Folk Music On Bass...

[derrenleepoole]

I'm doing a little side project at the moment of playing upright bass for a folk outfit. Folk music is not an area I'm experienced in, I'm a jazzer above anything else. I am enjoying folk music more and more, but it's never been a genre I ever played before. But, if it's good enough for Danny Thompson to play, it's good enough for me

Anyone got any useful tips and resources that may help a fledgling folkie get started? For example, there is the Fake Books for jazzers available, and I have the iPod iReal Book app which is excellent. Is there an equivalent resource for folk songs? I've seen one, but a lot of reviews state it's very US centric, and not ideal for British folk music. Just simple things like charts is all I need as I won't be playing the melodies obviously.

[3below]

What sort of folk? Trad Celeidh music, Scottish, Playford, Folk Rock, Fairports???? It is a broad church. I cut my formative first 8 years bass playing gigging 2/3 nights a week, week in week out in a trad celeidh band. Can give you some pointers in that line if you want.

[skej21]

Just make sure you know the difference between a slip jig, a jig, a reel and a polka (particularly the polka rhythm) so you understand the lingo. After that, it's likely to be the stereotypical 'Folk' music, meaning it will be modal (usually Dorian or Mixolydian) and a lot of bVII-I chord progressions.

[3below]

Also waltz, hornpipe and one amazing tune that went through 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8 changes... keys (GDAE typically) and scales are the secret, A typical dance tune will use two or possibly three tunes with a key change between each. Due to the sheer amount of tunes used (at least in bands I have played in) bands will usually have sheet music which includes chord labels (G, C7 etc). Reading and counting then makes it fairly straightforward combined with scales to link the roots and fifths. Dance music requires rock solid on the beat bass with phrases to 'lift' and 'lead' the dancers through the dance sequences e.g. strip the willow ! do si do and a whole range of other square dance steps. You want to get people 'skipping' or 'walking with a spring in their step' with your bass lines. They are dancing to it not listening to the 'artistry' Enjoy.

Edited March 8, 2011 by 3below

[icastle]

[quote name='derrenleepoole' post='1154410' date='Mar 8 2011, 08:15 PM']I'm doing a little side project at the moment of playing upright bass for a folk outfit. Folk music is not an area I'm experienced in, I'm a jazzer above anything else. I am enjoying folk music more and more, but it's never been a genre I ever played before. But, if it's good enough for Danny Thompson to play, it's good enough for me

Anyone got any useful tips and resources that may help a fledgling folkie get started? For example, there is the Fake Books for jazzers available, and I have the iPod iReal Book app which is excellent. Is there an equivalent resource for folk songs? I've seen one, but a lot of reviews state it's very US centric, and not ideal for British folk music. Just simple things like charts is all I need as I won't be playing the melodies obviously.[/quote]

You're gonna hit a few snags trying to locate a resource like that.

Traditional English folk music was written to match the instruments available to musicians at the time - bass was never a part of that.
American folk music, being somewhat 'newer' tends to have at least some resource available, albeit with a feel that doesn't really match English folk.

Bands like Fairport and Steeleye Span bought traditional tunes up to date from an instrumentation perspective and had to write suitable bass parts, generally around a rock format.

It really depends on the sort of material that the band are playing but 'latter day exponents' that may be relevant would be Pentangle, Seth Lakeman, Jim Moray and perhaps Miranda Sykes/Show of Hands - all have a traditional feel and some interesting UB parts.
Perhaps take a look/have a listen to their playing styles and see of they match your projects needs and use that as a basis for developing your own style?

Sorry it's such a vague answer but 'folk' can cover an enormous area and has very few hard and fast rules - bass parts in this genre either work or they suck!

Great fun though!

[skej21]

[quote name='icastle' post='1154485' date='Mar 8 2011, 08:59 PM']You're gonna hit a few snags trying to locate a resource like that.

Traditional English folk music was written to match the instruments available to musicians at the time - bass was never a part of that.
American folk music, being somewhat 'newer' tends to have at least some resource available, albeit with a feel that doesn't really match English folk.

