Perhaps, you could make the recordings yourself, Colin. That way the bench would be quite clearly marked. It would seem likely that there could be all sorts of interpretations of a tune, or bad playing technique, if the sound source were another instrument. Last night I played tunes with a friend, an ear player who grew up in Morpeth, was active in the folk scene in Northumberland for many years before moving here. He plays stringed instruments, so the popping pipe sound goes nicely with the slurry string sound. He doesn't play any of the tunes note for note the way they appear in the books, because he picked them up by ear, having heard many from the time he was a lad. If I said, look, you're not playing that tune correctly, it would be like the anthropologist telling the tribesman in New Guinea he's hunting monkey incorrectly. One tune in particular, "The Hesleyside Reel", is very difficult for me to play at his tempo without cutting out some of the notes. Was it written for the pipes? It's a lovely tune, but my right hand's ligature doesn't like it very much unless I play it at a rambling pace. Now, I realize, if I had Chris Ormston's technique I could do it properly, but I never will (I'm not alone, am I?). If the choice is mucking up the tune or adapting it to fit my technical abilities, what's a guy to do? John
rosspi...@aol.com 03/10/2009 10:40 AM To j.gibb...@imperial.ac.uk cc nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu Subject [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes Dear John, When I was saying that I thought the tunes in the 'First 30 Tunes' might be better played on some other instrument than the small pipes to give an idea of how the tune went it was to avoid the copying of pehaps bad playing technique from pipers who had contributed tracks for the CD. I had no experience of using ABC copies of the tunes to generate audio copies but it seems to be a relatively straightforward way of getting the printed tunes out there to be heard. At the moment the NPS is only interested in producing a CD to accompany the '30 tunes' book but as we have most of the other tunes that are in our publications in ABC form it could be applied to all those tunes that beginners have difficulty in lifting off the page. As you say the main problem is in finding someone to do the job. Colin R -----Original Message----- From: Gibbons, John <j.gibb...@imperial.ac.uk> To: 'colin' <cwh...@santa-fe.freeserve.co.uk>; nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu <nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:41 Subject: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes An abc pipers' tunebook should ideally - * Not be a copy of a printed source. It might affect its sales. Let alone copyright questions. * So should be mostly traditional unpublished material. * It could contain new tunes too, if submitted by the composer - copyright again. * It should be communally authored - wait for a single author and it will take a long time, and will mirror his taste; be it excellent or otherwise, someone will disagree! It is a view of the tradition that we are after, not just Joe Bloggs' bit of it. * Abc's could be submitted to the nsp mailing list, and someone web-literate could put it online. * So we need a willing able volunteer. * Here the plan falls to the ground..... John -----Original Message----- From: nsp-request+j.gibbons=ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu [[1]mailto:nsp-request+j.gibbons=ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of colin Sent: 10 March 2009 16:23 To: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu Subject: [NSP] Re: [NSP]Re: irst 30 tunes I'm glad you wrote this. I suggested something similar but my post never appeared (that happens quite often and yes, I did send it to the list, not the person who posted it). As I said there, I've been trying to do something similar with a book of hurdy gurdy tunes but some other player beat me to it by playing all the tunes on the piano and making it available as an mp3. The cries of "ah, that's how that bit goes" continue to echo. Colin Hill ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike and Enid Walton" <mikeande...@worcesterfolk.org.uk> To: <nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 6:53 AM Subject: [NSP] [NSP]Re: irst 30 tunes > > If tunes (the "first 30" in the current context, but it holds for all > the NPS tunes) were posted in "abc" format on the NPS website, it would > enable people with the necessary programs to print them in whatever > format they wished, hear them as midis, transpose them etc. It might, > of course, reduce the sales of NPS books. > > > > I thought about this when we were playing tunes on F chanters at > Halsway with other musicians. The music books proferred by pipers were > of course no good to the other musicians unless they were really expert > at transposing on the hoof. > > > > Mike Walton > > -- > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > [2]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > -- References 1. mailto:nsp-request+j.gibbons=ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu 2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html _______________________________________________________________________ _ AOL Email goes Mobile! You can now read your AOL Emails whilst on the move. Sign up for a free AOL Email account with unlimited storage today. --