Wendy wrote:
| On Monday 09 July 2001 14:51, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
| > Many violinists/fiddlers have a common problem. There is a tendency to
| > play certain notes out of tune, for example C#'s on the A and G strings;
...
| I dunno.. in all honesty I find this assertion baffling. It goes without
| saying, that beginner fiddlers often miss the pitch they're aiming for. But I
| didn't think this thread was about beginners. And it seems to me that if
| playing "out of tune" as you describe it (and I'm putting it in quotes
| because I don't agree that the altered pitches in question are out of tune),
| was a universal *fiddler* problem, it would turn up with *all* fiddlers,
| regardless of the style being played. In other words it would be just as
| prevalent among mature fiddlers specializing in bluegrass, contra etc. etc.
| etc. (insert whatever fiddle tradition you like here), but it isn't. The
| bluegrass and contra fiddlers around here in Connecticut and Massachusetts
| stick to the tempered scale. So I can't concur that it's sloppy fiddling, at
| least not among seasoned players.
...
This isn't just a Scottish observation. A funny thing happened this
afternoon. The wife and I were wandering around in a local clothing
store, and she pointed out that the background music was an Abba
song. Which one isn't important; what I noticed was that the singers
were consistently singing the 7ths in a particular repeated phrase as
a "half-flat" 7th, in between the two tempered 7ths. If you are
familiar with traditional Swedish music, you won't find this
surprising. It seems that several of the members of Abba are quite
accomplished traditional folk musicians, and this shows up in a lot
of their music. In this case, the backup was decidedly tempered, but
this obviously didn't bother the singers. They sang the 7th that was
"right" to their ears. The backup didn't have the tempered version of
the notes, so there was no clash.
I grew up in parts of the US with a lot of people of Scandinavian
origin, and I'm quite familiar with that tradition. An anecdote from
some festival a few years back: I had played a tune that someone
asked about, and one fellow pointed out that I had consistently
played the C's (in the D minor tune) at three different pitches. I
hadn't noticed, so I played it again, listening to my intonation.
Sure enough, there were three different 7ths. We both agreed that I
was playing all of them "in tune".
Non-tempered scales are common in a lot of kinds of music, even when
there are instruments that only play a tempered scale. Fiddlers and
singers can handle this quite easily. Accompanists can adjust by
avoiding the obvious clashes.
There are accordions available that have a switch which turns off the
thirds in the left-hand chords. Guess why they're made this way ...
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