The Blacksmith - Andy Irvine

[FooBlahBar]

silly? ... is beautifull

[Poodlepups]

It is not, of course, "As I Roved Out" (as the beginning of it says.) this is a fantastic version of The Blacksmith!

[asthrmyl]

epic

[jfsfrnd]

This is so awesome!

[kungfuasgaeilge]

aww, I thought that resounding D in the instrumental was pipes getting ready for a solo. Very cool nevertheless, good auld Andy belting it out as usual :)

Anyone heard news of a comeback collaboration/tour or anything with Irvine and Tunny?

[ZamHelga]

Yes - this is a "Hamburger Waldzither" - I have one and you can tell by the typical headstock... Great... I also love this Instrument - having my own tuning - but I enjoy the deep String - it's single - so you have 9 Strings - 4 Pairs and one Single Bass.....

[nurhamm]

@ZamHelga Sir, what is the exact tuning of Andy's here? Is he using waldzither tuning or mandolin?

[BanjoMan1916]

Im getting a new instrument for christmas (already have the banjo) and i was looking for a mandolin but i picked up a mandola in a music shop and im not really sure which one i should get. any advice??? Im really into Irish music by the way and play the Irissh tenor banjo

[Timothydlol]

@BanjoMan1916 mandolas are pretty wonderful, theyre like a medium between a high mandolin and a bouzouki. they sound fantastic to sing with. mandolins don't sound brilliant to sing with unless they're accompanied by a lower instrument. at the same time, the sound of a mandola is closer to a mandolin rather than a much lower bouzouki. they are just a fantastic instrument to have to sing with and play tunes on

[DuskY1991]

@Timothydlol If I had the cash I would get every single one of them. Ever since I got myself a mandolin I've been wanting to get more and more different stringed instruments. Mandolins aren't great to sing with, but it's certainly interesting if you've got a low voice like I do.

[ghasafello]

Incrible, non pensei nunca velo, Andy Irvine co buzuki. É autentico, anque imaxino o que tivo que pasar este homiño por introducires un instrumento grego na música tradicional irlandensa dos 70, parrocha papuda

[Boingusboingus]

Anyone know what instrument Andy Irvine is playing? It looks like a Portuguese guitar.

[Uuuurk]

@Boingusboingus I would say it looks like a german waldzither, which usually has 10strings but as u see in 3:00 Andy has taken the upper pair of strings off to fit his tuning.

[pjotr60dvd]

@Uuuurk Actually this is a Portuguese guitarra, as used in Portugal for singing fado.

[pjotr60dvd]

@Boingusboingus It is indeed

[odarochka]

I never tire of this! Thank you

[lindamon8]

Strange that "As I Roved Out" comes up at the start instead of "The Blacksmith". By the way, It's not a mandolin, it's a Portuguese "Guitarra". I think Johnny Moynihan was the first use one in Irish music.

[dachhh]

best mandolin solo ever! that was as hard as metallica at their best

[tttisanttt]

damn this was GOOD! freeking good, lol XD

[TheWolvie450]

Andy is the finest folk singer alive today. Check out his 'Planxty' work and also 'Patrick Street'.

[JonnyJustSpunkiied]

His voicebox is so deep; it makes me jealous!!! ... I wish i was in a Irish folk band =[

[eduardouk]

awesome song

[Fishmonger1966]

One of the finest trad musicians on Earth.

[lazyass100]

thats some DAMN fine mandolin picking.

[joeygsmom]

thats a damn fine man! (sorry I find myself a bit smitten with the guy! lol)

[bridgeenc2]

This is the sixth time in a row I played this....genius!!..so true and brilliant,let it capture you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mapworks]

Jenniferzed51 you can download software that will convert Youtube clips to MP3 Google convert youtube to mp3

[Donegaldan]

With his hammer in his hand he looked so impressive. A blacksmith what a great craft, shaping metal for others to use.

