Michael Coleman

Could anyone recommend any books on Michael Coleman’s style of fiddle playing? Thank you

I don’t know but here are some links which I have seen while on thesession.org;
http://www.archive.org/details/Coleman

The Roots Music Listening Room
Irish Dance Music from the 1920s - 1970s
http://www.juneberry78s.com/sounds/ListenToIrishDance.htm

“Michael Coleman: A Cape Breton Irish Connection”
http://capebretonsmagazine.com/modules/publisher/item.php?itemid=3823
this book appears to be out of print;

http://www.cranfordpub.com/recording_descriptions.htm#Classic%20Irish%20description

Re: Is there such a thing as “the new york style”
Posted on May 21st 2008 by Hup
https://thesession.org/discussions/17842#comment371568

Miles Krassen’s version of O‘Neill’s gives detailed ornamentation for the tunes in O’Neill’s original collection “in the style of the Sligo masters” (of whom I understand Michael Coleman was one)

Krassen’s introduction outlines the structure and purpose of the commonest ornaments in the style

it might be useful to look at it - only shows dots though, not bowing.

There’s also the long out-of-print “Bowing Styles in Irish Fiddle Playing”, which (IIRC) focused on the Sligo masters:

http://openlibrary.org/b/OL20336846M/Bowing_styles_in_Irish_fiddle_playing.

Miles Krassen’s version of O’Neill’s is one of the most execrable pieces of damaging bilge ever published in the history of music publishing.

You know, one of these days I really must get off the fence and say what I really feel.

🙂

I like Krassen’s book. It is what it is; the O’Neill books are rife with flaws too. It’s not like anyone pays attention to the contents of either, anyway, nowadays settings come from this site or Karen Tweed etc. Krassen wrote some great books on Old Time fiddle, also the excellent Trip to Sligo book with Tony DeMarco.

Random - thanks for the link to that Cape Breton article, very interesting. Must have my library order the Lyth book, too.

Id love to get a hold of the first, sligo fiddling book by Lythe… any one got a copy?…
As an aside, Ethical blend, Surely you are llig in disguise? Your profile says your a ‘noob’ but you seem to feel you know an awfull lot about the music? Something seems not quite right here. What other instruments do you play and what makes you think A massive undertaking such as Krassen’s work to be so bad?
Just h ow long have you been playing trad out of curiosity?

What books can you recommend? What is so bad about this book?
?

Search for the title at WorldCat, which will browse through all the world’s libraries. If you’re in the States you can order one via Interlibrary Loan, usually for nothing. I’ve searched for a copy on eBay for years, to no avail. I did pick up Trip to Sligo there recently. I do have an old edition of Breandan Breathnach’s occasional journal Ceol, with a generally negative review of Lyth’s book from James Kelly - lots of mistakes in the transcription of the bowing, James says. I have to take his word for it, I can’t even recognize what direction I’m bowing in listening to recordings of myself…

Krassen used Coleman settings where possible and those of his contemporaries/successors for the rest. People wring their hair out over this supposedly being the ruin of local styles etc, when Coleman’s records came out they had that effect too - players would either become clones, adopt some of his music into theirs, or give up entirely. It’s all a bit water under the bridge now.

>>I have to take his word for it, I can’t even recognize what direction I’m bowing in>> 🙂
cheers Kevin, unfortunately they couldn’t find it over here…. Sigh…. I will keep looking. Thanks for the Worldcat idea, never heard of it before.

Personally for picking up tunes I prefer books such as ‘’Tunes of the Munster pipers for the clear and simple melodic settings. But as regards Transcriptions of individual players , I find them interesting, to see on paper, how that individual might treat a tune. My own ‘bible’ is ‘The piping of Patsy Touhey’, for its in depth transcriptions. Books like this offer an experts approach, which I find immensely valuable.

IMO I can understand that a particular written score might become, through emulation and direct copying , the ‘standard’ and that this is fundamentally opposed to the traditional approach of individual variation as the artistic input . I can also appreciate that these books[of transcriptions] could be misused in this way, and quite likely have been. But surely any trad musician worth their salt will eventually realize this as time progresses and discard such mimicry as a false path.

Do you have the Séamus Ennis book, or “brick” as it was termed by one reviewer, referring to its massive size? Can’t imagine things getting more detailed than that. Also has bare bones transcriptions for each tune, too - great job Pat Mitchell did on that.

….. A big thanks to you for pointing that out Kevin, no , I dont have it yet, but its on its way! .. picked up the new Sean Potts Whistle CD while I was there[NPU]….. Been listening to Pat Mitchel nearly non stop for months now, lovely player.

The main problem with the Krassen book is, IMO, something which Krassen himself points out: he has tried to include all (or at least a lot of) possible variation and ornamentation in one brief ‘setting’ for each tune. This means that the settings he gives are almost never authentic in any way, because no player would ever have played them the way they are set out, on any one time through the tune. For my money, this makes it difficult to sort out what the actual tune is. It also makes it difficult to use the book even as a reference to remind one of the gist of a tune one may have forgotten.

I suppose the thing is, he was trying to produce something academic, rather than strictly musical, so, on its own terms, maybe it’s valid. Just not for me.

But one thing you can’t do is glean any notion of any particular style from the Krassen book. It’s not how it’s organised.

BTW, a lot of people think that the Krassen book is a version of one or other publication by O‘Neill. It’s not. It takes a sort of ’best of‘ approach and includes tunes from several different publications, including the 1001 Gems, Waifs and Strays, and the ’1850’ … maybe more, I can’t remember.

You cant get style from a book, but your points are fair enough. It depends on how you approach the written medium, and what you want from it. Thanks for the clarification.

Thanks very much for all the help. 🙂