(Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

[Sue]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

Ha!

". . .learning battlefield drum beats or drum beats without fifers."

I've always said that without us, it's just noise." :-)



Susan Cifaldi
FIFER!! :-)

[pjdrums96]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

I am not sure that anyone has said a word about using drumbeats on the field of battle. We, as musicians, know that drummers and fifers were not used on the battlefields of the civil war to relay commands or keep men in step while marching towards the enemy. They were usually detailed to the ambulance corps to help with the wounded, or sat on a nearby hill to watch the battle, as stated in the history of the 140th PA.

I think that point that Mr. Berger was trying to make was the daily calls used in everyday camp life were most certainly regulated by the fifes and drums. Aside from reveille and tattoo, there are quite a few calls that assemble men, or make them aware of some part of their daily routine. This is the area that is lacking that could be used and taught effectively to the average living historian. How many days of battle did the soldier of the American Civil War actually see? Not nearly as many as days in camp filled with the daily routines and drill that accompanied army life. We are much better suited at making the average living historian aware of what the average day in the life of a soldier consisted of as opposed to what many do now, such as hang around the fire and talk about the amount of hand stitching they have on their new blouse.

From what I have seen at most reenactments is a lot of time being wasted instead of educating taking place. Plus, a lot of this education could take place before "the big day" at a drill session or small living history event that many groups partake in around their communities. So in essence, I couldn't disagree with you more Mr. Samp about the role of drums and fifes during the American Civil War.

Sincerely,

Patrick Jones
Camp Chase Fifes and Drums

[joewhitney]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

I think most of us are in agreement that the drum calls for skirmishers would have been primarily an early war phenomenon on both sides because A. drum beats blend in too much with the rattle of musketry in battle, B. the bugle took over on the battlefield early on, being much better suited to its noise and fast movements and C. drummers and fifers were traditionally sent to help the surgeons since the days of Marshal Saxe.

We don't really know exactly what the ratio of the general calls in camp was between bugles and drum corps, although once again as the war went on, bugles were relied on more and more by both sides. We do know that as R.J. said, when both were heard bugles would typically be heard just before the drums and fifes.

Strictly recording calls from Casey's, Scott's or any other tactics manual presents problems, as their versions were indicative of but not always representative of what was actually played. For example, while the tactics version of the Old Queen Dutch Reveille (one of the Reveille medley pieces) is basically identical to the typical version found in most music manuals (compared to the Bruce & Emmett version universally played by reenactors), the tactics version of the Troop is not found in any music manual before or after the war I can recall seeing.

On the other hand, a relative handful of music manuals were printed and distributed compared to many tens of thousands of tactics manuals that flooded both armies, so I'm sure there was a lot of confusion among fresh drummers and fifers trying to play what their officer or N.C.O. pointed to in the tactics manuals, while old time drum and fife majors probably told them to "ignore it and play what I tell you to".

As for the best method of remembering the music, memory experts tell us there are different ways to learn and retain information. The time-honored method is repetition, i.e. hearing it over and over again until it eventually sinks in. However, this is not necessarily the fastest or best method.

A faster and better way is association, in which the information is paired with something else to make it more easily remembered, for example pairing music with words. In fact, even though I've played it hundreds of times, you'd be surprised how many times in a pinch I'll admit I've had to quickly remember how the music to Dixie goes by quickly saying to myself "Way down south in the land of cotton…" Other great examples are ditties invented to remember bugle calls (i.e. Reveille: "I can't get 'em up I can't get 'em up I can't get 'em up I tell you…"). And if you want to remember how Surgeon's Call goes, just remember the song "Hey git along, Jim along Josie, hey git along, Jim along Joe".

But the fastest and easiest method according to memory experts is associating the information with a memorable mental picture (the more unusual, even outlandish, the better). After all, we all remember how the Indian Wars bugle call Charge goes because we remember seeing exciting movie scenes of the U.S cavalry attacking Indians to the sound of it.

This method also produces the most marketable way to get people interested enough to obtain the product, and repeatedly watch it and retain the information without losing interest. Hence my earlier suggestion of a video connecting the drum and fife music to some memorable vignette of camp life. Associating the drum and fife music with an entertaining scene from camp life, and/or bugle calls with exciting scenes from a battle reenactment, will always be much more memorable than either just hearing a recording of the music or watching a musician simply standing and playing it. But it would be a major project, no doubt.

Joe Whitney
2nd SC String Band
Liberty Hall Drum & Fife Corps

[J.H.Berger]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

I aggree that ditties are very helpfull for learning! Besides that I was primarily meaning camp calls NOT combat calls!

