slides would possibly have been used more often.
Anyway, here’s what I came up with:
http://www.box.net/shared/rgecjguo0w
Standard disclaimer: my microphone is cheap, I’m rusty on banjo, and I’m definitely not where I’d like to be on whistle proficiency. But, regardless, I think this might be sorta how it could’ve been.
Also, I have a feeling that the overall result would be better if I made a clawhammer backing to an established whistle tune, since old-time tunes typically have more basic melodies.
Love it! I’ve been listening to and learning a lot of oldtime latly and this aboit made my day.
Glad you liked it. What instrument have you been learning old-time on?
That’s a great stuff!
I’m sorry for my ignorance, but what is “old-time” and where can I get more of music - both to listen and to play?
Very nice Casey!
KAC
Very nice, indeed. I like the banjo/whistle combination. Nicely played.
Michael
Thomaston, I like it! The whistle really fits in nicely. I like your banjo style,
it’s very “sitting on the porch of a houseboat, floating down the river”.
It’s a genre of American folk music:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-time_music
http://www.oldtimemusic.com/otdef.html
Some old-time bands are Old Crow Medicine Show, Carolina Chocolate Drops.
crookedtune probably knows several more.
Does anyone know if there’s an old-timey internet radio station out there anywhere?
I have this memory of having at some point found one, but either it went away or I lost the bookmark or maybe I simply dreamed the entire episode (according to my roommates, who get the synopses, I have an unusually complex and vivid dream life…)
edited to add:
I also really like the banjo-whistle combo, and have often puzzled over why whistle didn’t play more of a part in old-time music. Maybe there just wasn’t a big manufacturer of cheap whistles, like the domestic equivalent of Clarke?
edited again to add a couple of old-time sheet music sources:
http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.htm
http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/old-time-music/idxv11s.htm
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I’m gonna keep working on this, and see how the flute/low whistle sound with all of this eventually.
Squidgirl- are you think of Sugar in the Gourd, maybe?
http://www.sugarinthegourd.com/
About anything I have on hand… mostly harmonica and mandolin. Sometimes flute and whistle, I think they fit the idiom well, tho cause of my hand I’m basically comfined to my harp for the time being.
Great stuff Casey, and nicely played.
Old time music is a blast to play. There’s a local, floating session around here called Fiddler’s Tour which moves from place to place each month. They play all sorts of music including Irish and a lot of old time. Any and all acoustic instruments are welcomed and the mix varies from week to week.
I agree … nicely done, Casey. I think you’ve hit on an idiomatic, relaxed approach that works well for OTM. Coming from ITM, you need to unlearn some of what you know. 
Would be interesting to hear how your style blends with the addition of fiddle.
Maybe partly so, though the core tradition is pre-industrial. I think it has more to do with the 18th century roots of OTM in the aesthetics of fiddle-centric Scottish and Scots-Irish tradition, where whistle/flute have not played as strong a role as in ITM, and still don’t to this day.
Here’s my favorite, ‘Sugar in the Gourd’:
http://www.sugarinthegourd.com/
‘Old time’ means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Around here, it most often refers to fiddle/banjo based stringband styles from the southern Appalachians. In New England, it often encompasses a wider set of styles, (e.g. contradance and Canadian fiddling).
A great way to probe deeper is with this excellent Durham, NC-based magazine, ‘The Old Time Herald’. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/index.html
BTW, the term ‘old-timey’ has pretty much run its course, and fallen from favor.
Thanks for those links!
KAC
Ah, didn’t know that. What’s it called these days?
Archaeochronistic is now the preferred term. Those damn professors.
One day while I was flat-picking some American fiddle tunes at the office, a colleague referred to them as “folk crap”. Apparently that was her preferred term. 
‘Old-Time’ seems to be preferred to ‘Old-Timey’. No value judgement from me. I’m just the messenger.
FWIW, I do come from an “Old-Time Music” background. And both whistle and flute work very well for that repertoire, but are not generally accepted in sessions. That’s just the way of the world, I guess.
My suggestion is to listen a lot, read a lot, and play a lot of music. It will all work out.
Hey - I liked your rendition of Cluck Old Hen with whistle. good banjo playing and whistling! One would think that the whistle would’ve been included in the tradition of old time music, since the folks who settled in Appalachia were largely of Scotch or Irish descent. But then, there’s the percussive rhythm of the banjo (which I also play) - bum-ditty-bum-ditty, to contend with. I think that lends itself to reels, but less so to jigs. So, anyone playing the whistle back then (and now) would have had to leave out a lot of their repertoire, since the old time folks wouldn’t be playing jigs. Thats my humble opinion, anyway.
Judith
Too true. The biggest shortcoming of the clawhammer/frailing style of playing is that jigs become an advanced skill. Kinda ironic since many find jigs the easiest to learn on most other instruments.
Very nice! I hope you will post more tunes like it.