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Anglo influences


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A few years after I started playing the Anglo, I was learning tunes from several fiddle playing friends and tried to sound just like them with their bowing, phrasing, double stops and slides. I achieved some success but was never 100% satisfied in that goal.

 

Then I started listening to what the banjo was doing and tried to double that sound in my various bands, (American traditional dance music is the genre I'm talking about here). The role of the banjo in a band, with its rhythmic percussive quality... that was something I could kind of do, in my own Anglo way of course.

 

Then I was listening to a musician I have always loved, Fats Waller on the piano and realized that the um pa quality of his left hand was sort of like what I had been doing on the concertina in my solo work and tried to figure out how I could make more of that and make what I'm doing more like what Fats was up to.

 

Then the same with John Hurt on guitar and his simpler bass lines, syncopations and finger picking style. His kind of guitar playing makes a lot of sense to me and I have been trying to emulate the essence of his style on the Anglo. Another guitar player I've been listening to for his chugging chordal rhythm is Mississippi Fred McDowell.

 

Yet another instrument that makes sense to listen to is the harmonica. Some of the pre-war older stuff can sound quite Anglo like, but when I heard this harmonica solo at :46 I just shook my head and cried...

 

TAKE AN OLD COLD TATER AND WAIT ~ Little Jimmy Dickens

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Influence and inspiration can come from absolutely anywhere - chords and bass lines from Handel, key changes from Lennon&McCartney ...

 

I play Maccann, not Anglo, but the same applies. I really like that really dense Beach Boys sound, sometimes I try to get that.

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So... who do you listen to for inspiration?

 

Well..what started me on concertina was your brother, Tom, and his Round Pond Relics record, which I still pull out for periodic reindoctrination. And, early on, you on Grand Picnic (I still have the cassette tape, long replaced by a CD). And always go back to it for inspiration on how to use a concertina to drive a band. Nobody drives a band like you do.

 

John K and Brian Peters, for clean, creative playing in the English style

 

Big Nick Robertshaw for daring, exuberant Morris music.

 

A lot of different old time bands/musicians, but started with Fuzzy Mountain, Hollow Rock string bands and the original Red Clay Ramblers and inevitably go back to them.

 

Chicago blues, the stuff I grew up on. Fingerpicking blues guitarists; I did a lot of that in my younger years and the interaction of bass and melody is still rattling around in my head when I play.

 

Django, Bix and Louie.

 

Bellowhead, Whapweasel, Florida, Geckoes, Stocai for inspiration on the music I'm playing these days.

 

Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas for inspiration on how to make great music without relying on an entire band, using non-rhythm instruments to drive rhythm

 

Anything with Bob McQullen - reminding myself about the value of simplicity in dance music and the distilled essence of the contra dance sound that attracted me 30 years ago.

The Pig Dyke Molly musicians for inspiration on making morris music really fun..

Edited by Jim Besser
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as an irish musician, i listen mainly to fiddlers and piper's for inspiration on the concertina. one of my favorite piper's is unfortunately one of the least recorded great pipers, richard o'mealy.. compared to the pipers of the next generation that we are most familiar with, such as seamus ennis and willie clancy, richard o'mealy used his regulators to play chords on just about every beat. this fits in a lot more with my style than the sparse chords that are more usual in piping.

 

remarkably, there seems to be one video of richard o'mealy and true to form he is cheerily vamping chords in an air:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGhM6MueWbE&feature=related

Edited by david_boveri
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So... who do you listen to for inspiration?

 

Everyone!

 

Classical musicians for phrasing and subtle artistry -- all instruments.

 

Choruses, choirs, and other part singers (even Manhattan Transfer) for four part playing.

 

Several for inspiration in singing with concertina (all guitarists and most notable John Hurt, Leon Redbone, Ry Cooder, Jerry Garcia -- basement tapes, and right now a little known singer-guitarist Meridith Axelrod). Block chords played with rhythmic variation a la guitar strumming works as well with concertina (play soft!) for vocal accompaniment as guitar strumming -- and it is simple (easy) and musical.

 

I have big-band sax-section in my background and I sometimes try to emulate that for style, syncopation, harmonic sophistication, etc. especially when playing stuff from the big-band era.

 

When listening to (and jamming with) blue grass and old time string band types, in addition to guitarists and fiddlers, I pay particular attention to the bass and mandolin players. With regard to om pa, the bass is the om and the mandolin the pa. I'm not facile enough with arpeggios to get much from listening to banjo players.

 

Listing these inspiring influences is inspiring in itself. Music is wonderful!

Edited by Kurt Braun
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I love Mary Macnamara for her gentle flowing style and recently Jack Talty and Cormac Begley's duet album. I listen to William Kimber for his crisp rhythm. I really enjoy Michael O'Raghallaigh's heavily chorded Irish style - the best use of chords in Irish Trad! Recently iVe been listening to a lot of old time fiddle and banjo, probably due to Jody's influence. Spires and Boden have some great tunes with real bounce.

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A few years after I started playing the Anglo, I was learning tunes from several fiddle playing friends and tried to sound just like them with their bowing, phrasing, double stops and slides. I achieved some success but was never 100% satisfied in that goal.

 

Then I started listening to what the banjo was doing and tried to double that sound in my various bands, (American traditional dance music is the genre I'm talking about here). The role of the banjo in a band, with its rhythmic percussive quality... that was something I could kind of do, in my own Anglo way of course.

 

Then I was listening to a musician I have always loved, Fats Waller on the piano and realized that the um pa quality of his left hand was sort of like what I had been doing on the concertina in my solo work and tried to figure out how I could make more of that and make what I'm doing more like what Fats was up to.

 

Then the same with John Hurt on guitar and his simpler bass lines, syncopations and finger picking style. His kind of guitar playing makes a lot of sense to me and I have been trying to emulate the essence of his style on the Anglo. Another guitar player I've been listening to for his chugging chordal rhythm is Mississippi Fred McDowell.

 

Yet another instrument that makes sense to listen to is the harmonica. Some of the pre-war older stuff can sound quite Anglo like, but when I heard this harmonica solo at :46 I just shook my head and cried...

 

TAKE AN OLD COLD TATER AND WAIT ~ Little Jimmy Dickens

Fast! Wot key do u reckon the harmonica is playing in?

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