Celtic | Rod Wilson's Blog

I am often asked “what are the instruments you are playing”. The short answer is an Irish Bouzouki, on the left, and on the right, an Irish Cittern. They are two mandolin like instruments that you are unlikely to find on the rack in your average music store. Generally speaking these are custom built instruments hand made on an individual basis. There may be production models out there (I think Fender may have one) but that would be unusual. The instruments are generally used in Celtic or similar music. There is a slow creep of the instrument into other musical styles. For instance Steve Earle played an Irish Bouzouki at recent Key City Concert in Cranbrook. Both instruments are recent inventions, or re-inventions, that only go back to around the 1960s. Both have interesting histories.

The Cittern described as “a mandolin on steroids” is a perfect example of what goes round comes around or “there is nothing new under the sun”. In the 1960s the English folk performer and Luthier Stephan Sobell acquired a Portuguese Guittara that he started using to accompany traditional British songs. This instrument, with its convoluted history, is a 12-string instrument very much like the Cittern pictured above but with a very odd “porcupine nest” of tuning mechanisms at the top of the neck. Originally it was derived from the Elizabethan Lute during some English political incursions into Portugal way back before men wore trousers. To this day the playing style, using finger and thumb picks are more akin to archaic Lute styles than modern guitar styles. It is a finger picking technique that found its way to the Portuguese African colonies and into modern Afro/pop guitar music. The Portuguese Guitarra is very much alive today and is the predominant instrument for the accompaniment of traditional Portuguese Fado Singers. It goes without saying that it adds a distinctive voice to this Portuguese music (check the Youtube videos of the singer Mariza or better yet get your hands on the DVD “Mariza: Live in London”). But I digress from Stephan Sobell’s adventures back in the 60s. Although enamoured with the instrument he found it was not quite suitable for British Folk music. To solve the problem he started building similar instruments of his own design. He ended up with a 5-course (10 strings) instrument with a tuning system more suitable for Celtic music. In the end, because it basically was a re-invention of an earlier English instrument called a Cittern that’s the name that stuck. To this day Stephan is the premier builder of Citterns and if you have to ask the price of one of his instruments it is a pretty sure bet you can’t afford one. He only builds two instruments a month. Check his website \stephan Sobell to view some truly beautiful instruments. Another exceptional builder is the English Luthier Roger Bucknall at Fylde Guitars. I play two Citterns. The first was built in 2001 by Jamie Wiens here in Cranbrook. It is a beautiful, if slightly flawed, instrument that was a one off experiment for both Jamie and myself. It is a very long scaled instrument (26 inch neck) with Koa back and sides and a carved Spruce top. It is equipped with a Highlander dual pickup system that, unfortunately, has the battery installed inside the instrument. It has a huge sound and unbelievable sustain. It is the only Cittern that Jamie has built and when originally completed neither of us really knew how to tune or play it. There are a myriad of tuning options and after some research and experimentation we chose FCFCF (alternating fifth and fourth intervals). I tend to capo it at the second fret to allow me to use Irish Bouzouki fingerings. Alas, the instrument has developed a crack in the top and is currently in Kevin Turner’s Crow’s Nest Pass work shop (Chinook Guitars) being repaired.

Lawrence Nyberg is an especially fine Canadian Luthier working on Hornby Island (Lawrence Nyberg ) . He builds, guitars, Mandolins, Mandolas, Irish Bouzoukis and Citterns. He has a number of models including a 24 inch scale length model with a carved Spruce top, Rosewood back and sides and is equipped with a Headway pickup. The battery pack is conveniently recessed in the side of the instrument. The instrument is not as deep through the body as the Wiens instrument and, while not as loud, it has a “punchier”, darker sound. Surprisingly, the instrument sounds much better when plugged-in and amplified. Tuned DADAD this is closer to the traditional Irish Bouzouki tuning of GDAD and the Mandolin tuning of GDAE so that switching between the three instruments only requires minor mental adjustments.

The Traditional Irish Bouzouki – that’s playing loose with the language. It is neither an Irish instrument nor Irish traditional. Originally it is a Greek instrument. Irish musicians visiting the Balkans in the 1960s adopted the Greek Bouzouki. It is a bowl backed instrument that Irish Luthiers were unable or unwilling to duplicate. They ended up building a flat back instrument with a tuning system more suitable to Celtic music. It is looks very similar to a Cittern with only 4 courses (8 strings). At its most characteristic configuration the bottom strings are tuned in octaves (somewhat like a 12-string guitar) and is tuned GDAD. Although it has distinctive melodic possibilities its strength is in its use as a rhythm instrument. The chords tend to be simple modal chords that often are neither major or minor – the third note of the triad is often missing. Having such a long neck it is possible to play the same chords through three octaves without getting involved in gymnastic and difficult fingerings. In the bench mark bands of the 1970s (The Bothy Band, Altan, DeDannan) and in the hands of such performers as Donal Lunny and Andy Irvine the instrument quickly became well established. In this day and age there are not too many traditional Irish bands that do not include a Bouzouki. On the Key City Stage in Cranbrook the Irish Bouzouki has had a prominent presence in the bands of Danu, Dervish and Great Big Sea. The Studio / Stage Door has also seen its share of Bouzouki performers including the legendary Andy Irvine (one of the first performers on the instrument) and, in a different concert, Ron Kavanagh with his absolutely powerhouse trio of fiddle, bouzouki and button accordion. That particular concert at the Studio / Stage Door is one I will never forget.

