This brief interview
with me was done by writer and guitarist Art Edelstein in December 2000.
- GW
Introduction
Glenn Weiser has arranged hundreds of Celtic
melodies for fingerstyle guitar.(See my other reviews of his books in
the Celtic book section following this interview.) Recently, two of his
books of arrangements were published. They are: Celtic Encyclopedia
Fingerstyle Guitar Edition (Mel Bay) and Celtic Guitar (Alfred Music)
which comes with a CD of the arrangements. Both books are worth having
in your music library. Glenn arranges for standard tuning and dropped D
tuning although Celtic Guitar has some pieces in DADGAD. I conducted an
interview with Glenn recently.
AE: What
is your musical background?
GW: I studied classical
guitar all through high school, and took music theory therealso. Later,
I continued to study harmony and counterpoint independently by buying
textbooks on those subjects in used bookstores, and cross-referencing
them when I wrote my arrangements.
AE: What
interested you in doing arrangements?
GW: I started arranging for
guitar when I studied ragtime with fingerstyle virtuoso Eric Schoenberg
in New Jersey in 1971-2. After that, I arranged anything I thought would
make for a good guitar piece-I have a book a of Christmas carols out as
well as unpublished Joplin rags, Tin Pan Alley tunes, Sousa marches, and
all kinds of oddball stuff. As for Celtic guitar, I looked at what was
in print in the 1970’s and decided to try something different, which was
writing arrangements with bass lines and inner voices that adhered to
the rules of harmony yet still had a folk flavor. All the published
Celtic arrangements before mine were done by unschooled players with
folk music backgrounds. While the arrangers themselves were great
guitarists, I felt that better music could be had by using harmony in my
arrangements.
AE: Why have you stayed with standard tuning
instead of altered tunings other than the Dropped D you use?
GW: Why switch? Standard tuning was developed over centuries for a
reason, and it and dropped D are still the best in my mind for arranging
for the guitar. The strings are at full tension (with the exception of
the sixth in dropped D, of course) and have the most brilliance. I also
must admit that my familiarity with standard tunings made arranging
easier because I know where all the harmonies are. Also, in dropped D
you can have a G chord with the root in the bass on the fifth fret,
sixth string, and the high third (B) on the seventh fret of the first
string. In DADGAD the high third is moved up to the ninth fret, which
requires a greater stretch. For “Celtic Guitar,” though, Warner Brothers
[the original publisher] wanted some DADGAD arrangements to enhance the
appeal of the book, given that tuning’s preeminence in Celtic music. I
agreed with their viewpoint and was happy to arrange some pieces this
way. I found there are some sonorities that you can get with DADGAD that
are unavailable in standard, so I may well explore it further.
AE: What suggestions do you have for others who
want to arrange melodies they find?
GW: Study harmony, and learn to write simple diatonic bass lines. Use
inner voices in the airs and marches. Avoid the rough sound of parallel
fifths and octaves on one hand, and the excesses of heavily chromatic
bass lines on the other-that’s where Haydn and Beethoven got into
trouble with their Celtic arrangements.
AE: Do you perform your arrangements? Any CDs
other than in the book? Further projects?
GW: I play in a traditional Celtic duo called Byrne and Barrett with
Greg Schaaf, an immensely talented singer, piper, and whistle player.
Those are our Irish clan names, by the way. I’m also working on a debut
guitar CD [this is now out] which will feature arrangements from my
books as well as material Greg and I perform. |