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

For example, while the tactics version of the Old Queen Dutch Reveille (one of the Reveille medley pieces) is basically identical to the typical version found in most music manuals (compared to the Bruce & Emmett version universally played by reenactors

You can't say univerally because we in Liberty Hall D&F don't play the B&E reveille. I think playing the non-B&E versions is getting to be much more common, and people are even pulling the rags out of their drums too. Now if people would just quit playing the ubiquitous Q.S. #1 (brrrmm...dum...dum dum dum).

Unfortunately the only period drumbeat for Dixie is in B&E, so we'll never get around that one.

You buglers don't know how lucky you are. You can play Attention from most any source and chances are people will be hearing the call exactly the same way it was played 150 years ago. We drummers aren't so fortunate. Most of we play we can only say might have been played exactly the same way 150 years ago, with a few exceptions, like Army 2-4. We've got footage of veterans playing that one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqcN3YZs8rw

[RJSamp]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

I am not sure that anyone has said a word about using drumbeats on the field of battle. We, as musicians, know that drummers and fifers were not used on the battlefields of the civil war to relay commands or keep men in step while marching towards the enemy. They were usually detailed to the ambulance corps to help with the wounded, or sat on a nearby hill to watch the battle, as stated in the history of the 140th PA.

I think that point that Mr. Berger was trying to make was the daily calls used in everyday camp life were most certainly regulated by the fifes and drums. Aside from reveille and tattoo, there are quite a few calls that assemble men, or make them aware of some part of their daily routine. This is the area that is lacking that could be used and taught effectively to the average living historian. How many days of battle did the soldier of the American Civil War actually see? Not nearly as many as days in camp filled with the daily routines and drill that accompanied army life. We are much better suited at making the average living historian aware of what the average day in the life of a soldier consisted of as opposed to what many do now, such as hang around the fire and talk about the amount of hand stitching they have on their new blouse.

From what I have seen at most reenactments is a lot of time being wasted instead of educating taking place. Plus, a lot of this education could take place before "the big day" at a drill session or small living history event that many groups partake in around their communities. So in essence, I couldn't disagree with you more Mr. Samp about the role of drums and fifes during the American Civil War.

Sincerely,

Patrick Jones
Camp Chase Fifes and Drums

Sorry you misconstrued what I said (Specifically the parts about Casey's Battlefield drum beats which is what I was referring to, not the duty tunes).

I've been a tremendous supporter of field musics and have worked with many PM's since I began reenacting in 1997.....Tom Emerick, Jim Moffett, Neil Dickey, Steve Smunt, et al.....heck, we even brought in one of your own fifers at Manassas 150th and he slept under my fly.

For the record, we do NOT disagree on the role of drums and fifes during the American Civil War. I've been using them as an integral part of camp and battlefield life at every event I've attended....we encourage fifers and drummers to play all of the duty tunes.....use the drum for cease fire on the battlefield, bring the boys online using the long roll,etc.....nightly Tattoo's for an hour each evening while the men write letters in camp and relax with comrades....

I was one of the first to print and adopt standards for musician's to participate in events (the 'functional' musician audition)....and units\event commanders that I fall in with weed out the babysitting non musician's from the ranks, regardless of age. This has been at the core of First Federal Division event standards.

In short, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who is more of an advocate for period correct fifes and drums usage in American Civil War reenacting than I, Mr. Jones.

[RJSamp]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

But the fastest and easiest method according to memory experts is associating the information with a memorable mental picture (the more unusual, even outlandish, the better). After all, we all remember how the Indian Wars bugle call Charge goes because we remember seeing exciting movie scenes of the U.S cavalry attacking Indians to the sound of it.

Joe Whitney
2nd SC String Band
Liberty Hall Drum & Fife Corps

I'll buy that in a heart beat....they learned how by actual experiencing the field music tunes daily for X months.....actually stepping off at the end of Forward on a bugle.....actually practicing\drilling\reacting to a duty beat or bugle call live.....

I did my tapes\CD's back in 1999ish. It's 2011, online band width has increased tremendously and video streaming\DVD's are now a reality.

If we're saying that we can't learn fife and drum tunes from listening to Frederick Fennell recordings on CD from 1961 of the duty tunes.....I'm all for coming up with UTube and DVD compliations of the calls with an entire camp rising from slumber.

Our own Neil Rudy has the high end recording equipment (to NOT do this professionally with attendant costs).....we will have the Mississippi Valley Field Musics (Steven Smunt) at Shiloh in April.....maybe that's a chance?

[joewhitney]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

Will, I was excepting our present company, of course! But we're too often the lone voice drumming and fifing out in the wilderness.