Bands like Fairport and Steeleye Span bought traditional tunes up to date from an instrumentation perspective and had to write suitable bass parts, generally around a rock format.

It really depends on the sort of material that the band are playing but 'latter day exponents' that may be relevant would be Pentangle, Seth Lakeman, Jim Moray and perhaps Miranda Sykes/Show of Hands - all have a traditional feel and some interesting UB parts.
Perhaps take a look/have a listen to their playing styles and see of they match your projects needs and use that as a basis for developing your own style?

Sorry it's such a vague answer but 'folk' can cover an enormous area and has very few hard and fast rules - bass parts in this genre either work or they suck!

Great fun though! [/quote]

+ 1

The other difficulty you'll find is that "folk music" resources usually only have the lyrical content of the songs, as the whole idea of 'folk' is to take a song (i.e. lyrics) and create your own music for it in order to accommodate the instruments you have available. The idea of aural tradition also creates a lot of problems, because the songs etc are often passed down aurally, without any written resources.

[xgsjx]

Saying you wanna learn folk music is a bit like saying you wanna learn rock music. There's countless sub genres.
A good place to start would be [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=124763"]this place.[/url]

You get Celtic, Traditional Scottish/English/Welsh/Irish, Alt Dot, Americana, Dixie & countless others. & then you get blends of them. & then you get blends of one sort of folk with something else like hiphop or rock. All good fun.

[derrenleepoole]

Yeah, cheers guys and sorry for the vagueness of the first post - should've realized you'd need more ammo.

The stuff is straight english folk (I think), but as updated and played by the likes of Davy Graham, Joan Baez, Martin Simpson, Pentangle etc. It will be played quite stripped back though, with two singers, guitarist and me. So no fancy in your face band arrangements. Just interpretations true(ish) to the originals. It's stuff like Bruton Town, Jackaroe, The Bold Fisherman, Granemore Hare...

I have found a good website called [url="http://www.8notes.com"]http://www.8notes.com[/url] - like others have pointed out, this site only has melody charts etc. That's still very helpful because you can see where the melody is going and get a round-about idea of feel required and general harmonic movement.

Well, onward and upward and do my home work. Anymore insights would be very gratefully received

[4-string-thing]

You could just buy the entire Fairport Convention back catalogue, they've been recording folk with bass for well over 40 years, so if there's a song they haven't done.....it's not worth doing!

[BassBus]

I would stick with simple stuff like first and fifth to begin with until you get the feel for the music and then follow your ear. I think it's important to keep it simple in folk. I play some American old time from time to time. When I first played it the main man told me to keep it to first and fifth, no fancy conecting notes or anything.

If you haven't come across it [url="http://www2.redhawk.org:8080/irish/RRTuneBk/listings.html#mystuff"]Richard Robinson's Tunebook[/url] is a great resourse. No bass parts but you can make up your own.

[Earbrass]

There is a huge amount of folk tunes available on-line, mostly in ABC format (this is the [i]lingua franca [/i]of the folk world). This is a very useful format that allows tunes to be posted/stored in ASCII format, and there are free on-line programs that will convert ABC into standard musical notation and/or MIDI files( so there is actually no need to learn ABC notation unless you want to create your own ABC files). Typically, these will be melody only, though sometimes lyrics are included.

A good starting point is here: [url="http://info.melodeon.net/index.php/page,abc.html"]http://info.melodeon.net/index.php/page,abc.html[/url]

A good site for finding tunes you know the name of is here: [url="http://ecf-guest.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind"]http://ecf-guest.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind[/url]

An excellent book for English folk tunes is : [url="http://folkshop.efdss.org/Combined+Sets/Hardcore+English+Set.html"]http://folkshop.efdss.org/Combined+Sets/Ha...nglish+Set.html[/url] which contains 300 tunes in standard notation and there is a CD to go with it.

Hope this helps.

Edited March 9, 2011 by Earbrass

[chris_b]

Folk music covers many different styles and ways of playing but the main thing to remember is get a good sound and play simple lines.

1 note in the bar can easily be enough and 2 in the bar is all that most folk music needs. If you get busy in the wrong context you'll ruin everything. Overplay and you'll not be surprised when you get fired!