[jenniferzed51]

does any one out thare know whare i can find this song in mp3 format ? can i down load this on to my ipod from you tube or from a diffent source ?help....please

[shadowInurez]

well, what I do is download audacity, record songs, save em to a file on my desktop, and drag the file into my itunes. give me a message if you need help

[32GaugeSlug]

type "download youtube mp3" and sites should come up where you can download it as mp3.

[RugbyHockeySoccer]

I buy all my songs from the Itunes store, its easy, and they come in download mp4 format which is compatible with your ipod.

[HlerLogiKari]

The song "Blacksmith" by Planxty is on the album "Planxty" with some other very great tracks, such as "Arthur McBride", "The Jolly Beggar - Reel" or "Si Bheag, Si Mhor". I recommend getting this great piece of music.

[Timothydlol]

the size of mick hanly's hands

[RugbyHockeySoccer]

MASSIVE

[undressplease]

sounds a bit silly from a man? I like Loreena's version better.

[carollizc]

@undressplease Not at all. Folk music, is at heart, musical storytelling. And Ms. McKennit likely got the song from Andy's version, or Planxty's, then gave it an airy-fairy treatment that the song didn't deserve. The drive, and tension in this version is much more suited to the material of the song - I'd be pretty desperate, too, were I jilted so.

[GravityBoy72]

That is just so great.

Why aren't young people today making music like this?

This is deep.

[neohip]

I would say to you.

Why is it that so many young people still love this music,and many new musicians are nearly as good,but are being passed over by the Style Nazi's for Puff 2 Cents and his ilk?.

I didn't mean a question,we all know the answer.

[GuyAwoke]

Ugh, all this English vs Irish stuff annoys me. Really the man regarded himself as a folk musician with no particular mission other than his own musical experimentation. He started off in skiffle groups in the 50's and 60's eventually getting caught up in the folk craze, which had been steadily expanding since the 1940's. This was a common shared theme amongst all sorts of musicians at that time so he could have just as easily ended up becoming a great rock guitarist. Events decided otherwise.

[GuyAwoke]

Well I was remarking on others comments, I am sure he knew the origin of the songs he performed as he is a knowledgable musician.

[neohip]

I wrote a very similar reply to yours on another clip.

Not sure about him becoming a great Rock guitarist though.

We have enough of those!.

I like Andy the way he is!

[TheOrangeFondler]

What a fantastic sound for only 2 people

[horsemouth53]

what a finish. unbelievable.

[slanesavage]

A hugh talent, thanks Andy

[astrolog7000]

marvelous playing and singing. So incredibly gifted, that Andy Irvine. So much energy. Those northern latitudes, like Ireland, seem to spawn great tension and energy in their people.  Here in the southern US, people are lazier and speak and sing more slowly, as it stays above 90 degrees so long in the summers.

Lilli

State of Va. USA

[TheWolvie450]

@astrolog7000 Your latitudes theory is very interesting, i never thought of folk singing styles in terms of geography but when i think about it you could very well be right.

[Iverbraidhead]

@astrolog7000

"Here in the southern US, people are lazier and speak and sing more slowly, as it stays above 90 degrees so long in the summers." love that quote. Probably u r right, that is also why we got so great firewater here, to fire up?^^

Still man, "the south" of the US" has produced some really great music like blues and Jazz. I love it for that! ;)

[ivanwalsh1]

@astrolog7000 Andy Irvine is incredible :D

[timeofthedark]

Does anyone think between 1:16 and 1:20 he's putting that face on for the camera? Looks like he'd be much more comfortable in a live environment - wish I could've seen it!

[lichtbroeder]

Great video, thanks. ( I love Steeleye Span's/Maddy Prior's version of this too!

[breakingbisley]

steeleye span rock !!!

[lichtbroeder]

"You have the Web at your fingertips, why not use it?"

One thing that many get from You Tube is a sense of"community". We could all get music elsewhere, as well as information about it. Asking questions about music posted on You Tube is an example of community interaction and sharing. Posting comments like yours however is not.

