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Summer 2001ARTICLES
COLUMNS
TUNES
ARTICLE EXCERPTS
Tommy Peoples: Casting a Long Shadowby Brendan TaaffeRandal Bays has described Tommy Peoples as "one of the higher peaks in the great mountain range of traditional musicians." It is an image that captures a lot of Tommy: his great stature, his craggy features, his intense and individual nature, and the long shadow he has cast over Irish music. Originally from Donegal, near St. Johnstone, Tommy moved to Dublin as a teenager, and eventually to County Clare, where he married and raised a family. Rooted in the Donegal style of playing from an early age, Tommy's music evolved as he was exposed to different influences. Known early on for his ferocious triplets and dazzling technique, Tommy's recent recording, The Quiet Glen, shows the great sweetness in his playing. From his early playing with groups such as the Green Linnet Ceili Band, his recording on the Bothy Band's first album, and through his solo work, Tommy Peoples has influenced untold numbers of musicians. When I watch him play, I am struck by how he invests himself in every note, and by how deeply personal is everything he plays. We spoke at his family home, Kinnycally, Donegal. Tell me about your early life in Donegal. I was born here in St. Johnstone in 1948. They were bleak times alright, but I'm sure it was an improvement on what it was before. My uncle, Matt Peoples, played, my grandfather played. The first fellow that started teaching me was my first cousin, Joe Cassidy -- his mother and my father were brother and sister. In my father's generation, I was just thinking, there were about six fiddlers in a two-mile radius, but then no one since. Were there other early influences, apart from your cousin Joe? Well, at the time there wasn't much in the way of travel, or transport or anything else - it was mostly bikes and walking. There were pretty regular little sessions, once a month, up in Letterkenny [thirteen miles away]. Actually, the man that ran them there - Hugh McGovern -- he was an undertaker for years -- still runs the session and he's like ninety or something. I've gone up there the past couple of weeks now that I'm back home. When you were growing up here, were you playing in a traditional Donegal style? It's hard to say. Donegal style is associated with Johnny Doherty in particular, and I'd say there were a lot of different styles even within the county. I was probably playing a lot straighter when I was around Letterkenny. There were a lot of influences like Frank Kelly, who played maybe more like a Sligo style than a Donegal style, even though I wouldn't say he was influenced as such by the Sligo musicians. And Vincent Campbell had a very individual style. He was in Glenties and used to come to those sessions in Letterkenny. You moved to Dublin in your teens? I did. I moved to Dublin when school wasn't an option. I didn't succeed too well at school. I'd been expelled from one and hadn't turned up at another. It was kind of time to go. There wasn't a tradition of education around this particular area. I assume most of the people in the area were farmers? It's also a divided kind of area, religiously. So the farm owners are one religion -- Protestants -- and the other community are Catholics. Most of the Catholics that live in this area would have come in through what were known as hiring fairs. Mostly children hired after they were twelve years of age, for six month periods and the like. Most of the houses around here were laborer's cottages owned by the farmers. Education wasn't stressed because when people left grammar school, the next step was emigration. And then in Dublin you met up with the Kellys? I would have, yeah. I met John Kelly [James Kelly's father] accidentally. I didn't have a fiddle or anything, so I'd decided I would buy a whistle. There were a few in the window at John Kelly's shop. He would have told me then about the different sessions that were going on. It was kind of a different scene -- there was no such thing as playing for money or anything like that. There wasn't a lot of music at pubs, either. It was just in these little clubs where we got together just for the sake of playing. At the time, Matt Molloy was going to the college there and Mary Bergin and other people of that age group were around -- Sean Keane, James Keane, and the like. That was about the bulk of that age group. Then there was the older generation, like John Egan, John Kelly, Des O'Connor and Tom Mulligan. Leo Rowsome was teaching at the time in the Piper's Club, so he would often be there on a Saturday night. There were some great old characters around. They were wonderful people and you were safe in their hands. I was in a ceili band