It sounds like your basic Irish Dorian Jig. There are a ton of them, but they are modal and therefore "Drone" music. Dorian and mixolydian are the most common modes. It seems like with Mixolydian. The Drone is on the fifth ( the 5 of the root chord is the 1 of the fifth)of whatever key the violin thinks he's playing in. Dorian is not quite that Simple since the only two chords are adjacent. (D, EM)) so one or the other gets a 7th. I dont remember the formula, On the other hand there are a lot of tunes that "Mode shift" so the A part is in the key of Em minor but the B part is in D The older tunes are pipe tunes, so they play against the same drone in both sections. Then there is "artistic dissonance" so the Drone remains but the melody goes astray and builds tension. But newer tunes, especially anything that was composed in the latter half of the 20th century is highly suspect as these things were frequently "composed" by people that can't get into the soul or at least the ground of the music. "Virtuoso trad" is an oxymoron. If it don't work with a drone it's not celtic, it might be Celtic, it might be New Age, it might be just about anything, but when you lose the "Ground", you lose the roots.
I'm not at all disagreeing with what Melissa says, sometimes you should turn off the Drones and play melody or take this golden opportunity to go to the bar, or the bathroom, or somewhere. Also be aware that there are a lot of lightweights that don't like Drone all the time, turning them off sometimes might be a good thing. ( I said "might", I don't know---never tried it.) Later Roy P. S. Rule of Thumb, but not a promise: If it's Irish try a D drone. from the keyboard . If that don't work it may give you a clue. Rehearsal is good. you get to experiment On 1/8/07, Melissa Kacalanos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hm. Some tunes just aren't meant to be played on hg. Many tunes, I suspect like this one you mention, just wouldn't work with a constant drone on any note, whatever the note is. In your example, your trompette and petit bourdon are playing a constant open E chord. Then whenever your open chanter sounds (which it almost inevitably will), between some notes) you're playing an E minor chord. I suspect that if this worked at all, it did so by making the whole tune seem like it was in E minor, so people couldn't hear the D major-ness of the first part. Actually, how do we know it really switched from D major to E minor? That might just be the interpretation of these musicians, who are trained to think in terms of key changes and chord progressions all the time instead of drones. Maybe if one of us drone-based people heard it, we would just say, "Nice tune in E minor, and I like how the dissonance at the beginning resolves in the middle." Or, if they wanted to keep the D to E shift, in a situation like this, I might have turned my drones off for the beginning, and then turned on a drone in E at the change. This makes for a nice dynamic change as well as a key change. This only works if the changes don't come too fast or frequently, though. But in general, I don't like to waste my efforts trying to get my hg to play tunes with certain key changes or chord progressions, which would work much better on a piano or violin or something. What hgs are good at is playing tunes that work well with drones. This includes, besides the vast world of early and traditional hg music, tunes from drone-loving traditions from around the world. That includes bagpipe tunes from Sweden to Morocco to Bulgaria, much Indian music (which often uses a tambura to provide a drone), and much Arabic and Turkish music (which often use plucked string instruments with both drone and melody strings). That's a lot of music. Let's not get greedy and try to play music that sounds better on piano or violin.
Melissa
*james kruse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>* wrote: Hello, A couple weeks ago I was playing a street musician in a local adaptation of A Christmas Carol on Orcas Island, wa. I am both a begining hurdy gurdy player and musician. The individual I was paired with is a (very patient) professional violinist. One of the songs was a jig and started out in e minor and switched to d major. I had no idea what to set my drones to, and consulted her & her husband who is a professional pianist. Neither are familiar with the hurdy gurdy but both are top notch musicians and finally they decided that I should tune my minstrel gurdy as follows. the petit bourdon should be B, the chanter G, and the trompette E'. This was not their first choice, but were taking into consideration the tension allowances of the strings I had. It ended up sounding kinda cool. Has anyone else out there tried this sort of arrangement? Jim Kruse *Anthony Shostak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>* wrote: Hi, folks. I'm sure this has come up before, but I'm wondering what your collective wisdom is regarding G/C or D/G for playing Irish and related tunes? It seems straightforward enough to play out of G/C, using the upper rows of keys and capos for the drones, but with much of the repertoire fitting well on pipes and flutes that don't go lower than D, perhaps D/G would wind up being a bit easier and fit within the range of the instrument without too much octave shifting. Or is it really just a matter of making a choice and sticking with it? Best, Anthony __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