[andrewwigglesworth]

When that "community" includes anybody in the world with a decent enough computer/connection then it can and will include all sorts.

I was not reacting to a question, but to a definitive response to the statement that the song "A blacksmith courted me" is an English folk song. ie.

"The words are English the Music's Irish, does it sound like Germanic music.Its Celtic. "

[andrewwigglesworth]

(continued)

It was a rather silly response ("Germanic music" indeed!). A few seconds research would have revealed the truth, though I furnished instead. In what way was that not sharing?

[beziersdude]

Fintan mc Manus Makes this instrument and is also a great player and composer.

Andy is still going good today as in this clip 30 years later!

[SeanLarkinStreet]

Great rendition here by Andy Irvine, the version from the Late Late Show with the full Planxty lineup is out of this world. The timing is incredible.

[lurak9]

Can anyone put me onto the tablature for either the guitar or mandolin versions of this song, worked out a version on the mandolin but would still love to get the right version

[ConorSod]

There is 1 thing you need to know About Andy Irvine, if there are 8 notes in one bar of music you can be sure andy will play a further unecessary 12 notes. He is a notoriously complicated musician. Therefore, from a fellow mandolin player to another, i wud not even try to mimic what he is doing, not because you are not capable, but f andy himself doesnt even know what he is doing how the hell are we to tell. Stick with your version if it sounds good and build on it!

[lurak9]

I hear ya man!

[Brouzk]

does anyone think it would be harder to play like that, or to play that mando than it was for hendrix to play the electric like he did? Or did his skill on the electric surpass all other skill on any other form of guitar?

[jakewildwood]

Singing while playing like this is quite difficult, I can tell you that. Hendrix was good, but he was just a man, like other men, and his deification is (to my mind) a bit silly.

[Horslad]

oh also that not a portuguese 'faldo' guitar its a german waldzither. if you type it into youtube in brings up a video of a shop in germany who are making them these days, they look really cool!

[Horslad]

yeah i think that slightly bigger mandolin has been nicknamed the 'andylin' as andy and nobody else knows what to call it! haha

[54spiritedwill54]

Wonderful.

[GaryHungryMay]

Yeah, thats good playing. I am actually in the US, but a fiddle player gave me the address to this video. Since I play the mandolin, i'm thinking about getting a bouzouki.

[20jazzfunkgreats]

most likely a bulgarian tambour, if you consider his travels and influences

[wingandaprayer]

and Andy is playing a portugese guitar!...so what, the music is just beautiful....

[NoelL7]

Love this - of course they played English songs - Andy was born and rared on the wrong side of the Irish sea (only joking)

[mardimitriou]

Thanks for the info. I love Andy's work and I prefer those who move forward! Irish music has some things in common with Greek music, so why not to have a bouzouki too.

[mardimitriou]

(Continued) The modern Turkish Tanbur is practically identical to the ancient Greek pandouris.

So it seems there is no Irish bouzouki. I think this is a kind of mandolin-lute.

[neohip]

I admire your research,and you made a great (ironic) point!.

There was never an "Irish bouzouki" as much as we think their should have been!.Andy introduced it to Irish music after his travels to Eastern Europe.We all forget that the music he and his contemporaries played was not welcome, in the main, by the traditional musicians of the time, because it was moving foward rather than looking backward,and it was in English as well!.Hell,some of the songs they played actually WERE English!

[christymoorefan]

It was actually Johnny Moynihan who introduced the bouzouki to irish music..

[neohip]

fair cop!.

I Love much of Johnny's music,and am ashamed that in my enthusiasm to promote Andy,I overlooked and confused his contribution!.

