Playing Styles

[markwood]

Hello Swarb,

Really great to see you back on top form.

I'm not a musician (so please pardon my ignorance on this) but one thing that struck me is that your playing style is usually easily identifiable and of course, it's very different from other players such as Ric. I was wondering if you enjoy and find it easy playing with people with different styles? From an audience point of view, your duets/trios with Chris and Ric have always been terrific.

Best wishes, Mark

PS. My first Fairport concert was the last date in the Winter 1985 tour at the then Oxford Apollo (with Earl Okin as support). It changed my musical taste forever and I played my recently inherited copies of "Farewell Farewell" and "Tippler's Tales" constantly for months afterwards. Many thanks indeed!

[Swarb]

thats a tricky question, an interesting one though.Its hard to be objective about ones own playing.Of course over the years a lot of people have said that my playing is recognisable,so I am aware of that. But I have done nothing to make it that way, nothing deliberate anyway.It just so happens that it comes out the way it does. I like the duets and threesomes too. great fun.

[markwood]

Many thanks Swarb, that's interesting. Perhaps to a musician, I'm stating something blindingly obvious here but there are certainly several other musicians whose style seems to identify them easily. Richard is a very good example. I didn't know originally which track he was on when I first listened to Linda's fairly recent "Fashionably Late" album, but as soon as he started to play, it just seemed immediately obvious who it was. (I've also been listening a lot recently to my radio recording of the Liege and Lief set from Cropredy last year and again, despite familiarity with the material, it just seems so clear that he's playing, even in the places where he isn't taking the lead.) Peggy, Martin Carthy, Danny Thompson...probably many more to add to the list.

Cheers, Mark

[Jules Gray]

As a barely adequate musician, I feel barely adequately entitled to join in this thread.

So here goes....  

I think every player has their own style, and the more you hear it the more recognisable it would be.  That style is partly the way they learned the instrument (inluding any bad habits they picked up along the way), partly the influence of teachers and, even more so, people they admired (there's a recognisable Neil Young clunk to my guitar style for example), partly down to their own talents and/or limitations, even physiology (body shape, length of fingers etc etc), and partly down to how much they practice.  It all gets blended together to make something unique.

In short, even though we are all influenced by other players, our playing style is as individual as our finger prints.  Now when somebody is particularly gifted, like Swarb or RT, then a bunch of us fall in love with the way they play, and that signature sound gains in popularity and recognition.

And so another generation absorbs that sound into their own style of playing, and on we go.

Or something like that.

Jules

[Barry]

Don't I remember from the Chatham gig, Peter Knight saying something along the lines that he made a concious decision to pay in a different style from you?

[Swarb]

not quite, he made the decision not to listen to other fiddlers  too much,me included. so as not to be subconsciously influenced

[Barry]

Yeah, that was it - thanks