Mr. Fennel had some great sound effects of cannons roaring and musket balls zinging along, R.J., but his drum calls track is horrible (state of the art for 1961 research, I guess).

Those drum signals were taken almost beat for beat from the Ordonnance of 1831, French imports that came along with their tactics system, the same signals used in Napoleon's army.

In one account one federal officer drilled his whole unit solely by the drum with no voice command or other signal. Very impressive to the ladies watching, I'm sure, but these instances were so rare as to only deserve mention by their uncommonality. Perhaps it was the same unit as Mr. leopard skin pantaloons (or was it jaguar?)

Joe Whitney
2nd SC STring Band
Liberty Hall Drum & Fife Corps

[Sue]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

Frederick Fennell was a wonderful man who was indeed a friend of the Ancients (and reenactors)--maybe not such a great historian, though. :-)

He used to recall the times in his childhood when his dad would host encampments of the local Sons of Union Veterans on their front lawn. It was during this time he heard the Bruce and Emmett music for the first time. He soon acquired an affinity for what he called "early martial music," having heard it so often during his formative years, and often recalled how thrilled he had been to attend the Deep River Ancient Muster back in 1959. Unfortunately, his classical training would not permit him to utilize the field drum and military fife on his recordings, hence the concert drum and piccolo. But, as Joe points out, in 1961 it was important just to get the music out there; the fine-tuning (of using actual or facsimile instruments would come later, with time).

Actually, I have more respect for Dr. Fennell, who was breaking ground with Mercury Records in 1961, than I do for people who make modern historical documentary films, completely unaware of the rich musical resources available to them. For example, the PBS series, "Civil War" need not have relied upon 30-year-old recordings when so much more appropriate music was (and is!) available. And we still hear a very nice but very new (1982) tune 25 times, even in the remastered series and the film produced in 2002. (Apparently the trend continues, as I have heard ripples of dissatisfaction from musical scholars about "Prohibition.")

Just reminiscing. . .


Susan Cifaldi

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

If we're saying that we can't learn fife and drum tunes from listening to Frederick Fennell recordings on CD from 1961 of the duty tunes

The Fennel recording is terrible!

I suppose for non-musicians, CDs might be an okay way to learn what some of the calls sound like, assuming the right music was chosen and assuming it was played correctly. But this is usually a bad assumption.

Sadly, for musicians, CDs have probably done more harm than good in terms of improving the accuracy of musicians' impressions in this hobby.

Never assume that any recording by any musical group is historically accurate, no matter what is claimed in the liner notes.

Musicians should always compare recordings to the original sheet music or period manuals. Too often the music played in our hobby consists of "covers" of drum corps' tunes or beats from CDs.

But even then, we don't even know how close the music in the manuals is to what was actually played. In many cases the fife and drum music played might only be found in one particular source. How accurate would it be for everyone to wear copies of the same exact jacket from a single museum? Hell on the Wabash?

[joewhitney]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

I'll say this about Fennell's Civil War album: that's the best sounding CW brass band music out there. I love listening to it. In fact I'm sure it sounds better than it ever could have during the war itself, given improvements in instruments and the controlled environment Fennel recorded it in.

As for Ken Burns and his PBS docs, I'm watching his series "The West" right now. Didn't know Indians sang their chants "row row row your boat" style! Lots of repetition of the music, and much of it post-era. I understand he has to make it aesthetically appealing to modern ears, but there are some great pieces he could have included. But I can only complain so much, since he's used my string band's music in two of his documentaries (the son of our band leader is Burns' emmy-winning recording engineer).

Hell on the Wabash may have only been in one CW manual, but I suspect it was much more widely known and played. In "Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife" (btw thx Sue for insisting I buy a copy for $25, now that they go for $300!) Sam Bayard calls it "the widely known Hell On the Potomac" (also known as "Hell on the Rappahannock"), and presents many versions he found early in the 20th century among the fifers and fiddlers of the Pa. and Md. hill country.

It was also a fiddle tune in "Ryan's Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes" published by Elias Howe in 1883. It basically is a mixolydian variation of the much older tune "Mason's Apron". But you're right Will that the fact it wasn't in other manuals, like, say, "Girl I Left Behind Me", means it was relatively rare. Kickass tune though.

Joe Whitney
2nd SC String Band
Liberty Hall Drum & Fife Corps

[Sue]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

Thanks, Joe!! (Wish I had bought all the extras--and then sold them on ebay!!)

