Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Alexander Macdonald wrote: ...I hope we're taking this as an honest difference of opinion about something we both love... That comment was to Kate Dunlay, but if I may say, this thread has shown remarkable civility and restraint on a topic which could have, in other hands, become petty, childish and very personal. While both sides have strong opinions, it has been a fascinating discussion involving people who know and love the music. (Once you get past Jack's occasionally acerbic style; his bark is insignificant compared to his bytes.) I feel extremely unqualified to join in; I've never had a music lesson in my life and my love of Scottish music has more to do with the heart than the head (in my case, that's a blessing!), but L Lloyd's assertion that just temperament cannot be used for real music is fighting talk. I think. Um... I was also fascinated by Alexander's statement: The ear's perception of a note can vary so greatly that the literature uses two terms; frequency...and pitch...and the two can vary by as much as a whole tone... I often disagree with what an electric tuner says is in tune and make minor adjustments to suit my ear. I wonder if this is an illustration of that difference? -- Nigel Gatherer, Crieff, Scotland [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/gatherer/ Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Jack Campin Wrote: There are pipe tunes in G. Like what? My comment: See Nigel Gatherer's list. This was a side issue. The main one was your statement that a fiddler would naturally play flat thirds in A major and normal thirds in G because of the pipes. Nonsense. She's playing a fiddle. Jack: Objective measurements in recent decades (using equipment your pal Helmholtz couldn't buy, like the Stroboconn) show that the intonation string players (e.g. in string quartets) tend to use instinctively is mostly Pythagorean. My comment: My pal Helmholtz? Would that he were. Imagine being able to call one of the greatest minds of the last two centuries your pal. But we shouldn't get personal should we? We need to be very cautious about scientific instruments measuring sound. The ear's perception of a note can vary so greatly that the literature uses two terms; frequency, the actual vibrations in the air and pitch the ear's perception of frequency and the two can vary by as much as a whole tone. The musician must satisfy the human ear not a machine and the ear's capacity and sophistication far exceed any man-made device in this regard. One example will suffice. The ratio of the energy in a sound which is so loud that it hurts, called the threshold of pain, to the energy in a just audible sound, called the threshold of hearing, is 10,000,000,000 to 1. An attempt to replicate this in a sound system would fry your amp and blow your speakers. String quartets instinctively playing Pythagorean, for the most part, is what I would expect, but the suggestion that Lionel Turtis would be playing Pythagorean thirds and sixths in a quartet with Fitz Kreisler would provide comic relief were it not so absurd. They are not playing scales they are playing intervals, Pythagorean mostly, mean-tone where necessary, mutable notes where necessary etc. so as to play in tune. After all the Pythagorean and mean-tone scales were a compromise created to deal with a problem which doesn't exist in the violin family instruments. Ironically the problem, which these scales only placated not solved, is our subject , playing in tune. Re your comment on other cultures, earlier musicians playing Pythagorean or mean-tone scales in singing or on the violin family instruments, which Lloyd says is superhuman [read impossible]; why would anyone attempt to play/sing in a compromised scale which another instrument [piano and its predecessor instruments] forced on us because the human hand's ten digits couldn't physically accommodate on a keyboard the much greater demands of the human ear? Re barbershop singing. I was a barbershopper for 15 years. Loved it. Biggest reason, we sang in good close harmony i.e. in tune. Re Your comment; If you tune [your fiddle] in pure fifths you do *not* get just intonation pitches for the open strings, but Pythagorean ones; You certainly *do* get just intonation pitches.. The dominant interval in the just intonation scale is the Pythagorian fifth.. Are you confusing just temperment with just intonation? See P.P.S. The remainder of your e-mail refers to instruments/cultures having 24 or another number of note intervals, as compared with our 12 note [piano] scale. Sure, why not? In fact a fiddler has an infinite number of pitches to choose from and one who plays in tune utilizes at least 24 in the compass of an octave. But it seems to me we have gotten way off topic so lets return to the primary discussion; fiddling and playing in tune. Previous reference was made to Perlman's The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island specifically page 28 where the subject is pitch and where he lists notes which PEI fiddlers play off standard pitch. To my ear what Perlman says here is replicated, with one exception, in the playing of many Cape Breton fiddlers. [The exception; I have not heard Cape Breton fiddlers play the note D sharp in the key of A]. But the major players don't do this. So you have two groups playing the same tunes in the same style playing notes with different pitches. They both can't be playing in tune. At this point in the discussion many people have asked me, How come the fiddler doesn't know he's playing out of tune. For an answer I turn again to Turtis who said, 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. He also says in speaking about violinists and true intonation, Most of us are capable of discerning this [true intonation]. But how many do not. So the same problem exists in the classical music world also. Kate Dunley Wrote: Some fiddlers are nearly perfect, aren't they! All I can say is that some people prefer perfect music and others prefer something wilder. Here's an example of a different hierarchy of values from what you expect in the art-music world: Have you heard Anner Bylsma play baroque cello? He's a
