Guitar style & guitar playing.

[Joel H.]

Due to the great number of people in living history (particularly in
the group I am in) insisting on playing guitars with steel strings and
using a plectrum. And the fact that asking for documentation of that
style instrument, and presenting what little research I have, caused a
rather touchy and spiteful backlash. I have decided to lead by
example. (The introduction was to explain why I am playing guitar.) A
few observations that stand out and could be more support for the
current conclusions on the subjects in the early banjo community. One
of the two tutors that I have available to me (LOC) is "Companion for
the Guitar" by Robert Kelley, 1855. Very interesting is what is found
on page 6 here... http://tinyurl.com/42y74q is the description of the
"slide." I have also encountered it in playing two pieces so far.
This could support the "no slides were used" case as it seems common
in the guitar world but was left out of period banjo tutors. Also
this http://tinyurl.com/4ju5c6 from 1855 as well clearly shows the use
of a strap or sling, along with a staggering number of photos from the
time showing the use. There is only one photo in "Americas
Instrument" that a sling can be seen, and it looks like string and not
the ribbon that was used on guitars. My research has caused me to
began reading Gura's book "C. F. Martin and His Guitars, 1796-1873."
A few chapters in I found a pretty big mistake. Page 47, Plate 2-4,
has this caption. "Sixth-plate daguerreotype, ca. 1850s... These
boys, most likely recent Irish immigrants, play a bodhran and a
fiddle, probably to accompany traditional Irish dance tunes." I guess
he drew the "Irish immigrants" conclusion based on the "bodhran" being
played. Unfortunately the "bodhran" clearly has jingles attached.
Kind of voids the observations. Also makes me wonder what other
mistakes have been made that I don't have the resources to check out.
And in closing, does anyone have sources for period guitar methods,
early 1800s to mid 1880s? I am looking for facsimiles or PDF's and
all I seem to find are sections taken and "updated" for modern
classical players, with the fun stuff removed (polkas, mazurkas,
marches, and the like). I also feel like looking in to these tutors
could give more info on "guitar style" banjo.

Joel Hooks.

[brian wagoner]

There is a site called "Early Romantic Guitar," and it is quite intresting. They have a section on 19th century "'classical" technique and it appears as though every "new" trick on the guitar goes back at least to this time period. Harmonics, pizzicato(sp?), slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs ( slurs), "nails v. no-nails," "pinky on the sound board or not," and a host of debates over manners of play are to be found. Also they have some neat photos of guitars made by Lacote, Panormo and others; they go into string types, scale lengths, etc......Might be a good site for those looking into guitar playing from, say, 1790 to 1850. Also they have some luthiers who specialize in pre-Torres influenced guitar design.....Brian in NC

[Michael Randolph]

Based on some limited research on the Internet, the bodhran apparently was not widely used beyond certain limited circles until the 1960's.  For example, here's a quote from the Wikipedia article on the bodhran: Dorothea Hast has stated that until the mid-twentieth century the Bodhran was mainly used as a tray for separating chaff, in baking, as a food server, and for storing food or tools. She argues that its use as musical instrument was restricted to ritual use in rural areas. She claims that while the earliest evidence of its use beyond ritual occurs in 1842, its use as a general instrument did not become widespread until the 1960s, when Sean O Riada used it.[3] If true, this makes even less likely that the bodhran would be spotted among banjo players in the U.S. in the 19th century. --- On Thu, 6/19/08, Joel H. <deuce...@verizon.net> wrote:

From: Joel H. <deuce...@verizon.net> Subject: Guitar style & guitar playing.

[trapdoor2]

Joel,

For 19th Cent. guitar stuff, you might send a note to Doug Back. He
specializes in the 1880's guitar stuff of William Foden and may have
info on earlier stuff. http://www.douglasback.com/

He's banjo-friendly too. ;-)

===Marc

On Jun 19, 3:43 pm, "Joel H." <deuceswi...@verizon.net> wrote:
> Due to the great number of people in living history (particularly in
> the group I am in) insisting on playing guitars with steel strings and
> using a plectrum.  And the fact that asking for documentation of that
> style instrument, and presenting what little research I have, caused a
> rather touchy and spiteful backlash. I have decided to lead by
> example. (The introduction was to explain why I am playing guitar.)  A
> few observations that stand out and could be more support for the
> current conclusions on the subjects in the early banjo community.  One
> of the two tutors that I have available to me (LOC) is "Companion for
> the Guitar" by Robert Kelley, 1855.  Very interesting is what is found

> on page 6 here...http://tinyurl.com/42y74qis the description of the

> "slide."  I have also encountered it in playing two pieces so far.
> This could support the "no slides were used" case as it seems common
> in the guitar world but was left out of period banjo tutors.  Also

> thishttp://tinyurl.com/4ju5c6from 1855 as well clearly shows the use

[Scott C. Miller]

Maybe the folks playing the "bodhran" with jingles were
Canadian?