then when I was in Dublin -- the Green Linnet Ceili Band. It was a nice band, and good fun. There were a good few ceilis at that time, so it was our first venture into commercialism. We wouldn't play like every week, but maybe every second week. Mary Bergin was in the band, and Tony Smith used to play fiddle in it, and Mick Hand played flute. Did playing with these different people change your style? Well, yeah, I'm sure it did. Whatever you admire about anyone's playing would be an influence. Whatever appealed to the ear I would try to make use of. At some point then you moved to Clare? I moved to Clare when I was twenty-one or so. It seems like a lifetime ago. I got very friendly with three men who were lifelong friends and music lovers: Tony Linnane's father Pat, P.J. Curtis' father, and Miko Grady. I kind of fell in with them even though they were, again, of that older generation. In a way, they were a highlight for me. They were very kind individuals. The Russells were going strong in Doolin at the time, and Willie Clancy was playing. At the time I would have been playing with the Kilfenora Ceili Band - great musicians and characters as well. I played with them on and off through the years. And then ceilis went out of existence as the music moved into the pubs. In recent years, you've been playing in pub sessions? I kind of confined my playing to playing in local pub sessions, which I enjoy immensely. Anyone can join in, so there were always both visitors and people passing through. It was certainly never boring. Your triplets are very distinctive. How did you develop them? I probably consciously worked on them in the sense that they never seemed to work properly. So they developed from trying to bow them properly but not succeeding. There's a slight difference from what might be known as a Sligo style of playing in that it's a different bow direction. The actual triplet itself is started on a down bow; if you do it on an up-bow it gives a lighter feeling. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It depends on form. Listening to your recordings over time, your music has become sweeter and gentler. Does this reflect the changes in your life, or is it something you've worked towards? It's probably a reflection of the change in my life. Maybe the main ingredient is from alcohol to sobriety, as well as some degree of inner peace that didn't exist before. Plus a few other ingredients like nervousness that would have had a bearing on performance. Mostly I still am nervous performance-wise, though not on all occasions, but cope with it differently. Another thing that makes you a unique player is the number and quality of your compositions. Have you always composed? I would have from a pretty early age. I get fits of it. Being here at night time -- I'm not a television addict and I don't tend to go out very much, so it can be almost a necessity at times. I composed from an early age, and there was probably a theory then -- a ridiculous theory -- that tunes should be strictly traditional and probably passed on for ten generations or something. Maybe the best way to know that a tune was in anyway valid was not to say it was newly composed. There are probably tunes that are attributed to me that I had nothing to do with, that would be called "Tommy Peoples'" just because I happened to play them sometime. Do you keep track of the tunes you've written? I wouldn't, no. Maybe there are more than fifty or so - I would have written down a good few in a certain period. Generally I tend to just write a tune down on paper rather than pull an instrument out. It might change a little bit afterwards. I generally do that if I'm sitting down with some spare time on my hands, being a non- practicing workaholic. Do you have any pet favorites among your compositions? One that I wrote lately that's on The Quiet Glen, called "Black Pat's." I like the "Green Fields of Glentown" as well, mind you, but I don't play it all that much. It seems to have a certain appeal to a lot of people and has been recorded a lot by others. Glentown is just half a mile up the road from this house. Is it important to you to think that people will pick up these tunes and carry them on? It's nice if it happens. I don't know what started me initially, kind of just having a fascination with tunes. When I was younger it was probably a fascination with new material, or any tune that you haven't heard before always appeals. So I just started like that. It would have been a big surprise early on to hear someone play a tune I had written, a surprise and a confirmation that it was reasonably okay. It's hard to judge, really. ... [Brendan Taaffe is a farmer and musician in central Vermont. He plays fiddle, whistle, and guitar and teaches children.]