Last but not least – The distant, smaller, and possibly older cousin of Citterns and Bouzoukis is the Celtic Mandolin. It is somewhat different from the florid Bluegrass Mandolin. It is tuned the same way (GDAE) but tends to have a rounder, mellower sound. Bluegrass players like the hard “bark” of an instrument that enables them to lay down the distinctive chop on the “two and four beat” of BlueGrass music. The Lloyd Loar Florentine BlueGrass design is thoroughly entrenched in North America and the round-hole models favored by Jazz, Classical, Brazilian and Celtic players are relatively hard to find.

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CELTARA at Centre 64: Wednesday August 15, 2012, 7:30 pm

Celtic music can cover a pretty wide spectrum of styles and places of origin. From the “green beer and shamrock”, rip up the floor boards and blister the paint of a St. Patrick Day bar music scene to the precise, somewhat academic music favoured by the Chieftains. The blister the paint school grew out of the music of the Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners and the Irish Rovers in the 1960’s. They are well remembered for their recordings and the repertoire that has filtered into mainstream music. To this day this style of music is mostly song based and is great fun for a party. Occasionally a few dance tunes are thrown into the mix to get the feet tapping. Great Big Sea and the Pogues are recent popular manifestations of this school of Celtic music. Since the heady days of the Dubliners there has been steady growth in the number of musicians who have chosen to delve deeper into the well of traditional dance music. The Chieftains are still on the scene with their somewhat sedate ambience but they have been joined by bands with a more robust interpretation of the tradition. The Bothy Band set the pace in the seventies and since that time bands like Altan and Lunasa continue to expand the tradition. So between the Pogues and Lunasa there are various shadings of how Celtic music can be played. And off to the side, there are various regional styles of the music. Fiddle music from Cape Breton and Scotland and bagpipe music from Galicia (Spain) are just a couple of examples. While guitars are used the music is more noted for its reliance on the traditional flute, penny whistle, fiddle, harp, concertina, accordion and more recently Irish Bouzouki.

And where does Celtara fit in this scheme of things? Well they are some where in the middle. The traditional songs are there (“The Bonnie Ship the Diamond”, “P Stands or Paddy”) as well as the traditional dance tunes. They string the dance tunes together in the time honored tradition of three or more played without a break. The normal predictable cadences that end a Bluegrass or pop tune are missing. Like most Celtic bands of this ilk, tunes are strung together and the aim for a good, or even great, performance is for flawless smooth transitions from one tune to another. In some instances it is like the shifting of gears in a luxury car, smoothly without notice and then all of a sudden things can just take off. Like motoring a mountain road the musicians navigate the twists and turns of the tunes in the set. Remember this is dance music and a one tune dance doesn’t cut it. There is a huge reservoir of tunes to pick from and Celtara is adding to the list with their own original tunes. In their “The Gap Tooth Set” they included a new tune by Tammi Cooper called “Spillamacheen”. Included in another dance set was the tune with the unusual title “Grannie Hold the Candle while I Shave the Chickens Lips” (????).

The musicians are from Edmonton and include Tammi Cooper (flute and Irish whistle and vocals) Bonnie Gregory (fiddle, harp and vocals), Steve Bell (keyboard and accordion), Andreas Illig ( Irish Bouzouki and Guitar) and Mark Arnison (percussion). The flute, fiddle, harp and accordion all have well established pedigrees in traditional Celtic music. Although it should be mentioned that Bonnie’s harp was built in Western Canada so it is somewhat home grown. The Irish Bouzouki is a recent invention, if that’s the right word. Irish musicians visiting the Balkans in the 1960’s became enamored with the Greek Bouzouki and they took it back to Ireland where they had them built with flat backs and changed the tuning to fit Irish music. The Irish Bouzouki is a common feature in Celtic bands.The band Great Big Sea uses the Bouzouki and even Steve Earle showed up at the Key City in Cranbrook recently with an Irish Bouzouki. Andreas Illig plays a beautiful Irish built Foley Bouzouki. Guitars are a fairly recent addition to Irish traditional music and generally requires a different approach to tuning and how it is played. Andreas plays a Collins dreadnought guitar tuned in DADGAD (guitarists will know what that means) . Bones and Bodhran (Irish Frame Drum) are the only traditional Celtic percussion instruments that I know of, but that is changing.Traditional bands are now known to use Congas, Darbukas, and Djembes and just about anything that they can hit, shake or rattle. Mark Arnison uses a Djembe (from West Africa), tube drums (home made from plumbing pipe) and a variety of cymbals and shakers. He also plays the Bodhran but not always in the Irish style. During performances he switched back and forth from the traditional beater to a Middle Eastern hand drumming style where the Bodhran is nursed in the lap and played with both hands. His percussion accompaniments were subtle and always there. Never loud or overbearing. Like all good percussionists he was under the music adding colour and pulse. Celtara plays very finely crafted music that places an emphasis on being in tune with smooth transitions from one instrument to another. Tammi explained that they way back they had a teacher who had the motto “Tune or Die” tacked to his wall. It is a lesson that has stuck. So the music was a superb mix of traditional songs, sad and happy, and a great sampling of dance tunes. The sound system was superb and transparent. It was easy to forget that they were even using a sound system.