on 16/12/2000 7:56 pm, SUZANNE MACDONALD at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> The C note on the highland pipes is ambiguous. Is it C or C sharpe. The
> designation of its scales obviously depend on which it is.
>
C sharpe is the bloke wot collected Scottish ballads.
C is the stuff you end up in if you keep walking east after you get to
Berwick.
One of the great things about pipes is that they contain neither of these,
but something guaranteed to be in discord with the same 'note' on a fretted
instrument like a guitar.
Last year there were some 'mainly fiddle' classes with Matt Seattle for
local musicians, and I went along with a guitar and bouzouki. One
(originally smallpipe) tune in A featured a note which was a sharpened G or
a flattened G sharp, which Matt played correctly and accurately on the
fiddle, and it sounded right - as it would have done on his pipes.
Guitarists need to sharpen a minor 7th slightly to make it work in this type
of tune, and guess what - exactly the same thing applies to blues playing.
It doesn't sound right if you don't bend that note slightly upwards.
So now the Scots can also claim the origin of the blues...
David
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