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Topic: The Mediæval Side of Alan Brookes |
Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Barry Blackwood
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Posted 30 Aug 2014 8:24 am |
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Very impressive, Alan, TFS.  |
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Joachim Kettner
From:
Germany
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Posted 30 Aug 2014 12:55 pm
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I've already listened to five of them, I will listen to more.
_________________
Fender Kingman, Sierra Crown D-10, Evans Amplifier, Soup Cube. |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 30 Aug 2014 2:58 pm
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| It's been several years since I last recorded early music. In the meantime I've been recording roackabilly, blues, folk and cowboy music. It's time for me to lay down some more tracks, so I am planning on coming up with two new collections, one called Days of Yore, and the other called Ancient & Modern, the latter being arrangements of hymns from the Anglican hymn book, Hymns Ancient and Modern, which in most cases were based on old folk melodies to which Anglican words have been added. As my recordings will be instrumental the numbers will be closer to the original melodies than to what is sung in churches. I've built a lot more original instruments since my last collection of arrangements, which need to be aired, such as the hammer dulcimer, hurdy-gurdy, crwdd, etc. |
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Laurence Pangaro
From:
Brooklyn, NY
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Posted 3 Sep 2014 3:52 am
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Hi Alan,
It's nice to see you sharing this work here! I listened to this material following our correspondence quite some time ago before I became a full-time diaper changer.
I really enjoyed this music. It brought to mind some of John Renbourn's older work.
Looking forward to the next installment.
ciao,
Laurence |
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Andy Volk
From:
Boston, MA
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Posted 3 Sep 2014 5:29 am
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Thanks, Alan, I'm enjoying listening to these cuts.
_________________
Steel Guitar Books! Website: www.volkmediabooks.com |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 22 Sep 2014 2:14 pm
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Here are a few of the period instruments that you will hear on the recordings.
Board Zither.
Hummel.
English Cittern.
Lute.
Neopolitan Mandoline.
Bell Cittern and Renaissance 8-string Guitar.
5-string Rebec.
3-string Rebec.
Hammered Dulcimer.
Another Hammered Dulcimer.
Folk Harp.
Bowed Zither.
Bowed Psaltery.
Plucked Psaltery.
Another Plucked Psaltery. (They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.)
Teardrop Cittern.
Oud. The Crusaders brought them back from the Middle East and during the Middle Ages they gradually evolved into the European Lute. ("Lute" is from the Arabic "El Oud".)
Lute.
Another Lute.
Milanese (gut-strung) Mandoline. |
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Lane Gray
From:
Topeka, KS
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Posted 22 Sep 2014 3:34 pm
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Alan, Denise and I thought of you at the library's sale. Bought an album of early English Christmas music.
Frederick Renz, director (Nonesuch 71369)
_________________
2 pedal steels, a lapStrat, and an 8-string Dobro (and 3 ukes)
More amps than guitars, and not many effects |
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John Scanlon
From:
Jackson, Mississippi, USA
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 29 Sep 2014 10:33 am
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That's the way they used to be, John, until some immigrant from Europe copied one that he had seen back home, from memory. He also seema to have got hold of a left-hand model, which explains why the Appalachian Dulcimer (or Dulcimore as they used to spell it) has kept the shape of the Swedish Hummel, yet reversed the strings and lost a few in the transition. By putting the bass strings back where they belong, that allows you to pick them with your thumb, as you would a guitar, whilst playing the melody on the top strings.
That error became perpetrated in the "folk boom" of the 50s and 60s, so that a backwards instrument has now become standard.  |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 1 Sep 2015 10:11 am
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Gosh, it's been a year since I remarked that it was time for me to get off my rear end and record some more mediaeval music. I guess I've been taking my Procrastination Workshop too seriously. 
Well, now that all the kids in the neighbourhood are back at school it's quiet during the day, so I shall get to it soon. I've already made a list of most of the tunes I shall be putting on it, worked out a lot of the arrangements, and designed the cover. It will be called "Days of Yore". This time the instrumentation will be more varied as I've had twenty years in the interim to built more instruments. My first two albums were recorded on a four-channel Portastudio, but I now have several eight-channel machines, plus a hard disk recorder with 24 channels, so I shall be a lot less restricted than before.