Christian LeMaître: Reviving the Breton Fiddle Traditionby Peter AnickCeltic music is generally associated with Ireland and Scotland, but an equally rich musical heritage can be found in Brittany [Bretagne], the northwest peninsula of France which lies just south of the British Isles. Settled by Celts after the withdrawal of the Roman legions, this region managed to preserve its unique language and culture into the twentieth century. After World War I, traditional Breton music began to disappear, only to be revived in the '50s and '60s through music festivals and evening dances known as fest-noz. The primary instruments of dance music at that time were the biniou, a shrill one-droned bagpipe unique to Brittany, and the bombarde, a double-reeded oboe with a trumpet-like sound. In the early '70s, singer and composer Alan Stivell initiated a renaissance of Breton music, reviving interest in the Celtic harp and exposing a new generation to the complex and beautiful music of Brittany. One of the young French musicians who was introduced to Breton music at this time was Christian LeMaître. A quarter century later, Christian is recognized as the leading authority on Breton fiddling. His bands Kornog and Pennou Skoulm were among the most influential of the folk music revival, reestablishing a role for the fiddle, flute, and guitar. At the time of this interview, he was finishing up a tour with the Celtic Fiddle Festival, a true "supergroup" that also featured Irish fiddle master Kevin Burke, Scottish wizard Johnny Cunningham, and Soïg Siberil, one of the pioneers of Breton guitar accompaniment. In this interview, Christian retraces his efforts to bring the fiddle back into Breton music and gives us an introduction to the complexities of Brittany's dance repertoire. How did you get started playing Breton music on the violin? It was a long time ago, the time of Stivell, the early '70s. In fact, my first tunes were American tunes, Cajun. Then the first records of Irish music arrived. I found one called Paddy in the Smoke, which was fiddlers from London. This was my first record of Irish music on the fiddle. And then in '75 there was the first record of the Bothy Band. It was a revelation for me! In Brittany, there was a fiddler playing with Alan Stivell. And there were some bands like Bleizi Ruz, who had a fiddler in the band. But it was more accompaniment than playing the lead or going into the style as a melodist. The real start was with the band Kornog, with Jean-Michel Veillon on the flute. When we started Kornog, it was one of the first bands to try to preserve this style. After a year or two we formed another which is called Pennou Skoulm. This band was only for playing fest-noz for dancing. This was the very first band to play in a fest-noz without a bombarde. We were two fiddles, Jackie Molard and I, and flute, guitar. We founded that because we said, why not try it? And it was a success. The Breton music has plenty of different styles. Each small area has its own style of music and its own dancing. There are plenty of them, so the only way to play them correctly is to see how people do them and to know the dance. The traditional musicians and singers, the bombarde and biniou players, the old ones only knew the music from their own area. Fifteen years ago, in many places, the people danced only the dances of their own area. Now for the younger people, the musicians have to know all the styles. Developing the fiddle is mostly from the singing tradition. Also, there are some connections with the small bagpipe and the bombarde. I'm sure you know the connection with the fiddle and the pipes in Ireland and Scotland, so with me, the fiddler should hear also the biniou, which is the small bagpipe, and take some of it. Did you grow up in Brittany? No, in Paris. There is a place in Paris which is called Ty-Jos, and there I met a fiddler who was playing with Stivell. And I was going often to Brittany, where I knew some very good singers, bombarde and biniou players, and I was fascinated with the way they were playing. The bombarde player was improvising tunes; he was an inspiration. I met also Alan Kloater, who had played with Stivell in Dublin. He was a bombarde player who also played the uilleann pipes. He was sure in that period, which was about 1980, that it was not possible to play Breton music on those instruments -- uilleann pipes, fiddle or flute. Why did he think that? He was [a] pessimist! It had not already been done. It hadn't? I