We are grateful to the Chieftains who successfully
introduced the bodhran to Irish traditional music in the
1960s. But we have evidence that a frame drum played with a
beater accompanied fiddle tunes at dances in North America
(Quebec) as far back as 1801. And tambos w/jingles were
played that same year at what appears to be the same venue.

Is this an early bodhran?
A watercolor painting by George Heriot, entitled the "Dance
in the Chateau St. Louis, Quebec" (1801), depicts a dance
with two fiddlers - and what appears to be a drummer with "a
stick in his hand, perhaps a beater for a small tambourine
hidden from our sight behind the man to his left."
http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=1229

Painting of 1801 dance shows tambo w/jingles:
This watercolor of Heriot's "Minuets of the Canadians"
depicts two tambourine players.
1801 version
http://artefactscanada.chin.gc.ca:8015/Webtop/CHINApps/artefacts/newImgWin.jsp?currLang=English&i=0&j=0

1807 version:
http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=1241

And the beat goes on, eh?

All the best,

Scott Miller
Saint Louis, Missouri

..
>..."Sixth-plate daguerreotype, ca. 1850s... These

>boys, most likely recent Irish immigrants, play a bodhran and a
>fiddle, probably to accompany traditional Irish dance tunes." I guess
>he drew the "Irish immigrants" conclusion based on the "bodhran" being

>played. Unfortunately the "bodhran" clearly has jingles attached...

[Michael Randolph]

It's hard to tell details from the image.  Perhaps a higher resolution image would help.  Here's a link ( http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=1813) from the same web site to a page entitled "That Tamboreen."  It begins... nstruments resembling tambourines are mentioned several times in the journals, but always in descriptions of Indian music, except for Sergeant Ordway's comment on New Year's Day of 1805. In the absence of evidence that any of the men carried their own, it seems likely that Ordway borrowed one from an Indian, or even traded for it... There's no indication from the article that a bohdran is depicted. --- On Fri, 6/20/08, Scott C. Miller <sc...@bonedrymusic.com> wrote:

[Scott C. Miller]

Thank you for posting the link.

I almost included a similar quotation, but was afraid the
Lewis and Clark journal entries regarding "Indian
'tambourines'" might confuse the issue. Another reason I
chose to omit the L&C citation was because the Heriot

paintings pre-date the L&C expedition.

Scott Miller
Saint Louis, Missouri

..

It's hard to tell details from the image.  Perhaps a higher resolution image would help.  Here's a link (

http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=1813) from the same web site to a page entitled "That Tamboreen."  It begins...

[Ole Bull]

I have come to the conclusion that "bodhran" was a title slapped on to
the tambourine, or tambourine with no jingles, by the people
associated with the Chieftans. Before that it was a tambourine.

Ronan Nolan writes;
"THE bodhran evolved in the mid-20th century from the tambourine,
which can be heard on some Irish music recordings dating back to the
1920s and viewed in a pre-Famine painting. However, in remote parts of
the south-west, the "poor man's tambourine" - made from farm
implements and minus the cymbols - was in popular use among mummers,
or wren boys."
"...following its use in Sive, John B Keane's play staged in Dublin's
Abbey Theatre in 1959, others gradually took up the instrument. Keane
had heard it played by mummers from the Listowel hinterland.
[According to the stage script, the instrument used was referred to as
the tambourine, beaten with a stick]. In 1960 O Riada used the
instument for the incidental music in the Abbey's production of
Listowel writer Bryan Mac Mahon's The Song of the Anvil." and
"..it was to Davy Fallon..that Paddy Moloney turned to for the first
Chieftains' album... He used an old-style goatskin bodhran with
tambourine jingles around it and Paddy had to persuade him to tape up
the jingles so only the drum could be heard."
"According to John B Keane in a 1977 interview, it was originally
known as the tambourine, then corrupted to bourine, until somebody
called it a bodhran."

So here it is. I conclude that the tambourine, fiddle, bones, banjo
combination was presented to the Irish in 1843 by Sweeney & Emmett &
Co. It was absorbed into the folk curture to re-emegre, adjusted to
emphasize it's drum-like characteristics and re-christened "bodhran"
during the 1960's folk music craze. Another example of the worldwide
impact of minstrelsy.

[Joel H.]

It is funny where a topic can go. Thanks for all the replies. I ran
across this in my searches http://tinyurl.com/62bvvb seems that
Frank's brother Charlie also arranged for the pianoforte. This family
had talent. The fact that slides hammer-ons and various other
"modern" techniques were known to instruments of this class, and that
the "guitar style" was adopted as early as Briggs, it would seem that
the use of them were intentionally left out of the banjo repertoire.
Perhaps it was not banjo enough. We have to be careful with all this
bodhran talk, I find people get upset when the known origins of it are
mentioned.

Joel