[sunnyvale123]

I believe he has them custom made....He is a mandolin player, so think of it as a custom mandolin, that is a half octave lower, (notice the capo, I play this song on mandolin) and has a bit louder/deeper sound. But hey, could be wrong. But, i heard that somewhere. Lets say, my friends sisters husbands cousin (jk)

[mardimitriou]

I made a litle research in Wikipedia to see if there is some "Irish Bouzouki". "In Greece, this instrument was known as the pandura or pandourion...it was the first fretted instrument known, forerunner of the various families of lutes worldwide. The Mantineia marble (4th century BC, now exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens), depicts the mythical contest between Apollo and Marsyas, where muse plays a pandouris. In Byzantium it was called "tambouras".

[mardimitriou]

An Irish bouzouki? That's very interesting. I thought that only the Turks and Greeks had bouzouki. The Greeks have altered the organ (in fact it was Manolis Chiotis, the famous bouzouki player, who did that).

So you can see a real bouzouki here: watch?v=EHTdxF530N8 and here watch?v=zbMXm1BE63Q played by Chiotis.

[1singularity]

mesmeric

[1singularity]

BY SMITHEREENS that accompaniment is sweet!! what a great version.Did they have cut the tail off like the end had no significance? at least we got 99% of it though. great stuff

[Timothydlol]

anyone know the time signature to this?

[acadams5]

It's 2 measures of 4/4 followed by one measure of 3/4 and one of 4/4. Each phrase goes like this:

4/4

4/4

3/4

4/4

[mardimitriou]

This is not bouzouki.

[acadams5]

It looks like a 5-course cittern with one of the courses removed. Either that, or it's a short-scale Irish bouzouki. Could also be a strange octave mandolin, but it really looks like there's a fifth course missing, and octave mandolins are 4-course instruments.

[SlickSmooth22]

i just recently saw Andy play a show at a pub in downtown Detroit called Baile Corcaigh. it was in the basement of this pub, it was almost like something out a pirate movie...haha. but good lord was that one of the best shows i've ever seen, he closed with the blacksmith and afterwards i got to shake his hand and tell him how much his music meant to me. I'm sure it sounded strange coming from a 19 year old kid from Detroit.

[neohip]

I think he would have loved it and not thought it strange at all!.If there is one thing I have learnt about Andy,even in the last year,it is he is one of us, and lives for his music.A trooper!.You managed to do what I could not;shake his hand,which I shied away from doing in 1993.I was daunted by the prospect of meeting a hero,only to discover he was an asshole.I need not have worried.

[xoseliz]

No Bouzouki, no mandola.That´s a portuguese guitar without 4 strings (original has 12).

[jethrotullfreak]

it must be a mandola

[mickculleton1]

yep, 'tis a bouzouki.

[Butcherguitars]

the pickolympics

[Dreamseeker123]

neither mandolin nor portuguese guitar, I'm sorry. Andy was one of the first and most important musicians to introduce the bouzouki (lookup Wikipedia Bouzouki) to Ireland.

That's what he's playing most of the time since, a bouzouki.

[jomaugar]

It's not a mandolin nor a mandola. It's a portuguese guitar.

[squeakymonkfish]

Yes, this is a traditional English song, of which there are many!

[dundalk28]

The words are English the Music's Irish, does it sound like Germanic music.Its Celtic.

[andrewwigglesworth]

You have the Web at your fingertips, why not use it?

"The Blacksmith" (often sung with a shoemaker as the protagonist instead) *IS* an English song.

It has been noted by several song collectors and is in a group of similar songs/tunes that includes "Our captain cried all hands".

Ralph Vaughn Williams collected a version of the tune out of which he created the tune "Monksgate" (to the the words "To be a pilgrim").

[andrewwigglesworth]

(continued)

If anyone bothered to read record/CD sleeve notes then they would have noticed that that Andy Irvine is quite aware of the origins of this song and happy to acknowledge it's origins in English traditional music.

[gunnerglory]

It sounds like there's not that much tradition there

[ConorSod]

Your dead right that is bacuase, it is taken from a bulgarian tune. Most of Andy´s playing is inspired more so by the time he spent travelling eastern europe rather then english or irish folk! Check out his band Mozaik!

