Lizzie Polka

Comment by Carl Anderton on August 22, 2012 at 4:56pm

Great stuff, Tim.  Any early impressions on his methodology vs. early banjo tutors?

Comment by Carl Anderton on August 22, 2012 at 8:06pm

Mainstream CW reenacting guitar music is now obsolete.

Comment by Silas Tackitt on August 23, 2012 at 12:25am

So is blue speckleware enamel, but you still see lots of it.  My point is that folks are still going to bring their fat guitars with metal strings, play olde tyme tunes and play chords via the Nashville number system.  They may know there is some new music out there they should be playing, but they're not going to play it.  This ought to be the death knell of Little Red Bird, Golden Slippers, Shenandoah and et cetera, but we'll still hear them.

This music is pleasant to the ear - Mrs. Silas even liked it - but it's parlor music, not sit by the campfire, clap to the beat and pass around knock-em-stiff with a ten yard proofing.  (Ten yards, as in, that's as far as folks get before falling flat on their faces.)  There ought to be more of this music, but we're just not going to hear it at reenactments.

And we're all the poorer for it.

Comment by Tim Twiss on August 23, 2012 at 9:35pm

This method by Charles Converse is well worth a look. What I find is a link to the already rich tradition of Classical guitar at the time, leaning on methods, techniques, and styles laid down by such composers and musicians as Carulli. It does the same basic thing, but contextualizes it with popular forms of the day...waltzs, polkas, marches etc. The music is very  simple, and must have been composed by the author. It does flip right into a rather complex Sor piece....which seems out of place, but provides perspective to the true roots of this work.

     It may be interesting to look at the songs, and song accompaniments. Here we see the same techniques found in banjo tutors......even arpeggios, and vertical chords. I imagine that this is about the only valuable window into common period playing. It is much as we would do it today.....because that is how the guitar best serves a song. This is what the common soldier, or whoever, might have done. It just works good, and is illustrated over and over...here, and in the Howe book. I don't think there should be any big mystery here.

    It has been valuable for me to have an authentic instrument, as it helps complete the puzzle of what things must have been like. The smaller instrument has it's limitations.....and playing style adapts to that. I would not have felt it playing on a larger instrument. It lends itself to a certain style of play.

    I think the banjo, having no real heritage to draw upon, was seeking legitamacy, and that is why we always find the long winded musical explanations in the front of the books. The Converse guitar book is no exception, but he does a better job of tying it into graduated excercises that progress and actually lead somewhere in a logical manner. I can see how the banjo books attempted to put the instrument in the same league with parlour guitar, at least in the presentation of instructional material. They always (IMHO) fails as a true method book......you are presented with way too much information in the beginning, get a few simple pieces, and then you are thrown into th deep end. I would render a challenge to find anybody who has ever slugged out the endless dribble of work in those books....and I'm sure it was not that different in the past. I think people want to get to the songs. 

 

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