Hi to All, a week or so ago on this site i read in a mail a passing comment of playing Dixon tunes on the northumbrian small pipes. i was a little surprised as with a 7 keyed set of NSP i would have thought the tunes were difficult/impossible to play due to the natural 7th note missing in the top and bottom of the scale. the more i thought of it, i wondered how it could be done? do people, who play from the Dixon manuscript, play with A drones and using the A major scale on the NSP starting on the bottom A note as their tonic, and using the natural 7th - above and below the tonic as the A scale would allow for this? this would work fine, and keep in key with the Border pipes key/manuscript setting, but one would be using fingering that would never have been used in the early 1800s or before, runs would difficult etc. or, do people transpose to the G major on the NSP and use the key for the bottom F# (so raising the natural 7th of Dixon to a sharpened 7th) for the 7th note, and using G drones? or, do people pay in D major, and miss out the bottom 7th note all together, and keep the natural 7th on the top note (C natural); playing with D drones? i have been experimenting with these variations. the best i have found is to play in G major, and tune my drones to D,d. this goes well with the bottom F# (sharped 7th), sadly missing out the natural 7th note of the original Dixon scale. occasionally i play in D major with drones tuned in D,d; if there is not a bottom 7 note in the notation, and gives me the flattened 7th note in the top register.
these natural 7th notes are often strong and give a real feel to the style of music, but i wonder if this is what Peacock had to think about when designing and compiling music for the early NSP manuscripts? i am wondering what do people do when playing Dixon with NSPipes? Best wishes, Kevin -- http://www.ethnopiper.com http://www.youtube.com/kevnsp http://kevnsp.blogspot.com http://facebook.com/kevin.tilbury http://soundcloud.com/kevnsp -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
