John Walsh wrote:
| Frank Nordberg wrote:
| A problem with the O'Neill tunes is that many of them doesn't
| seem to have a clearly defined tonal centre at all.
|
| Ah, that's interesting. I think it's one of the great interests
| of the tunes, rather than a problem, but of course Frank's talking about
| notational questions, not musical interest here.
It's interesting, but as for it being a problem, I'd say that the
current buzz phrase "Deal with it!" applies. Traditional Irish music
has a lot of examples of tunes without a clear tonal center. Usually
the feel is as if the tune were "wavering" between two (or sometimes
three) tonal centers, with none the main center. It can't be fixed;
it's part of the style. The tunes like this aren't the "norm"; they
are a minority. But they are definitely part of the tradition and
something that you need to be familiar with if you want to really
understand the style. This can bother people coming from other styles
that always have clear tonal centers. It is a minor problem with ABC,
which wants you to specify a tonic note. So you just pick one of the
likely tonics, and tell yourself that it's not a major sin.
One of my favorite examples is the well-known Blarney Pilgrim. I just
checked with my tune finder, and there are 35 instances on the Web.
About 2/3 are in G; the other 1/3 are in Dmix. The tune is highly
ambiguous about which is the tonic center. I've found that, although
it can be harmonized with chords, I like it better with just a quiet
drone, and the drone note should be D. But this doesn't mean that D
is the tonic, because a drone on the 5th is quite normal in Irish and
Scottish music. The tune is almost pentatonic, but there are a few C
naturals. To most ears, this would put it in G major, but to ears
attuned to the Mixolydian scale would make it Dmix. And the fact that
it starts and ends on the low D is probably a point of tension to
many ears ("It's not resolved"), but a perfectly satisfying ending to
ears attuned to this style of music.
| [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
| and I realize I am in the minority on this, but I continue to feel
| that the K: field should describe the number of sharps or flats
| without naming a tonic and/or a mode.
|
| Well, if you'll amend that to "...the K: field should *be able* to
| describe the number of sharps or flats without naming a tonic and/or mode"
| you might not be in the minority. At least you wouldn't be alone, for I'd
| agree. But I think it should also be able to describe the tonic and/or
| mode, along with a quite few other possibilities.
Agreed. This is what I've done with my doctored abc2ps that accepts
the extended syntax
K:tonicmodeaccidentals
As a computerized music notation, one of the nice things about ABC is
that it allows you to state the tonic and mode, unlike standard staff
notation. This is useful for searches, especially when transcribers
get it right. But it's more limiting than
K:accidentals
This should be allowed, for various reasons. Frank has pointed out
one of the musical reasons: There are musical styles that lack a
clear tonic. For such music, requiring a tonic is inappropriate and
misleading, and leads to "false positives" in searches.
This is a different argument from the usual one based on transcriber
ignorance: It's better to see just K:^f than, for example, K:G when
the correct key is K:Em or K:Adorian or K:Dmix. K:^f is a way of
saying "I don't know what the tonic is, but the f's are (mostly)
sharp. With Irish music, you do see cases where what you'd like to
say is "Well, all the f's are sharp, but it's not clear whether the
tonic is G or D, and a few bars seems to have A as the tonic center."
I doubt that we'd want to have an explicit ABC notation for this.
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