Irish Tenor Banjo

Gold Tone AC-4 

Although I'll continue to play American Old Time fiddle tunes on Mandolin, I wanted a GDAE-tuned Tenor Banjo for Irish tunes. I've always liked the sound, and the resonance is more forgiving than trying to get a perfect tone on a mandolin. 

Besides choosing a specific make and model, the big questions were whether to go for 17 or 19 frets and an open or closed back. 17 frets is easier if you are used to the Mandolin, but there can apparently be intonation issues and a slack G-string problem in Irish (GDAE) tuning. So I decided to go for the longer scale if I could cope with the stretch and/or movement of hand position. This awaited actually trying a 19 which I finally managed in August. It was OK.

The closed back (with resonator) provides more volume but I don't expect to be throwing myself into dedicated Irish sessions and I found the resonator banjos very metallic. The open back ones have a sweeter tone.

I eventually decided on the Gold Tone AC-4 which has a two-way adjustable truss rod (lacking in some more expensive banjos) and is considered to be great value. It seemed proportionate to my beginner status and level of commitment shared, as it is, with so many other instruments. The included case is little more than a dust cover but I had a spare padded gig bag.

Transferring the Irish mandolin tunes to banjo was straightforward. Obviously I had to get use to the increased fret distances, but it essentially feels like playing the same instrument.

Old Time, new times

Reviving my Old Time String Band songs with guitar was intended as a side-line, but it’s worked out well and I’ve been encouraged to give it more priority.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I feel more relaxed performing the American material and can pack more punch into it. This makes for a better performance and more engagement with (noisy) pub audiences, the milieu I often find myself in and most enjoy. The approach, and material, may be less appropriate for some folk clubs and festivals, where I will continue to focus on the trad folk repertoire.

Reviving my Old Time String Band songs with Guitar

I went from trad folk to Americana and back again, never feeling comfortable about pursuing both genres concurrently. But a chance to participate in a new session finally inspired me to revive my American Old Time String Band repertoire alongside my mostly English and Irish folk songs. 

Rather than use the Mandolin, I'm relearning the songs with Guitar as this is more appropriate as a solo instrument. I’ve had Guitars since I was a teenager. I’m not a complete beginner, but I’ve rarely played Guitar in public. 

Right: My Gretsch Jim Dandy parlour Guitar. I originally bought this for Delta Blues but that is another story...

2023

Time for some tunes

Although my collection of songs is never static and although there is always room for developing technique, I’ve now essentially rebuilt my trad folk repertoire. I’ve got 26 songs with Irish Bouzouki, 17 with Crane Duet Concertina and 24 unaccompanied. Although I intend to spend just as much time practising, the race to rebuild a performable repertoire is over.

As a floor singer in a typical folk club evening you usually get a couple of songs, and in singing sessions perhaps four or more. My current plan is to do one Zouk song and one Crane song per session, and then to fill in with acapella songs. This means balancing practice time between the Zouk and Crane. The unaccompanied songs look after themselves.

One area I do need to develop is tune playing. My folk club and the session I go to are both interspersed with English tunes drawn from the Lewes Favourites. They’re not exclusively English, of course, but they’re common in English sessions.

I did manage to learn a number of these on Concertina years ago but I find some melodies difficult to absorb or tricky to play at speed on the Crane, so I want to experiment with just chordal accompaniment, either on the Concertina or Zouk or maybe both.

Hora Concert Irish Bouzouki

Accompanying my singing with Irish Bouzouki has now become my main focus so I decided to upgrade to the Hora 'Concert' Irish Bouzouki. I wasn't unhappy with the basic Hora model, but the improved version is larger, has much better tuners and is more mellow and resonant. This makes the droning arpeggio style more convincing and easier to pull off.

I've now learnt a core repertoire of about 20 songs with the Bouzouki, so can spend more time on developing technique. This year I went to two very useful Irish Bouzouki workshops, one given by Daori Farrell and the other by Jon Doran, two of my favourite performers.

Medieval Lute

 

I fell in love with the handcrafted instrument in the video, a reconstruction of a 4-course Medieval Lute made and played by Jo Dusepo, so I have commissioned one from her. They take about two months to make but there is an eight month waiting list.

