----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 12:28 PM Subject: Re: [scots-l] Question on modes
> > > > I think you're a mixing up key-mode with scale. > > Not as much mixing them up as trying to avoid doing so... I know that mode > and key signature are not the same thing -- I'm trying to find out how the > "oh-so-natural" just intonation of classical violin works with fiddle's > modes (compared to key signatures). I've spent some time comparing just > intonation with equal temperament. It was really obvious really quickly > that there is a real difference with those two, which made me start > wondering if I had perfect intonation (as a classical violinist would > define "perfect"), how someone with perfect pitch and a good understanding > of modes would think I played. You raise a complex question. Here's my take on it: There are 36 frequencies per octave in the just intonation scale. Which 12 or 8 or 5 etc you utilize in a given tune is determined by the starting point, the tonic or key note. But this is only the beginning. The scale [intervals] must then be flexible so that the consonant intervals can to be maintained at that their correct size [as defined by the just intonation scale] whatever their position in the scale and so that melodic intervals may vary in size; i.e., the notes must be mutable. The intonation of "passing" notes is altered so as to achieve the above. Then there are the vagaries of the human auditory system. What the ear "hears" is called the pitch of the note. While pitch is mostly determined by frequency, it is also dependent on intensity [loudness], waveform [harmonic content] and time duration of the note. It can vary from frequency by as much as a whole tone. On a violin/fiddle, for example, pitch can be altered by changing bow pressure, or speed or point of contact on the string or combinations of the above with no change in the "stopped" finger on the string. How to achieve good intonation!! I don't think it is easy. Some suggestions I've read. Spend lots of time practicing all the scales, boring but indispensable I'm told. Lionel Turtis suggests always playing the tonic note against an open string when beginning or when changing keys so as to get the starting point precisely right. One of the best Cape Breton fiddlers of the last century not only did what Turtis suggested, he also did a scale or two and a few arpeggios, particularly when changing from "fiddle" keys to the flat keys, no doubt to re-acquaint his fingers and hand to the new spatial requirements and his ears to the significantly different sound in the flat keys brought about by the overtone pitches produced by the unbowed open strings being both loud and many multiples of the tonic as opposed to thirds, fifths,etc on the fiddle keys. If you play mostly open strings as many fiddlers do, you of course will not be able to alter those passing notes as suggested above. That is less of a problem in the fiddle keys. Incidentally that is one of the reasons violinists do not use open strings. I don't think the above is altered by whether the tune is major, minor, modal, hexatonic, heptatonic, pentatonic, double tonic etc. I also don't think it is altered by "ethnicity" which is sometimes used to explain differences, or to put it more bluntly to justify playing out of tune. Electronic measuring devices are useful provided that one bears in mind that they measure frequency not pitch and it is pitch which the musician must get right. The only true measuring device for this is the "trained" ear. Lionel Turtis says we must not only listen but listen intently, [he points out that there is " a vast difference between listening and listening intently"]. Most of us, he says, have "good ears" and are capable of and can attain good intonation but then adds that many do not. Here is a quote from Lionel Turtis; "A 'good' ear can become permanently perverted by negligent, superficial, non-penetrative listening on the part of the performer. This inattention to one's faculty of hearing is a vice of such rapid growth that in a very short time the player accepts faulty intonation with equanimity, eventually becoming quite unconscious that he is playing out of tune". The problem obviously is a serious one in the violin as well as the fiddle world. Alexander Mac Donald Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