I've got form in this area! In the 70's I joined a folk band called Storyteller. With my inflexible Duck Dunn style I turned us into a folk/rock band. Our record label, Transatlantic, wasn't happy and stopped promoting us! We fizzled out within the year!

[BassBus]

[quote name='chris_b' post='1154980' date='Mar 9 2011, 09:50 AM']1 note in the bar can easily be enough and 2 in the bar is all that most folk music needs. If you get busy in the wrong context you'll ruin everything. Overplay and you'll not be surprised when you get fired![/quote]
This is quite important if you are playing in traditional folk. There are usually so many notes being played by the melody instruments. If we play too many notes on the bass the whole thing becomes muddy and has no definition.

[Paultrader]

I play in a barn dance band with accordion, fiddle and acoustic guitar. I see it as my role to bed down the rhythm for the dancers to latch onto, so I've developed a fairly percussive staccato finger style, and play with more treble on the tone than I do in the soul band so that it cuts through.

I use lots of roots and fifths, but also throw in the odd run now and again to keep myself awake.

It's good fun - it's like being invited to someones party - getting to play and not having to dance, then getting paid at the end of the evening!

[guyl]

"Folkies" tend to be the most appreciative and non-judgemental people you'll ever meet.

Not met many competitive folk musos - they tend to love to pass on new tunes and ideas in the "traditional" way - ie over a real ale rather than through books.

I'm sure you'll meet lots of people that will help you in the right direction and without any competitve pressure, you'll develop really quickly!

Good luck with the beard growing - that's the bit that takes a while to reach proper folk size!

[Oscar South]

Just immerse yourself in the genre and play whatever you want. Don't 'keep it simple', just play tastefully as you would in any context and use your own judgement. Folk is just another kind of music and like any genre its very much alive; tradition is all around us and to dwell entirely on music of the past would be a mistake when there's such a flourishing contemporary folk scene right now.

The obvious bands to check out are the old Folk Rock bands like Fairport Convention and The Oysterband (also give Dave Pegg's bass playing on Bryter Layer by Nick Drake a listen), but there are an untold amount of new and cutting edge bands drawing from a rich tradition with elements of themselves and other genres they're inspired by moving the genre forward, check out any or all of these bands (these are just my personal picks that I've run into or been introduced to, there will be MANY more worth listening to):

Urban Folk Quartet - [url="http://www.theurbanfolkquartet.com/"]http://www.theurbanfolkquartet.com/[/url]
The Destroyers - [url="http://www.thedestroyers.co.uk/"]http://www.thedestroyers.co.uk/[/url]
Little Sister - [url="http://www.littlesistermusic.co.uk/"]http://www.littlesistermusic.co.uk/[/url]
NewRising - [url="http://www.myspace.com/newrisinguk"]http://www.myspace.com/newrisinguk[/url]

and check out my own Folk band, The Bear Beats Band (who I'm opening up for Jackie Oates with in North Wales this very night ):

[url="http://www.bearbeatsband.com/"]http://www.bearbeatsband.com/[/url]
[url="http://www.reverbnation.com/thebearbeatsband"]http://www.reverbnation.com/thebearbeatsband[/url]

We've just finished recording our debut 6 track EP. which is just being mastered, 3 of the tracks are up on our social networking resources. I play fretted electric bass entirely on this EP. over double bass or fretless.. electric bass has been a mainstay of folk music culture for over 40 years now, so don't hold back for the sake of 'tradition'


Edit:

Oh yeah, and find out where your local pub sessions are, go to em and listen, chat, join in if you want. As has been said Folk music is all about knowledge and music being passed down through the aural tradition, what better way to get it into your soul than to involve yourself with the real thing.

Edited March 12, 2011 by Oscar South

[wateroftyne]

[quote name='4-string-thing' post='1154643' date='Mar 8 2011, 10:09 PM']You could just buy the entire Fairport Convention back catalogue, they've been recording folk with bass for well over 40 years, so if there's a song they haven't done.....it's not worth doing![/quote]
I can think of ZILLIONS.