have a record in my collection that is all traditional fiddle music from Brittany. Oh, yes. This is very different. There are two very different traditions in Brittany -- western Brittany and eastern Brittany. There is a limit of the Breton language, which is in the West. After this, the traditional language is called Gallo. And the musical tradition there is originally from French sources. And then you have an area called Poitevin, around Poitiers. And the music from eastern Brittany comes from here also, and the songs are in French and there is a big tradition of fiddle. They (traditional fiddlers) are still alive but most of them haven't played for a long time. There is a tradition of hurdy-gurdy and accordion, but it is a completely different kind of music from the western part. Myself, I play almost nothing from the east of Brittany. Even though they have more fiddlers there? Yes, it's funny because it's not bad music but I don't have a big interest in it. Have you heard of Archetype? It was a band with six fiddlers from Brittany, with a cello and double bass and we played some tunes from eastern Brittany. Sometimes in festivals, we played for the dance called schottische and there are polkas and things like this, which are more influenced [by non-local musical trends] than the music of western Brittany, which is totally original and special. Did western Brittany ever use the violin or was it never a part of their traditional music? In the '50s, when some people wanted to make a record of Breton music, what was left at that moment was only singing and bombarde, biniou, and accordion. Many accordion players could play waltzes and tangos, and then they'd play the gavottes. But as for the fiddle, there is nothing positive left about it. The only thing we know is from books. French writers mention that they saw fiddle players in Brittany. There are plenty of reports of this, and pictures, too -- drawings, and some statues you'll see in churches. Did you find that some of the same tunes from western Brittany were also played in Ireland and Scotland, or were the repertoires completely different? It was completely different. In western Brittany, the structure of the music is completely original. Most of the tunes are very intricate with the dance, and you have several musical phrases. The gavotte is eight beats and every beat has its own function for the dance and its own way of being played. It has nothing to do with Irish and Scottish music. ... [Peter Anick, co-author of Mel Bay's Old Time Fiddling Across America, plays fiddle and mandolin with the Massachusetts-based Acoustic Planet.]
Cambodian Music: Surviving "The Killing Fields"by Michael SimmonsCambodia has always been something of a mystery to me. Like most Americans, I only knew two things about the country: that it was home to Angkor Wat, the mysterious temple complex that lay unknown to the West for centuries, half-consumed by the country's jungles, and that in 1975, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh and instigated a massacre that eventually took the lives of more than a million people. So when I got a chance to spend four weeks there earlier this year, I jumped at the opportunity to learn about the country, its people, and especially its music firsthand. Cambodia's recent history is dominated by the four-year period in the late 1970s when the Khmer Rouge took over the country. During that brief span, which was referred to by all of the Cambodians I met as the Pol Pot Time, the Khmer Rouge tried to turn the country into an agrarian "worker's paradise." To this end, they murdered anyone they perceived as bourgeois or middle class, which included most of the doctors, lawyers, government workers, engineers, and teachers. They also killed ninety percent of the classical dancers and musicians, and in the process they nearly destroyed a tradition that stretched back almost a thousand years. In the last few years, the few dancers and musicians that survived have been busy teaching a new generation of performers, and there are now hundreds of younger artists to carry on the traditions. I was lucky to meet a dancer named Meas Kim Heng, who was kind enough to take me to a rehearsal for a dance concert he was performing in, and to the Royal University for the Fine Arts, where the next generation of performers are being trained. The rehearsal was held in a building that used to house a dance school. Unfortunately, a fire damaged it a few years ago and most of the