Bryan Creer comments further:
| > My guess is that you're one of those
| > people who don't consider "major" and "minor" to be modes.
|
| Well, I'm equivocal. I thought part of the criticism of classically trained
| players was that they lumped modes into the major/minor system and hence
| missed the character that the mode gave them.
Actually, I'm equivocal, too. But I'd say that the perceived problem
with the "classical" crowd (which actually just means people with
some little exposure to classical notation and theory) is the
confusion between "This is how this music works" and "This is how
music works". Classical musical education typically instills both
knowledge and a prejudice that this is the Way It Should Be. It's
curious that this should be a problem in the English-speaking world,
whose older folk music follows such different rules. But classical
notation and theory mostly developed in countries where they spoke
German, Italian and French, so I guess it's not that strange that it
doesn't quite fit with British-Isles music and its derivatives.
| Actually, we don't even use those very much. What people really want to know
| is what row/string do I start on or whistle do I get out of the case? After
| that, the tune follows. We play in a fairly limited number of keys which is
| why The Presbyterian Hornpipe is fun; it really messes up the melodeons.
... which is why I've come to like my chromatic accordion ...
| > The British Isles
| > traditions also have a good number of "neverending" tunes that don't
| > cadence on the tonic at all, but just keep returning to the beginning
| > forever. The human ear hears this pretty easily, but an algorithm to
| > discover it isn't simple.
|
| Just so. Give people the notes and let them judge for themselves. The first
| part of Scan's No 2 sounds resolved to my ear, but maybe that's because it is
| very familiar and does what I expect it to do, and the second part sounds
| unresolved, but maybe that's because I'm anticipating the change of tune.
| The human ear varies by person and circumstance.
Well, I'd say that you've just "internalized" the style, which
doesn't particularly care if a tune ends on the tonic. Ending on the
5th isn't anything too strange in England or Ireland, though it might
make people very uncomfortable in Bavaria or Lombardy. This is also
something that's not all that unusual in a lot of musical traditions.
I just recently played Come Under My Plaidie (good title, that),
which is quite clearly a strong G major until it gets to the cadence
on an E minor. This is a cliche in Hungarian and Romanian music, and
it isn't all that unusual in the British Isles. In Serbian music, a
cliche ending is to have a strong cadence (with key change) on the
dominant, so a tune that's chugging along in G will suddenly end with
an A7->D cadence. After a while, this sort of thing stops sounding
odd and starts sounding downright pleasant, and you realize that your
subconscious has absorbed something new.
| Double Hornpipes are, indeed, cracking tunes. They seem to be picking up in
| popularity in sessions. As well as the 121212 and 123123 rhythms, there also
| seems to be a 123412 rhythm with matching harmony. There don't seem to be
| many recorded that I know of, but The Presbyterian and The Red Lyon can be
| heard on Blowzabella - Bobbityshooty (Plant Life Records PLR064) and Rusty
| Gully and Go To Berwick, Johnnie on Sandra and Nancy Kerr - Neat and Complete
| (Fellside FECD107)
This sort of tune is fairly common among the English Country Dance
crowd. The minuet used such tunes, though the dancers would say that
you should write them as 6/4 rather than 3/2. That is, there really
are six counts in a measure. The minuet used all six of the counts in
many of the steps, with patterns like step-pause-step-pause-step-step
common. Some of the steps used the variant rhythms, and good dancers
would presumably match their steps to the tune. The modern dancers
just walk through the figures, with three steps per measure, so it's
not so important to get a six-count feel. Because of this, SCD
accompaniment typically won't use the "hemiola" 1223123, but will
just play 121212 while the melody does something else. The 123412
does show up a lot in the chord pattern, though the dancers mostly
ignore such subtleties.
I had an interesting experience a few years ago, when a few of us on
melody instruments were playing unaccompanied for some English
dances. Then a guitar player joined in, and a 3/2 dance came up. He
heard the music as 6/4, and played 123123. This really confused the
dancers, and they couldn't dance to it. We couldn't explain to him
what the problem was; he just kept playing the same rhythm. So we had
to tell him to not play for that dance.
One lesson that it taught me: I found myself thinking that if I'd
only thought to bring my accordion, I could have grabbed it and
dominated the rhythm, and he would have picked it up quickly. But I'd
though that, given the musicians I knew would be there, I could just
travel light with my fiddle and a whistle or two. Bad decision. This
and a few similar incidents eventually taught me that it's a good
idea to always drag my squeezebox along. If I don't need that left
side, fine; all I wasted was a bit of energy. But there are times
when it really helps to have a keyboard player who knows the music
and can dominate the rhythm players who are trying to do something
different.
Sometimes we keyboard players can be nearly as arrogant as those
pesky fiddlers ...
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