On Border pipes, nominally a tone higher, the drones are fixed, in A; they have no bead holes. Cuckold, or the Peacock followed the Hen, swap around between B minor and D major above the A harmony of the drone. This corresponds to playing them in Aminor/Cmajor against G drones on NSP.
It works, and certainly doesn't sound nasty, which is the only sound argument against any musical idea. John -----Original Message----- From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of Matt Seattle Sent: 15 August 2012 11:28 To: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu Subject: [NSP] Re: small coals, and the peacock following the hen On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 12:26 AM, Anthony Robb <[1]anth...@robbpipes.com> wrote: Here is what Forster Charlton, Colin Ross and Roland Wright put in the introduction to the second edition to the NPS 1st Tune Book: "Small Coals and Little Money and Cuckold Come Out The Amrey are in an unusual mode for which the drones should be tuned to the notes A and E. Any drone which will not tune to either of these two notes is best shut off!" Personally, I agree - others don't. Where I disagree is in saying they are in the same mode. Small Coals is a straightforward A minor tune, although with no 6th (F#) it's neither dorian nor aeolian mode. There is a case for tuning the drones to A for Small Coals if you insist on the drones being concordant with the home key or mode of the tune. I don't personally find that an issue, and neither do other bagpipe traditions, where drones are what drones were meant to be - fixed, so that tunes in different modes sound like they are in different modes. For me, Cuckold is a mixed-mode tune with alternating A minor and C major strains, where A drones have the effect of masking the C major sections because, over A drones, these also sound like A minor. So, if I were an NSP player, I'd leave the drones in G for this tune, which I am well aware is heresy. [2]http://youtu.be/71KwJ11O0fI -- References 1. mailto:anth...@robbpipes.com 2. http://youtu.be/71KwJ11O0fI To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