rooms are unusable, but the lobby was unharmed so the rehearsal took place there. The dancers were accompanied by a traditional pinpeat orchestra, which consisted of two roneat (bamboo xylophones), drums, a ghong (small tuned gongs), a srlay (an oboe-like woodwind), and a two-string fiddle called the tro. Meas Kim Heng also took me on a tour of the Royal University of the Fine Arts. This is where he trained and occasionally teaches. I was able to see classes in classical dance, drama, and even juggling and acrobatics in the school's circus section. I also got to watch students playing the various instruments of the pinpeat orchestra. I was also lucky enough to get an impromptu lesson on the tro so. The tro is ubiquitous in Cambodia and it's nearly impossible to escape its plaintive wail. It's the standard instrument of blind street musicians, it's a featured instrument in both classical and folk ensembles, and it even turns up regularly on the pop songs that pour from every bar, café, and karaoke joint. There are three kinds of tro: the tro u, which has a small, round wooden or horn body and a snakeskin head; the tro so, a larger baritone version with a coconut body; and the tro khmer, which has three strings. The tro u and tro so originally came from China and are very similar to the erhu (see Jody Stecher's article about China in the Winter 2000/2001 issue of Fiddler Magazine for more about the erhu), while the tro khmer probably originated in Malaysia, or perhaps Indonesia. The bow passes between the strings on the two-stringed versions. The player presses down on one string to get the high notes and pulls up, using the "underside" of the bow, to play the low notes. The strings were once made of silk but these days they are made of metal. Tros are very easy to come by in Cambodia, particularly in the two large markets. You can find new tros at the Central Market, which is housed in a beautiful 1930s French-built art deco dome. A good quality, professional one costs around $100 to $175 depending on fanciness, although you can pick up a tourist grade instrument for much less. (The stalls with the tros were right next to a woman selling fried locusts and what looked like fried spiders.) The other place to search for tros is the Russian Market, which is the place to go if you're looking for antiques. The instruments are much less expensive here and range in price from $15 to $50. Most of the instruments here are old, but it's impossible to say how old. The climate in Cambodia in hot and humid and even new wooden objects tend to look old very quickly. I bought a tro u for $15, which was a bother getting home because it was so fragile. Although I spent most of my time in Phnom Penh, I did make it to Siem Reap, the province where the Angkor Wat temple complex is located. Actually Angkor Wat is just one of more than thirty temples in the area. I spent three days exploring a small fraction of the sites. My favorite was the Bayon, which featured wall carvings that showed ancient court musicians playing instruments that were identical to the ones played by modern performers. At one temple I saw a folk ensemble made up of musicians who had lost their legs in mine explosions. My guide said that it was unusual to see them at a temple because this particular group was in high demand for weddings and other ceremonies. At this same temple I saw a man playing a leaf like a kazoo. The guide said he wasn't sure if he was a holy man or a scam artist, but that we should give him a little money just in case. Cambodia was not at all what I expected. Although the signs of the Khmer Rouge occupation of Phnom Penh are everywhere, the people seem to want to put all of that behind them and to get on with rebuilding their country. Everyone I met was charming and even when they spoke no English, we had very little trouble communicating. (My Khmer consisted of little more than hello, thank you, and good-bye.) At the University of Fine Arts, I met a man who made ghong. My attempts to try and play the instrument quickly attracted a crowd of onlookers, and we all laughed at my lack of skill. My guide translated one of the students as saying, "Even though we don't speak the same language, we all laugh the same." If you find yourself in Phnom Penh, call Meas Kim Heng to see where he will be dancing with his troupe. His phone number is 016-824-962. [Michael Simmons, Fiddler Magazine's Review Editor, is a guitar player and writer living in Mountain View, California.]
