[ disentangled mess from Laurie - can't you get that mail
client to stop top-posting and quoting everything? ]
>>> I need a good strathspey to play on the fiddle in the key of
>>> B flat major.
>> Transpose whatever strathspey you like into the key of Bb?
> Yes - but then you have to mess about with it until it plays
> well on the fiddle.
It's a bit more subtle than that. There are two reasons for strathspeys
being in flat keys:
(1) they were intended for the piano or lever harp of c.1800 which
sounded better in flat keys because of greater sounding string
length;
(2) they were intended to get a specific sound on the fiddle. Tunes
in sharp keys put the tonic, dominant or subdominant on an open
string. In B flat, you get the third and seventh on an open
string, which produces an entirely different sound, particularly
since the A probably won't play much role in the tune. Marshall's
"The Marquis of Huntly's Strathspey" uses the open D string only
on heavy downbeats - you'd lose the effect entirely in any other
key. A few of his other strathspeys hit that open D on the third
beat of the bar for a cross-accent. In the common lydian/major/
mixolydian pentatonic mode, the only open string possible in B flat
is the low G, and B flat fiddle tunes invariably bottom out at _B,
so there won't be any open strings at all. (Marshall doesn't do
that anywhere I know of but maybe somebody else did).
I don't have perfect pitch; the way I pick out the key of fiddle tunes
is largely by timbre. Nobody could confuse the sound of a B flat tune
with that of an A one.
BTW, playing in B flat on an F treble recorder gives you a similar
effect - tonic, dominant and subdominant are all relatively muted
cross-fingered notes while the others are brighter in tone. But
most B flat strathspeys have a full two-octave range so they don't
fit on that.
=================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> ===================
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