[jamartgallery]

squeakyenglishfish me thinks...!having said that,you may well be right..

[deargdoom07]

You are well off. This is irish music.

[Domitianvs]

Well, that's a hard thing to decide. Sure enough, his playing and delivery and such, that is irish in style, but the tune is english and the tune at the end is composed by Andy, but it's very much inspired by the folk music of the balkans.

[neohip]

Very perceptive!

The tune was not composed by Andy however, but by an ancient Greek guy called Anonymous,who was probably the greatest song writer of all time.Check him out!....

This song, as far as I can discover, is late 18th Century English.

Andy,as an Englishman with an Irish accent, has a cultural right to play this.And he did so.

Brilliantly!.

[Domitianvs]

Like I said, the tune at the end (the piece in 5/4 time), is composed by Andy and is inspired by the music of the Balkans.

[volgodon]

The instrumental WAS composed by Andy.

[andrewwigglesworth]

Heh, he has the right to sing the song wherever he comes from.

I simply find it a pity that so many fine English songs get labeled by the ignorant as Irish simply because an Irish singer/band has recorded them... then the media ignores English folk music (or even tells us that it hardly exists) whilst labeling so much of it as Irish or "Celtic" (whatever that means).

This is not a dig at the many Irish bands and singers who quite legitimately sing English folk songs.

[neohip]

Well,much English music was lost during the Reformation.Most of what the English call traditional only dates from two or three hundred years ago, because few people before then thought everyday music important enough to preserve.I love the re-imagining of British folk that happened in the 1960's and 70's because in the attempt to reconstruct what was lost,it probably found something even better!.

BTW.The Irish were never ignorant.That was a slur invented when they first rejected English rule.

[ConorSod]

HA NICE!!!!!!

[scati1971]

I believe the blacksmith is an english trad song, never knew they had any.

[mardimitriou]

Wonderful.

[ThePeacefulCat]

No smiling on this one.. It's as serious as hell..!! So so powerful..!!!

[stuartpotty]

mick has massive hands

[ThePeacefulCat]

How on earth does one tune that mandolin??

[stuartpotty]

either andy irvine is really small and that is a mandolin or he is playing a mandola

[Miiiikee]

hahahhahahhahahhahahha

[Miiiikee]

hahhahahahhahahahhaha :D

[jomaugar]

It's not a mandolin nor a mandola. It's a portuguese guitar. This guitar usually bears 6dobule strings, but I guess Andy Irvine is using only 4 orders for this song.

[stuartpotty]

thanks for correcting me, i knew there was no way that was a mandolin though haha

[autodane]

There are small tuning pegs on the headstock

[HowardForce]

Planxty do it better

[ireland88]

yeah they do, but the songs killer anyways :)

[alicejuliet]

Excellent thank you, I'm going to try to sing this! x

[ambidine]

What key was that in??

[6079eoin]

E minor

[ThePeacefulCat]

This version sounds like it's in Dm...

[ThePeacefulCat]

Yeah it's defo it Dm.. I find that it sounds nicer capoed on the 5th fret.. Am to G etc...

[Leifr3]

ooh..never heard this song before..that was great!!

[TinfangWarble]

Great song!!

But i miss the bodhran at the end...;-)

[Wowbagger86]

Sheck out the "local classic" from here in Norway ;) "Krasafaren Steinbu" by "Hellbillies" :) It`s a Norwegian version of Mick hanlys "past the point of rescue"...(with hal Ketchum`s guitar parts thou) For us it`s a highly loved classic... But most people are unvare that it was originally Scottisch, and written by Mick Hanly :)

[eoin55]

Mick Hanly is irish not scottish!

[Wowbagger86]

Oops, sorry ;) Seems like I've made a bad comment there. To my deffence I red that he was Scottish, but I guess it was wrong. Love his music thou :) Irish folk music is a real treasurechest. Take care !

[ssheridan]

Good stuff from Andy and Mick as always.

[wrigley666]

Thank you so much for this!