On Jul 22, 2008, at 5:29 PM, David Tayler wrote: > I think Peachy falls into the "very picky" category. Hard to ignore > the first responders.
Indulge me some room to babble a bit about Merle Travis here. I personally think that Merle Travis did the same for American country music in the 1930's that "Kap" and "Peachy" did for Italian lute music in the 1630's (give or take a year or two): he provided a definitive way of playing it. Merle's style was not derivative: he had very few predecessors to learn from. But those who came after him emulated his playing to the point that it became known as "Travis picking." Doc Watson even named his son after him. That's pretty cool, right? But it was not Merle's thumb-and-one-finger technique that made him legendary. It was his sound. Chet Atkins and all the others who played in that style were going for that sound, and came to it each in his own way, some using thumb plus all four RH fingers! (if you want to hear some wild Travis picking, find Doyle Dykes on YouTube.) Okay, finally my point: I'm suggesting that it was probably the same with K and P: people heard them play and wanted that sound, which in it's day was the sound of the new music. I'm willing to bet that lutenists who heard those guys play used that sound as a yardstick for developing their own ways of playing. Never having heard that "sound" first hand ourselves, I guess we have try to recreate it by studying the sources, hopefully throwing a bit of intuition into the mix along the way. But the last word as to what K's and P's music can sound like today, is in our hands. My point is that we can all develop our own style of "Travis picking." Thanks for reading all the way to the end. DR [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
