Ladida wrote:
>
> While I'm here... anyone have any opinions about how much "droning" on open
> strings in a tune is just simply too much? (I know this question doesn't
> hold the same passion as Northern Aggression but it'll have to do.)
>
In a certain other group we had a discussion as to whether a song could
reasonably be handled all the way through without changing a chord, which
produced dozens of one-chorders. For fun, I made a proper studio mp3
recording of 'She Moves Through the Fair' in which the guitar basically
plays D - D - D out of a D chord held down in drop D tuning, with just the
occasional hit on an A and no significant use of the F sharp. To reinforce
that I added a mountain dulcimer played in AAD tuning; admittedly, that does
have a sort of moving line in with it, but the effect is a very strong
drone. I reckon it's one of the best tracks I've done in terms of having a
distictive sound, but obviously, you can't just go and do every song like
that - which I often hear from Scottish DADGAD guitarists, whose only answer
is to move the capo to get some variety. But I am guilty of doing maybe 70
per cent of all my stuff in drop D.
You can find the file somewhere on http://www.mp3.com/DavidKilpatrick if you
are interested. Dec Cluskey of The Bachelors gave a whole set of chords they
used to use for She Moves, and the only book I could find gave a whole
different set; although I only use D major, the third is almost entirely
missing and there is a strong implied drop tonic (C major) which appears in
the form of a minor 7th to the basic D.
A lot of my favourite Scots tunes are drop tonic D/C and little more.
David Kilpatrick/Kelso
Having a GREAT weekend music festival - you can't GET IN the Red Lion and
there were six separate sessions going AT ONCE in it at lunchtime, one with
Galician smallpipes...
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