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Don't
click the link thinking you'll see a scholarly article that you can
pick apart and argue about. These are differences that almost anyone can
spot, but if you play, you'll nod knowingly while chuckling. A sample:
Fiddle
The
Bluegrass fiddler paid $10,000 for his fiddle at the Violin Shop in
Nashville. The Celtic fiddler inherited his fiddle from his mothers 2nd
cousin in County Clare. The Old Time fiddler got theirs for $15 at a
yard sale. Celtic and Bluegrass fiddles are tuned GDAE. An Old Time
fiddle can be in a hundred different tunings. Old Time fiddlers seldom
use more than two fingers of their left hand, and use tunings that
maximize the number of open strings played. Celtic and Bluegrass
fiddlers study 7th position fingering patterns with Isaac Stern, and
take pride in never playing an open string. An Old Time fiddle player
can make dogs howl & incapacitate people suffering from sciatic
nerve damage. An Old Time fiddle player only uses 1/8 of his bow. The
rest is just there for show.
Personalities and Stage Presence
Bluegrass
band members wear uniforms, such as blue polyester suits with gray
Stetson hats. Old Time bands wear jeans, sandals, work shirts and caps
from seed companies. Celtic bands wear tour tee-shirts with plaid
touring caps. All this head wear covers bald spots. Women in Bluegrass
bands have big hair and Kevlar undergarments. Women in Old Time bands
jiggle nicely under their overalls. There are no Women in Celtic bands,
only Lassies with long skirts and lacy, high collars and Wenches in
apple-dumplings-on-a-shelf bodices and leather mini-skirts. A Bluegrass
band tells terrible jokes while tuning. An Old Time band tells terrible
jokes without bothering to tune. Bluegrass band members never smile. Old
Time band members will smile if you give them a drink. A Celtic band is
too busy drinking to smile, tune or tell jokes. Celtic musicians eat
fish and chips, Bluegrass musicians eat barbecue ribs, and Old Time
musicians eat tofu and miso soup. Bluegrass musicians have mild high
frequency hearing loss from standing near the banjo player. Old Time
musicians have moderate high frequency hearing loss from sitting near
the fiddler. Celtic musicians have advanced hearing loss from playing in
small pubs with all those fiddles, banjos, tin whistles and bodhrans.
There's plenty more, which you can read at
Bluegrass Nation.
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