by Steve Gadd
ACCOMPANIMENT They were also played on fiddles, harmonicas, banjo-mandolins and in the larger towns they were played on pianos. This list by no means exhausts the range of instruments used for the old Apple Shed and other dances. Musicians taught themselves to use whatever instruments were at hand. One band that played for barn dances in the Huon Valley boasted snare drum, piano, saxophone and fiddle. Another Geeveston based band incorporated a lap steel guitar alongside the windjammers.
 The accordions and concertinas, however, were favoured as they were portable, loud and capable of a full sound. In fact the windjammers, be they English or Anglo accordions, or the rarer piano accordions, partly displaced the fiddle as the instrument of choice. One implication of this was that the mostly diatonic accordions had trouble playing the older convict era tunes that often had archaic modal scales and ornaments outside of standard classical temperament. Sadly, a lot of these ancient sounding melodies dropped from the repertoire or were adapted to major keys.The accompaniment to the melodies was often of a simple oom-pah bass or elementary chords. This was in most cases not so much an aesthetic choice but more that the approach to harmony was influenced by the nature and limitations of the instruments at hand. Contemporary players who wish to play these tunes are advised to use the traditional simple chording at first. This should give the player some idea of the more original sound and feel of each piece. Having established the tune in its essence more sophisticated harmonies can be added according to taste. In fact some traditional musicians were already stretching the harmonic accompaniments to these tunes. GORDON POWELLGordon had begun playing American Cowboy tunes in the 1930s but switched to playing the traditional barn dance tunes that his father played on accordion. Gordon developed a method for flat-picking traditional Tasmanian tunes at the same time that Doc Watson was developing a similar approach to American fiddle tune in the US!
In Gordon's playing one can see typically guitaristic ornaments such as slides, slight bends and the use of 6th chords tastefully applied to tunes learned from his father. Gordon is exceptional in this regard so for starters it may pay to follow Fred Pribac's advice on style and keep it simple.
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