> Set the
> early Auld Lang Syne tune/s into steel string DADGAD or Open G, or
standard,
> or (see below) DADFAD and do some recordings on the everyday instrument.
> Then you can disseminate the earlier tunes in an accessible form to
> vernacular musicians.
Funny you should mention that, as I have been doing just such a thing and
shall upload some stuff over the next week or two.
> Seriously: that full-tone 'drop' of the whole sung or played scale in
double
> tonic pieces
Shall I go into this? Why not... There is no such thing as the double-tonic.
The term is meaningless, but is a convenient way of describing something
that is a wee bit difficult to get to grips with. It is a hangover of the
medieval modal system, the mixolydian mode, in fact. Lets stick with the
white notes of the piano: CDEFGABC. Suppose we start on G: GABCDEFG we have
what is called the mixolydian mode _of_ C or the mixolydian mode _on_ G.
The dominat chord above the G would be d minor - in a G _Major_ scale it
would be D Major (with an F sharp), but there is no F sharp in our
mixolydian mode on G - so the dominant chord is minor, which is not a good
thing as it weakens the function of the dominat chord (the function being to
post a return to the tonic). Therefore, the Relative Major comes into play.
The Relative Major of d minor is F Major. The Tonic now has a strong
dominant chord. That works for some tunes which alternate G to F to G, etc,
finishing on G. Some finish on F, in which case we have been using the
Lydian mode. In F, the G major chord is the - wait for it - Dominat of the
Dominant! No wonder we find it hard to grasp. But the medieval mind
understood it well.
Another way of thinking of it is to say that we are alternating chords IV
and V in C major, which is true and simple, but a slightly skewed way of
looking at things.
John Purser is the first to come up with the terms Home and Away for the two
chords, but you might prefer the ancient Welsh way of describing them in
terms of ones and zeros. Thus, the Robert Ap Hew manuscript shows tunes
prefaced by a row such as : 1100110010101110, which gives you the order of
chord changes.
Now, there is a lot of double-tonic pieces in the bagpipe repertoire because
the 'home' note has six fingers down and the 'away' note adds the pinkie to
that, i.e with all the holes closed, the lowest note on the bagpipe. The
dominat note is slightly 'out of tune' - there are arguments over how to
finger it - so, again the dominant function is weakened, so the lowest note
comes into play as the Relative Major equivalent. In other words, the
chanter is tuned to the six finger mixolydian mode, or the seven finger
lydian mode, whichever way you want to look at it.
Which introduces temperaments and that pesky 3rd. In medieval times they had
a different tuning system, which made the 3rds sound horribly out of tune,
but 4ths were in tune. So it was best to leave 3rds out all together. The
only place which apparently loved 3rds was Orkney. Now either they loved the
dissonant sound, or they used a different tuning system. The 'Hymn to Saint
Magnus' has the melody running in parallel 3rds - the only instance of that
in the medieval world. When we recorded it on a CD called 'Graysteil' we
'tempered' the 3rds so that they sounded softer, warmer, which befitted the
humble saint in question. But the 4ths were out. The awkwardness we sense
over the use of 3rds is nothing to what the medieval musician (outside of
Orkney) would have felt.
> Now you *will* tell me that this is actually a modern and slightly
American
> inflection of the ear and it only sounds this way because that's how too
> many 'celtic' instrumentals choose to treat things... and REAL Scots music
> is entirely different.
On the contrary! ...as I hope I have shown!
Did any of that make any sense? Or am I getting too surreal for my own good?
Yours aye,
Rob
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.robmackillop.com
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