I shall be adding such things as the Strohfidl, a kind of Mountain Dulcimer with a Hurdy-Gurdy wheel.
Here's the cover I've designed for the new album....
I also intend to put together a collection of instrumentals on old instruments of songs from Hymns Ancient & Modern. Most of the hymns were based on old folk songs, with new words written, so the songs themselves are much older in most cases than the hymns. They're one of the things I miss about school Being raised in England, every schoolday started with an Assembly, where notices were read out, and songs from the Anglican Hymn Book sung. |
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Scott Duckworth
From:
Etowah, TN Western Foothills of the Smokies
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Posted 1 Sep 2015 12:15 pm
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Me thinks Alan likes stringed instruments!
_________________
Amateur Radio Operator NA4IT (Extra)
http://www.qsl.net/na4it
I may, in fact, be nuts. However, I am screwed onto the right bolt... Jesus! |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 16 Oct 2015 4:13 pm
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Verily, methinks thou art indeed correct.  |
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Charlie McDonald
From:
out of the blue
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Posted 17 Oct 2015 1:33 am
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The Medieval side of Alan Brookes--
--from another Renaissance man (someone who was born three hundred years too late)
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 17 Oct 2015 9:04 am
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Charlie, regard how adoringly the lady looketh at the musicians. I know not whether it be the tone bar, the lutenist, or indeed the fancy tights.
It showeth how, verily, music be an attraction for fair maidens all.  |
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Chris Templeton
From:
The Green Mountain State
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Chris Templeton
From:
The Green Mountain State
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Posted 27 Oct 2015 4:28 pm
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Yes. some of those groups did get electric.
On a steel note, It was great to see that Burt Jansch used Red Rhodes on some of his material.
The first part of this video is mostly Red, Burt and producer, Michael Nesmith being casual, (and some others. The song is later in the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn2wYecTJFU
It was nice to hear those groups/individuals make their music with the traditional in mind, but, Alan, you have really given the original the real treatment.
Nice work on putting item together and thank you for sharing it with us.
Now where is my horse and that long poll, and of course, ye fair maiden. :0)
_________________
Excel 3/4 Pedal With An 8 String Hawaiian Neck, Sierra Tapper (10 string with a raised fretboard to fret with fingers), Single neck Fessenden 3/5
"The Tapper" : https://christophertempleton.bandcamp.com/album/the-tapper
Soundcloud Playlist: https://soundcloud.com/bluespruce8: |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 28 Oct 2015 10:44 am
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That was an interesting Bert Jansch video. Yes, modern instruments such as the Steel Guitar and Banjo can sound well in English Folk Music. In fact I did put some steel guitar in some of the folk music that I recorded in the 70s. Maybe I'll post some here someday. If you think about it, what Steeleye Span did with English Folk Music is exactly what Country musicians have done with American Folk Music.
But my recordings are intended to reintroduce old instruments that have become forgotten over the years. Most people would have no idea of what most of them sounded like. I remember going around the Instrument Museum in The Hague and talking to the curator about the exhibits. As he said, no-one had heard them played for centuries, because it would be too risky to restring them and bring them to concert pitch, as the glues would have dried up on some of them, and they could collapse in on themselves. I made up my mind at that stage to build replicas, and I've been doing so now for about forty years.
"Èœe fair maiden." Ah, yes, the letter thorn which used to represent the th sound in such words as Èœis, Èœat. Shakespeare used it all the time, but it looked so much like the letter Y that it led to such ridiculous phrases as "Ye Olde Shoppe". By the way, the extra e's were there because, in the old days, sign writers and masons were paid by the number of letters, so they added as many as they could. But shoppe was NEVER pronounced shoppy.
It's a shame that the advent of the printing press led to the loss of many letters from the English language, such as eth, thorn, wynn, yod, and several more. In fact the reduction of Å’ to E in such words as Å’strogen has caused their pronunciation to change.
Last edited by Alan Brookes on 31 Oct 2015 1:50 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Chris Templeton
From:
The Green Mountain State
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Posted 28 Oct 2015 1:53 pm
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That is an amazing collection of instruments you have made/put together.
I understand that old hide glue can lose its stick. (I think that's what they used).
I hope you didn't have to kill any animals (cats) to make strings for your instruments :0)
Interesting about the letters.