Tim Phillips: The "Infidel " Violin Makerby Elaine BradtkeThe initial impression you get when approaching Tim Phillips' stall at an event is that something is different. Ah, yes, it's the color. Instruments in deep greens and blues, robust browns and pale blonds all vie for attention. Then, as you move in for a closer look, the unique details of his craftsmanship become apparent. The occasional use of checkered purfling, unusual scroll shapes, striking f- holes, angled finger boards and the ever-present lustrous finish, give his instruments their special character. But wait, there's more. The sizes, the body shapes, the number of strings, and even the number of corners on the instrument vary; each one is truly individual. Tim Phillips is obviously not a man content with turning out one Strad copy after another. I interviewed Tim at an annual weekend of traditional music workshops called "Strings and Bows at Witney" (held in a town not far from Oxford). He had brought a supply of his instruments along with accessories for sale to the participants. Several of his instruments were already in use, and their distinctive shapes and colors stood out among the crowd. His wife kindly handled the steady stream of curious fiddlers as we stood to one side, looked at some photos and chatted about the strange and winding road that lead to his present career as a violin maker based in Wales. I'm not from Wales, I went to school in Sussex [a county in Southern England] and moved up to Wales in about 1980 to start a fashion jewelry business in a new factory unit in mid-Wales; making bead earrings and selling to gift shops. After three years I sold my share of the business because I was fed up with it. On the proceeds of that I bought this place [his house and the mill that was to become his workshop/showroom/office]. I spent a year rebuilding the house full time and then had to make a living again; which meant making wooden gates in the old mill. I'm not naturally good at making things out of wood. I started working in the mill here, making wooden gates, because they're fairly simple to make. Then I made doors, and then frames, and then cupboards. He gradually increased his skills in wood working, and began to look for something more satisfying than making gates. Rather than taking the logical next step of building fine furniture (which he had no interest in), his thoughts turned to musical instruments. Tim had played the violin as a youngster, and as an adult played the guitar. I honestly just went to bed one night and said, "I know what it is, I'm going to be a violin maker!" Some of his neighbors thought he was putting the cart before the horse, building his work spaces before he even knew how to build violins. I set about building those workshops, which took me four years of my spare time and was known locally as Tim's Folly, and then I set about making violins. I had a violin kit that my wife had given me from a few years before, which is a box of all the bits already made. Basically you have to finish them off and glue it together. I got all the bits out and put them on the table. It looked far too complicated, and I couldn't understand what they were, so I swept them all away. I got out some cedar and some maple that I had from making jobs for other people and set about actually making all the bits (so I knew what they were and how they were going to fit together). I made two violins [in] this smooth shape. I chose the smooth shape because it was easier than doing the corners. A guitar is that shape, so I thought, "Well, why shouldn't a violin be that shape?" I still do them, you see them here. Of course now I know that lots of other people did them. I didn't do them in order to try and be better or clever or anything, I just did them because it was a simple shape. Then these other shapes, that's where it all comes from. If you can be as radical as that, then you can do ones just with top corners or bottom corners or asymmetric or whatever. It's those sort of things that make them your violins and not somebody else's. I've always done stuff like that, the different shapes, the different bits of purfling and the different scrolls. The reason I've done it is because I like it. Not being trained in any school or with any maker, I'm totally free, as a violin maker, to do exactly what I want to try. And I'm totally responsible for it. Nobody can say, "You've got a certificate from such and such school, you can't do that sort of thing." The off spin of that is other people see it and they can immediately recognize it as mine. You heard it here today, "I saw someone playing a fiddle that must have been one of yours." Commercially, that's a big help. If I was making perfect Strad copies Unless you're a real expert, you don't know the difference between one maker's work and another maker's work. It just looks like another violin, and you wouldn't even ask, "Who made your violin?" would you? It satisfies my desire to make things sort of different, and it keeps me stimulated. How did you choose the name infidel? Oh, it's my joke for my smooth violins. When you start violin making, you are only too aware of the massive amounts of rules that exist around it. You must do this, you must do that, you must not do this, that and the other. My first violin I made the smooth shape as I explained and it was different. It was breaking a lot of those rules. It's a pun on "in fiddle," as in something that's fashionable, if you like, and infidelity, which is of course breaking away from some established norm. So that's why I call them infidels. Did you ever have any experiments that were total disasters? [laughs] I've still got a few violins hanging on the wallNot total disasters because I never started off with the idea that it's going to be any good (or any better). I've made violins out of flat pieces of wood, as with guitars, and they're okay up to a point; but they don't have the potential to be really beautiful