The Lute originated from the Middle Eastern Oud to which chromatic frets were later added, but many believe that a quite Eastern approach persisted. This has been a huge area of debate, as indicated here. Nobody  knows for certain how mediaeval instruments were played, so there is a lot of room for interpretation. Styles vary from Fine Art to Folky, and from foursquare European to Silk Road fusion.

Medieval music was modal and harmonised with Unisons, Octaves, Fourths and Fifths but Thirds were considered discordant so I won't be playing any modern triad chords. After a lot of discussion I've decided to have it tuned DADG, a drone tuning which Jo suggested. There is obviously a coincidence here with DADGAD guitar tuning and the Zouk (GDAD).

Irish Bouzouki

I bought a Hora Irish Bouzouki from Romania with the idea of transferring my mandolin skills to an instrument that would be better  for song accompaniment. 

It's really good quality and fantastic value and I'm very pleased with it, but it's quite a bit different from playing the mandolin.

I've enrolled with the Online Academy of Irish Music which not only provides Zouk lessons but includes access to all its singing and instrument courses.

My musical activities have now settled into four main areas:

Singing with Concertina
Sea and other English songs. These are being re-engineered in a more chordal style.

Unaccompanied singing
Sea and other English songs, Irish songs. The mainstay of my participation as a folkclub floor singer.

Singing with Zouk
Predominantly Irish songs. This is a work in progress but I am optimistic.

Mandolin
Essentially Irish tunes. For private enjoyment.

Irish Mandolin

Some accumulated books, though I am
learning mainly through MandoLessons.

My time in Intensive Care at the end of last Summer somehow left me with a dry mouth condition that made singing unpleasant. Scarcely had I more-or-less recovered from that and we were all hit with the Covid Lockdown. The revival of my singing with concertina accompaniment was thus delayed and remains a work in progress, but I have been doing a bit of acapella singing in Zoom sessions. 

I have also just started to learn Irish traditional dance tunes on mandolin. I've always loved this genre and made several attempts to play tin whistle without much success. Thanks to the experience I gained in the Bluegrass and Old Time genres, however, I'm getting further with the mandolin than I did with the whistle. 

It's a great thrill to be playing these tunes but I'm not putting myself under any pressure. My guiding ambition now is just to sing and play for my own pleasure.

Forwards to the beginning again

Shirley Collins: where it all began

Exactly five years after switching my musical focus from English Traditional Folk music and playing the Crane Duet Concertina to Americana and playing the Mandolin, I have decided to reverse direction again.

The Hillbilly band has been fun but I wanted to have a rest and to create more space to explore solo projects. I had a number in mind including Blues Mandolin, but the most obvious option was to revive my English repertoire and relaunch my concertina playing in a new, more chordal, style.

Bert Lloyd with Alf Edwards
on English concertina

Scarcely had I made this decision when my life was suddenly interrupted by a potentially fatal  condition requiring an immediate operation. Fast forward a month and I am now convalescing.

This unexpected time to reflect has given me an opportunity to think about style and I have been particularly drawn back to the very roots of my interest in English folk music. That is the singing of Shirley Collins, particularly when accompanied on Portative Organ by her sister, Dolly, and the singing and concertina accompaniment of Bert Lloyd and Alf Edwards.

It will take me some time - maybe months - before I develop anything performable. In the meantime I will just enjoy dabbling.

Sore Fingers 2, Learning to Learn and some English Trad Folk

Celebrating May
Day with Fowler’s
Troop

At my second Sore Fingers Summer School I was enrolled in Matt Flinner's class. He focused on the first and third Four-Finger Closed Positions and close-harmony double-stops. It was the most valuable Bluegrass tuition I've enjoyed to date and will be central to my plans for future development.

Another significant experience was reading Jonathan Harnum's The Practice of Practice. It wasn't all new to me and I didn't warm to the writer's style, but the book does bring together and bring home some essential points about how you should practice, as well as some interesting ideas for maintaining interest.

I saw a Mummer's Play marking St George's Day and sang a few English Trad Folk songs in the session which followed. I also took my concertina out on May Day to join Fowler’s Troop leading a Jack-in-the-Green procession through Deptford and Greenwich, an annual fixture and re-acquaintance with my English Trad Folk past. I also did some unaccompanied English songs in sessions during the Wessex Folk Festival.

It was interesting to find I could still play the concertina and remember some of my old repertoire, but it didn’t draw me back. I find Americana much more exciting and I feel my own performance flows much more readily in that genre.