If you ask me (and I realize nobody did), there is no "one" way to research this music, you have to address it comprehensively. So, yes, indeed, find all the printed and handwritten material (including tunes, titles, beatings, and references to same) that you can. But to put it all in context you have to broaden your research:

1. Aural repertory: If you think it's all just "tradition" muckied up with anachronistic modernisms, think again. Better yet, read the introduction to Bayard's book. Sometimes tunes were so well known that nobody bothered to write them down (Yankee Doodle, for one). Did the tune survive in oral tradition? If so, was it regional or more widespread? For what instruments? Did it produce variant tunes? Was it a song at one time, if so what was/were the text(s)? Do you find it under different titles?

Most importantly, what other tunes did it survive alongside of? This helps to identify tune clusters--really important when you are working with undated material.

2. Period references. Do you find references to specific tunes, titles, or bits of associated text(s) in letters, diaries, newspapers, etc?

3. Other genres. Lots of popular fifers' tunes were picked up from instrumental books, dance collections, song collections, and theater (including opera). And don't forget to search "backwards"--you can find some tunes that ended up as children's rhyming games ("Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley, O," for example, and "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush," I could go on).

Will is soooo correct that you have to find the music in a relevant, tangible period source, but to put it into context you simply have to compare it comprehensively to what you find before it was was born, after it died, and all that exciting stuff in between.

Just sayin'.

Susan Cifaldi

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

to put it into context you simply have to compare it comprehensively to what you find before it was was born, after it died, and all that exciting stuff in between.

Luckily most of the manuals are pretty consistent with each other for the Camp Duty, so your advice above is not too hard to follow. For everyday quicksteps it's a little harder to make comparisons because sometimes there's nothing to compare it to.

For quickstep drumbeats maybe the "gold standard" of the manuals can be pretty far from what reality probably was. Take Road to Boston for example. There's a beat in Keach's 1861 manual for it (attached), but it is so boring that no one would want to play it today, or probably 150 years ago either.

Maybe some of these quickstep beats were written for beginners. With Road to Boston, the fife tune is easy too, so maybe that makes sense. But there are a number of advanced fife tunes that have very boring drum beats in Howe's 1862 Drum and Fife Instructor. My theory: Howe quickly pulled some fife tunes from his 1861 manual and slapped on some drumbeats to create his 1862 drum and fife manual (he also literally cut and pasted much of Keach).

So if your drum corps had a fifer talented enough to play Arkansas Traveler, would a drummer be playing something as simplistic as the drumbeats in Howe's for that tune? Sometimes simple sounds good. But not always.

[Sue]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

"Take Road to Boston for example. There's a beat in Keach's 1861 manual for it (attached), but it so boring that no one would want to play it today, or probably 150 years ago either."

Yeah, but. . .

Boring to those who can chew gum and march at the time time perhaps, but to the musically unsophisticated or outright klutz (that would be me), it's perfect. Simple, yes, but you always know where the downbeat is and hence when to step with your left foot. (Anyone who has tried to teach marching--or move a large group of 4-year-olds from the playground to the nap area--will understand what I mean). It's the fancy stuff (with syncopation and off-beat dynamics) that messes people up. The musicians (one would hope!) would have no trouble stepping to the fancy beatings, but the regular-old-soldier, heavily equipped and treading on uneven corduroy or dirt roads (or worse) might have trouble figuring out what to do when the drummers emphasized the offbeats, stick-clicked, or crammed in lots of sixteenths. (BTW, this inter alia is my argument Re: the unsuitability of B&E, but I digress). I don't think they were written for beginners especially, but more likely for non-musician marchers.

And, to complicate things even further, RTB is one of those all-over-the-aural-repertory tunes (like Yankee Doodle) that you just don't find in print. It definitely goes back to the Revolution, even though the first time we find it in print is 1805 (coupla fifers wrote it out in their manuscript tunebooks way before that) and it lasted forever. . .yikes, even the G.A.R. bragged about playing it as late as 1904! And there's that delightful story in the Olsen book, about the court-martialled Massachusetts fifer who played it for 3 hours in front of the adjutant's tent...

Personally, I hate the tune (I call it Road to Boredom and, if I have to play it more than 3 times in one day, Road to Barfdom), but gee whizz, can't deny it has a fine, fine history ;-)

Susan Cifaldi

P.S. Just for fun, try the Acton Ostling beat for it. I know, I know, it goes back only to 1939, but it's fun ;-) Just don't play it on the reenactment field, or I'll out ya ;-)

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: (Dan) Emmett's Standard Drummer Manuscript - In the Gilderoy

My suggestion for Road to Boston wouldn't be anything fancy, just Army 2-4. We know at least that's what some vets played for it in a GAR parade.

But the Road to Boston beat in Keach makes Army 2-4 sound like one of Keith Moon's drum solos.

And it turns out the Ostling beat for Road to Boston (without the fills) is basically the same beat as Hart's Girl I Left Behind Me.