Hello Colin What I am trying to get across is precisely the fact that the tunes themselves were played as rants at musical gatherings with no suggestion of dance involved. Yes, there are similarities to the polka rhythm but Rant tunes tend to be crotchet rich and have, to my ears, quite a different feel (as anyone familiar with Will Taylor's rendition of the Pearl Wedding or Nancy Taylor will realise - polkas they ain't!). Dancers can indeed just get on and rant along to most reels. In fact 3 Rothburys ago I Ranted the whole of a very long Dashing White Sergeant set to full-on reels played by 422. Not as satisfying as rants but acceptable and more fun than a gym workout. It was the labelling of tunes such as "Whinham's Reel" and "Lamshaw's Fancy" as marches which I found particularly misleading. Perhaps calling them Polkas would have closer to the mark. It's funny you know, but back in the late 70s I remember a music evening at the Dickson's near Wooler when John Dagg chipped in over a similar reel/rant discussion instigated by something the "Toonies" (in this case represented by Foster Charlton) had said. Foster had apparently suggested that there were so many notes in such and such a tune that it had to be a Reel not a Rant . John's comment, "I don't give a doodies [sic] how many notes it has you can still give it a good rant rhythm", remains etched in my memory. This discussion is far from new and only goes to emphasise the differences in understanding and approach across a mere 40 miles of countryside! Regards Anthony
--- On Wed, 11/3/09, rosspi...@aol.com <rosspi...@aol.com> wrote: From: rosspi...@aol.com <rosspi...@aol.com> Subject: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes To: anth...@robbpipes.com Cc: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu Date: Wednesday, 11 March, 2009, 4:20 PM Dear Anthony, Since you are now on the List I feel I can respond to your fascination with gobstoppers and tomato soup. I was going to comment on what you were saying about playing Rants and how deeply disappointed you were that none of the tunes in the 30 tunes collection were called RANTS. I think the reason is simple enough in that the rant is a dance step and not a specific tune rhythm. A tune with that rhythm consistently throughout the music would be a polka. The tune Hesleyside Reel only has it specifically written into the music at the end of the four bar phrases in the A part and at the end of the tune. The dancers however are stepping throughout the tune so in calling it a reel we were not wrong only in not mentioning in the forward that Julia wrote that tunes like this can and maybe should be stepped with a rant step. I have been playing this tune for many years now with the High Level Ranters and concentrate on keeping a good bouncy rhythm along with other tunes that can be called reels or hornpipes like the Morpeth Rant and leave the dancers to get on with their footwork. Cheers, Colin R -----Original Message----- From: Anthony Robb <[1]anth...@robbpipes.com> To: [2]john_da...@hmco.com; [3]rosspi...@aol.com CC: [4]...@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:52 Subject: Re: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes Dear Colin, John et al. I think we should be distinguishing between Regional and personal styles here. Reels in the most of the British Isles (and elsewhere) have a pulse which can be interpreted as: Gob-stopper, gob-stopper, gob-stopper, gob-stopper. In Northumberland many of these tunes would be played as Rants which have a pulse: Tomato soup, tomato soup, tomato soup, tomato soup There is much room for personal interpretation on top of this basic style difference. Letting people hear these differences is important. As for so-called "bad habits" these must surely be/have been pleasing to the players themselves at some point and are therefore valid in their own right even if others may find them displeasing. Copying these personal idiosyncracies is one thing, and each player can decide this for themselves, ignoring the regional accent completely is another thing altogether! I would say go for it Colin, a person with your background can not help but make a valuable contribution to the body of piping knowledge. As aye Anthony --- On Wed, 11/3/09, [5]rosspi...@aol.com <[6]rosspi...@aol.com> wrote: From: [7]rosspi...@aol.com <[8]rosspi...@aol.com> Subject: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes To: [9]john_da...@hmco.com Cc: [10]...@cs.dartmouth.edu Date: Wednesday, 11 March, 2009, 1:12 PM Dear John, No, it would not do at all for me to play the tunes as20I would be imprinting my own style, whatever that is, on the tunes with all the bad habits of gracing I have picked up over the years.. This would also apply to other pipers who have learnt from 'the old guys' and have developed a personal style of their own perhaps. Opinion would be divided as to who is the best and my solution of using a mechanical device to demonstrate a tune aurally for those who are unable to do this from the printed source would at least- and it would be the very least- give those folk an idea on how to tackle playing a tune and then go to a player or a recording of a player to get the spirit of the tune infused into it. Colin R -----Original Message----- From: [11]john_da...@hmco.com To: [12]...@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:26 Subject: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes 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 strin g 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 [13]rosspi...@aol.com 03/10/2009 10:40 AM To [14]j.gibb...@imperial.ac.uk =C 2 cc [15]...@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' <[16]cwh...@santa-fe.freeserve.co.uk>; [17]...@cs.dartmouth.edu <[18]...@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=[19]ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu [[1]mailto:nsp-request+j.gibbons=[20]ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf 0 Of colin Sent: 10 March 2009 16:23 To: [21]...@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" <[22]mikeande...@worcesterfolk.org.uk> To: <[23]...@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][24]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index..html > -- References 1. mailto:nsp-request+j.gibbons=[25]ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu 2. [26]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. -- _______________________________________________________________________ _ AOL Email goes Mobile!20You can now read your AOL Emails whilst on the move. Sign up for a free AOL Email account with unlimited storage today. _______________________________________________________________________ _ 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. -- References 1. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=anth...@robbpipes.com 2. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=john_da...@hmco.com 3. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com 4. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu 5. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com 6. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com 7. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com 8. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com 9. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=john_da...@hmco.com 10. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu 11. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=john_da...@hmco.com 12. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu 13. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com 14. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=j.gibb...@imperial.ac.uk 15. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu 16. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=cwh...@santa-fe.freeserve.co.uk 17. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu 18. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu 19. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu 20. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu 21. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu 22. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=mikeande...@worcesterfolk.org.uk 23. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu 24. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index..html 25. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu 26. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html