The New Blackthorn Stick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XZwb-uGh-w

Woah.

Do you know if he's playing an A or a Bb clarinet? Either way, I'd think going back and forth between clarinet fingerings and whistle fingerings might be a bit brain-boggling....

(Bassoon, on the other hand, behaves quite nicely like a very low fully chromatic G whistle.)

_________________
Sol's Tunes (new tune 7/2019)

I don't know which clarinet he's playing. I've only seen Andy Lamy a few times while playing Irish sessions at Dunne's Pub in White Plains, NY, and he always had two or three clarinets, along with a few whistles. I do know that Andy plays with the NJ Symphony Orchestra. We share a few Irish mutual friends.

By a quick glance at his fingerings, he's clearly playing a Bb clarinet in a few of those clips. So G tunes in A fingering, D tunes in E fingering, etc. Not hard keys if you're an orchestral player. But playing through the throat register can still be awkward for an idiomatic flow. Maybe that's partly why he tongues as much as he does. If one of those three clarinets he uses is a relatively rare C clarinet, that would make sense.

_________________
Vivat diabolus in musica! MTGuru's (old) GG Clips / Blackbird Clips

Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.

I did a quick check to see if I could find the key, I should just ask Andy Lamy on FB.

I asked, the clarinet is A with a Bb on a few tracks, "and there's also a bunch of low-C bass clarinet in B-flat on the album."



Meanwhile, I did find his kit of instruments. Copelands high and low.

Another teaser...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykGCJFR ... ture=share

Maybe there is room for the clarinet in Irish Trad.

There's a fellow in town who plays Trad on clarinet and he's pretty good, actually. I've only seen him at sessions maybe twice, and that was years ago. Call me hidebound, but his Trad chops aside, the sound just didn't work for me.

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Can't say the clarinet does it for me in trad either. But remember discussing recorders, flugelhorns and marimbas when I was new here?

_________________
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

Why I teach... and where
Master of nine?

Well, ya gotta do it all at least once, right? I remember another fellow who brought in a trumpet, but he was a drive-by who had to use the dots. Other than that and the noise, he wasn't bad.

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

The clarinet? the whistle has been my focus all along. I do like the tune 'Lord Mayo' and Joanie Madden's whistle playing set the standard as far as I'm concerned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FFJif06ipw
I'm just curious what Mary Bergin played on The New Blackthorn CD. I have to wait though.

I'm not so sure of where I stand on Trad instruments as there has been ever evolving expansion concerning instruments from long ago. Even some of the traditional instruments have adapted new "materials", plastics/polymers (replacing the woods), and carbon fiber, etc., that bring along (enhance?) the traditional music. So instruments change. Trad changes. To name a few, recent C&F threads have mentioned the whisolo (whatchamacallit), nyckelharpa, and the nyckelharpa joined the Cape Breton Celtic Colours International Festival this past Oct. 2014
http://www.celtic-colours.com/tag/nyckelharpa/
I had never heard of a nyckelharpa. Pretty cool and legitimized the instrument beyond the Swedish borders. And eventually 3-D printing of instruments is bound to expand the Trad music.

I don't much have it in me to push that envelope; I leave it to others to do what they will. If it catches on (I think the guitar was inevitable), it's part of the tradition. If it's to be a good fit for the great majority, I think it has to not only sound but look as if it had somehow always been there. I don't believe the melodica or euphonium will make that grade anytime soon, but they're good for a novelty. In that spirit, I once did a duo at a trad open mike event where we played the Harvest Home hornpipe on kazoos. It was fabulously dreadful.

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EMFf_F ... e=youtu.be
The players seem to be quite a group, no?

Sure, but it's still a clarinet!

_________________
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

Why I teach... and where
Master of nine?

With all of the classically trained musicians out there the whole orchestra will want to get in on the Trad act. I'm not sure there's any stopping the expansion/dilution. Is there?

Bonus tracks by Andy Lamy.
https://app.box.com/s/zk7qsm8hzh2hh0771pag