Your comment about the printing press makes me think about what we may be losing about history due to the transition to digital. Especially all the books/documents/music/etc. that have been scanned, recorded and archived that can no longer be accessed because of format changes.
Maybe, in the future, someone will say "remember when we had face to face conversations?" or "remember when people used to play music together?".
_________________
Excel 3/4 Pedal With An 8 String Hawaiian Neck, Sierra Tapper (10 string with a raised fretboard to fret with fingers), Single neck Fessenden 3/5
"The Tapper" : https://christophertempleton.bandcamp.com/album/the-tapper
Soundcloud Playlist: https://soundcloud.com/bluespruce8: |
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Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 28 Oct 2015 2:58 pm
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That's a very good point. People used to write letters, which would still be readable hundreds of years later, but modern communication, being electronic, will only remain for a short time. What I'm writing now, for instance, will probably not be readable in fifty years time, yet if I wrote it in a journal it would be. Even people's journals are often saved only on their own computers, and even encoded. When someone dies do his heirs go through the contents of his computer?
Another real problem is that there has never been any etiquette written as to the composition of emails. The old traditions of writing the address of the sender, indented, at the top right-hand side of the letter, followed by a blank line and then the date, followed by the addressee's name and address on the left-hand side of the letter, and then Dear/Dearest Sir, Sirs, Madam, Mmes, or "To Whom it May Concern", and ending with "Yours Sincerely," "Sincerely Yours", "Yours Faithfully", "Yours Truly", "Yours Affectionately", "Your Obedient Servant", as appropriate have all gone.
By the way, in all of that did you even notice that the keyboard uses the same " for both opening and closing quotes? So, how do you know whether the " is the start of a new quote or the end of a previous?
Most emails start with "Hi", "Hello there", etc. Punctuation is often omitted completely, as are upper case letters, making communications ambiguous. I was always taught that, when typing letters, a comma was followed by one space, a colon or semi-colon by two spaces, and a full stop/period by three spaces. Modern computer programmes won't let you do that. They put in one space even if you type three. And how many people know that :- and ; mean the same thing?
Typing into 'phone pads is encouraging abbreviation and mis-spelling. Did you notice that I wrote 'phone and not phone? 'Phone is an abbreviation of Telephone, not a word in itself, just as 'bus is an abbreviation of omnibus.
Back in the Middle Ages there was very little standard spelling, and people spelled/spelt however they liked. It's only standardised/standardized spelling that has kept the English language from splitting into several. A Scotsman can write to an Indian, using standardised spelling, and will be understood. But if they both wrote phoenetically they would be out of communication.
Just look at the closest language to English; Dutch. It's no co-incidence that the two languages are similar; they used to be the same until one group migrated to Britain and the rest stayed home. But Dutch has undergone different spelling conventions, so their language looks a lot more foreign than it actually is.... dijk/dyke, huis/house, mijn/mine, u/you, boek/book. prijs/prize, dochter/daughter. vader/father, nieuwe/new, een/an, drie/three. vijf/five, tien/ten, etc. Yes, English is currently spelt the way it was pronounced hundreds of years ago, but, once you start spelling it the way it sounds, you will have lost mutual compehensivity.
I apologise if I've drifted a little from the subject, but, to me, it's all a matter of tradition. Traditional music and traditional language go hand-in-hand, or, otherwise, we shall lose the rich culture of our forefathers. |
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Chris Templeton
From:
The Green Mountain State
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Posted 28 Oct 2015 5:00 pm
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You know your stuff about this.
Maybe a little more drift, but the R&B group The O'Jays have a thoughtful statement on their "Family Reunion" record that says, in part:
"The Generation Gap is another evil plan. The result of which divided the family structure, therefore creating a halt to the flow of wisdom from the wise to the young, and stifling the energy of the youth which is the equalizer to wisdom and age…"
Without this flow of wisdom, tradition can be lost and we can become just consumers looking for the next best thing.
And to get back on track, Great work of many years, Alan.
_________________
Excel 3/4 Pedal With An 8 String Hawaiian Neck, Sierra Tapper (10 string with a raised fretboard to fret with fingers), Single neck Fessenden 3/5
"The Tapper" : https://christophertempleton.bandcamp.com/album/the-tapper
Soundcloud Playlist: https://soundcloud.com/bluespruce8: |
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