Fife and Drum Recording

[jppard]

I'm looking for some fife and drum music that is recorded well. Most recording I've heard sound like they were made in a barn, and may be they were. Who do you recommend for sound and quality?


J.M. Perry

Jppard

[Remember1864]

Re: Fife and Drum Recording

Hello J.M.

If you can find a copy of it, I highly encourage the purchase/listening of the CD put out by The 2nd Maryland Fife and Drums. Lotsa great tunes including "Frog in the Well", "Gay and Happy Still", "Captain McIntosh"...and a whole bunch more. If/when you get said copy it will purport to be "Vol II". That's a bit of a fooler as there IS not "Vol I". Good luck and happy listening.

[Smokey Toes]

Re: Fife and Drum Recording

We are currently out of Vol II, but we are having another run of them produced right now. They should be ready shortly....

Best

[Company Fiddler]

Re: Fife and Drum Recording

The Camp Chase Fife and Drum Corps have a couple of CDs available.

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: Fife and Drum Recording

While there are many variables in the recording process, one reason why a fullness in sound is missing from some fife and drum recordings is that most groups use skin heads with mufflers or even worse, plastic heads with mufflers. The mufflers do not allow the drums to resonate and the plastic heads have a very high pitched tone. You just can't get that rumbling sound of old from a drum corps when there are rags in the drums.

The only fife and drum CD I know of that was recorded using the type of drums used during the War Between the States, i.e. unmuffled drums with skin heads, is that of the Moodus Drum and Fife Corps. I heard one unfinished track before the CD was released and the drum sound was fantastic. It is the closest thing I have ever heard to being there in person. They use original Eli Brown drums from the early 1800s. This group was formed in 1860, and while they use a slower tempo than was typically used in the 1860s, their drumming style is very traditional and can be described as Civil War drumming played more slower and more open and with more fills. Almost none of their members read music and the drumbeats are supposed to have been passed down by rote from drummer to drummer. While some modern influences have no doubt made their way into their style, they are perhaps the closest thing to the old Connecticut style of drumming.

While not a CD, the Echoes of the Blue and Gray DVD has some clips of CW veteran fifers and drummers. My favorite part is when a huge drum corps is marching down the street with the fifers playing Road to Boston and Girl I Left Behind Me while the drummers are beating Army 2-4. If you watch closely you can even figure out the bass drumbeat being played...with one hand only.

[Edwin Carl Erwin]

Re: Fife and Drum Recording

I'm looking for some fife and drum music that is recorded well...Who do you recommend for sound and quality?

The CD that is part of the Drummer's Call documentary DVD/CD set has excellent sound quality, "Carefully moved from archived original reel-to-reel tapes to digital recordings, the audio CD Half Century of Quarter Notes features music of the Fifes and Drums from the last 50 years."

More about this at: www.history.org/history/fife&drum/about.cfm.