instruments. So, no, I haven't had any real disasters, because I haven't had any great expectations. But I have got violins that hang on the wall that are just there for fun, really. Nothing I would consider selling to anybody. Do you use standard wood types? Yeah, I use generally, absolutely standard wood types: alpine spruce for the fronts, which comes from Italy and Germany, and maple or English sycamore for the backs, ribs and necks. I have made a couple of violins with cedar fronts -- my very first two were made with cedar fronts. But I stick to what is traditionally accepted as being the best wood because in the end they are the best. The quality that maple and sycamore have for backs, ribs and necks is a mixture of things. We use that wood because it's good for carving, it doesn't split very easily. It's very stable, it doesn't change its shape very much once dried, once carved. And it can look beautiful. It has the right acoustic qualities. Good quality spruce for the fronts is, in my opinion, absolutely essential. It really makes a difference to the potential sound of the instrument, the quality of the wood you use to start with. I guess like grapes for making wine ... You make custom instruments, and people can specify color, body shape, even the number of strings, but how much control do you have over the tone? You can control the tone to some extent. If somebody says they want something that's really screechy, or really loud on the high notes, you can produce that, to an extent. If somebody wants something that's going to be really mellow and slushy, then you can do that. If you want something with a loud mid-range then you can do that. But what seems really difficult to finely control is what I call the flavor of the sound. I can effect whether it's going to be louder or quieter or more mellow, but it's really hard to fully control the yummy factor. If I make an instrument for somebody on commission (probably about ten per cent of what I make is made specially for people) then I only offer it to them as a first option. If they don't want it, if it doesn't suit them, they don't have to have it. I don't want anybody to have one that they're not absolutely happy with. I might get the shape right, and the color right and the strings right, but if they don't like the actual tone of the instrument, they're not obliged to buy it. But I've never ever had anyone not take one that I've made especially for them. ... Any plans for future models, or experiments you're currently working on? Well, I have been experimenting with a violin that has got what I call asymmetric ribs. I've made two now. On the treble side, the side where the E string is, the ribs are a lot lower, not so deep as the ribs on the bass side of the instrument. The thinking behind it is that bass instruments need deeper ribs and you get a fuller bass response. High pitched instruments generally are thinner, not such deep ribs, so you get a quicker response. That's pretty radical as violins go, they're squished like a wedge. I made one last year which I sold, and it was a really lovely sounding violin. I'm making one right now that's a commission for somebody who played the other one and they liked it. I don't know what the results will be yet. Maybe the first one was a complete fluke, but it sounded great. It may be that I'll get similar characteristics in the second one, but I won't really know until I've done about ten. Then I'll be able to identify the certain characteristics that come through having that [wedge shape] as a feature. There are so many things -- the wood you start with, the thickness, the shape of the arching, the shape of the model, the sound post and where it is, the bridge and what it's made of, how thick it is, makes a massive effect. Identifying the element that produces an instrument's particular characteristics is very, very difficult. You might think you know, whereas actually, it might be something else. Like my smooth ones, people say, "Do they sound different?" because of their smooth shape. Quite honestly, I'm not sure. It must have some effect on that particular instrument. Generally, I think they sound a bit mellower and respond a bit quicker than the ones with all four corners, but I'm not sure. I thought that was the case when I tried a smooth violin and then one with corners, but it could just be the difference between the two instruments. Absolutely. I think the really nice thing about them is they're all different, they all sound different, they all behave differently in different people's hands. That is what is interesting about them -- violins are more like people. Everybody who plays, plays differently, and all violins sound different in different people's hands. That's largely what excites me about them, because they're human in many ways. When you get a violin and a person together that suit each other, then you've got a real sort of magic happening. That's why I don't try to make all my violins the same. I don't have an ideal violin sound in my mind. I don't try to copy the sound of one that I made previously and I don't aim to make one that sounds like a Stradivarius. I just try to make nice ones out of what I've got. It would be really boring if you could bottle a formula for violin making. It would ruin violin making for ever. Everybody would work to what is supposed to be the perfect formula and that would just produce loads of instruments all the same. Tim Phillips, The Mill, Mochdre, Newtown, Powys, Wales. Tel.: +44 1686 624 536; e-mail: timsviolins@supanet.com; Web: http://www.timsviolins.supanet.com [Elaine Bradtke is a native Floridian living in London. When she's not playing the fiddle or studying Japanese, she works on various research, writing and indexing projects related to traditional music and dance.] For full versions of these articles, please visit Fiddler Magazine store to order back issues. |
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