Now, I do not know how often they sing “traditional” or traditional-inspired Celtic songs, as I do not listen to them on account of their blandness, but this has happened more than once:
They are singing an ostensibly Celtic song, but instead of something like this this (notes all the same length, 3 to a bar, tune totally made up):
x
x
x
x x
x x x
x xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
They would sing/play something like this:
x
x x
x x
x x x
x xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
With the two high notes taken down one note. Or perhaps not a note, it's been so long since I've had musical training I'm not sure if it's the key, tempering, or the actual notes that differ. All I know is that those types of notes are lower and it sucks as much as elevator music.
This is totally unfun and bland to my ears. Since it wouldn't appear to me that the more traditional-sounding construction would be grating on the average PBS-viewing public's ears, my only explanation is that they hate themselves.
I don’t get your notation but I do agree they sound very bland. They’re hugely successful though and I am not so I’ll shut up. The High Kings are a band from the same ‘factory’ that are vaguely edgier, more like the Dubliners, still shit though.
They’re part of the wider “Celtic” trend - a denatured Scots-Irish-Welsh cultural artifact for deracinated Scots-Irish-Welsh white folks seeking some misty remnant of roots in a multicultural era that, they rightly sense, doesn’t include them.
And as a musician, I actually am part of that audience at times. I actually respected the professionalism of the 1970s Welk orchestra of live, seasoned LA studio men. But in subsequent years (Yanni, John Tesh…) it became all polish and no leather, if you will. CW, AFAIK, are part of that generation.
I can’t read the OP’s notation (letters, give us letters!) but I wanted to mention that I made my poor mother seriously sad and upset when I saw her watching these guys and teased about how corny they were. I honestly didn’t know she was watching very seriously–I thought she was flipping through channels.
I have a certain respect for it, too. I know it takes years of practice to get that technique, and years more to get the polish. But if you can play Rachmaninoff while smiling for the camera, or finish a two-hour concert looking like you’re on your way to the prom, then you’re not trying hard enough. You don’t have to all be Bruce Springsteen, but I’m just not artistically moved by anyone who works so hard to make it look so easy.
Our PBS TV stations often have fund-raising events. For a week or so, special shows will be interrupted by earnest folks asking us to send money! Celtic Women is just the sort of band that shows up at those times; several times during the week, in fact. I found them fairly harmless.
That’s the kind of music I just don’t get at all (but then, I don’t get living in the suburbs, either, so I realize the problem is mostly mine). It has nothing to do with age - my grandparents listened to edgier stuff. It has to do with, as far as I can tell, the total appreciation of technique as opposed to expression or passion or beauty. Because the only thing being expressed is professionalism.
It’s both the actual notes and also the intonation that are involved, and by extension, the key.
The tuning is straightjacketed into 12-note equal temperament, or a close approximation thereof, once you’ve got any kind of synthesiser involved in the accompaniment, even more so than it would be only by guitars. The alternative and non-fixed tunings which are a characteristic of ‘more traditional’ folk music are perhaps part of what you’re yearning for here. With this in place, it’s possible to simplify the sounds of typical fiddle tunes into very basic Dorian harmonies using a handful of chords.
Uh, not to get off-topic, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of a way in which people of Celtic heritage are “not included” in the “multicultural era” (which seems a misnomer to me anyhow). This very thread indicates otherwise.