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Jack Campin wrote: There are pipe tunes in G. Like what? Miss Menzies The Right Honble Lady Elcho Thro' the Muir She Ran Stormont Lads (all from The Piper's Assistant - perhaps they're fiddle tunes adapted?) Second Jig by Pipe Sergeant E MacDonald The Red Brae by PM W Ross The Clucking Hen by W Shaw Brae Riach by D A Campbell The Grumbling Carle (Gillan Nan Drobher) John Paterson's Mare The Shaggy Grey Buck The Jig o' Slurs (parts C and D) (all from Scots Guards - Standard Settings) Caber Feidh (from Master Method for Highland Bagpipe) X:274 T:Stormont Lads B:The Piper's Assistant (1877) Z:Nigel Gatherer N:c sharp omitted from first bar to force N:a point (unfairly) (|dGdB GB/^c/ d2|) M:4/4 L:1/8 K:G g|dGdB GB d2|eAed AB/d/ e2|gaeg dGBd|ed/e/ gB A2 G:|] B|Gggf gG B2|Aaag aA a2|gaeg dGBd|edgB A2 GB| Gg f/g/a/f/ gG B2|Aa f/g/a/g/ aA a2|ga/g/ eg/e/ dGBd|\ ed/e/ gB A2 G|] -- Nigel Gatherer, Crieff, Scotland [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/gatherer/ Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Jack Campin wrote: Another table is pertinent to a discussion we had a few weeks ago; the lists of historic fundamental pitches beginning on p.495 show how fantastically implausible it is that anyone in Britain in the mid-to- late 18th century would have used a pitch below A=390, even for such an obscure instrument as the guittar, without saying explicitly that they were doing something really, really weird and foreign). In this I think Rob MacKillop has changed his Ephraim Segerman-inspired viewpoint. The Abbe Carpentier's notes on the late 18th century notwithstanding, Rob has now tuned his guittar to a true A=440 C hexachord, and uses this, along with higher capo positions, for his Oswald Divertimento recordings. That's a full 2.5 tones up from the pitch of his earlier recordings and it sounds quite different; brighter, clearer, less twangy and more accurately intoned. I have raised the pitch of mine as far as the string lengths will permit, it ends up being in B not C, but it's improved dramatically in sound and the pitch matches the comments made about vocal accompaniment in Bremner. I plan to make some new strings with a shorter untensioned length and better loop twists, to be able to take it up to a true modern C. It is really the instrument itself that says 'this is the right pitch' as it becomes infinitely more robust and playable - and by no means mandolin like, still very much a more airy and harpsichord-like sound. David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Toby Rider wrote: On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, John Chambers wrote: So you'd think that fiddlers with a classical background would know and understand that different musical groups use different intonation rules. Traditional Scottish music shouldn't be anything other than yet another sort of intonation, to be mastered if you want to pass as a Scottish fiddler. You would think that this would be the case. However it so often isn't the case, that I forever swore off playing in an group with more then two other fiddles. Some local musicians with a well-known wee band were after 18 microphones and a monster mixing desk - one mike for each players, including one per fiddle. This is not apparently to make them louder. It's so they can secretly turn the mike DOWN on one or two of the fiddlers who have a different idea about intonation, tempo (etc, etc) compared to all the others :-) DK Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, David Kilpatrick wrote: Some local musicians with a well-known wee band were after 18 microphones and a monster mixing desk - one mike for each players, including one per fiddle. This is not apparently to make them louder. It's so they can secretly turn the mike DOWN on one or two of the fiddlers who have a different idea about intonation, tempo (etc, etc) compared to all the others :-) Ha..ha..ha... I like that :-) Toby Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Jack Campin Wrote: Tunes in A are often pipe tunes and hence might be expected to be given piping intonation. Tunes in G are never pipe tunes. So this is exactly what you *would* expect if the choice were a musical one. My comment: There are pipe tunes in G. More importantly it is impossible for a fiddler to play in the piping intonation or any intonation either than the just one. More on this in my reply to John Chambers. John Chambers wrote: So you'd think that fiddlers with a classical background would know and understand that different musical groups use different intonation rules. Traditional Scottish music shouldn't be anything other than yet another sort of intonation, to be mastered if you want to pass as a Scottish fiddler. My comment: It is impossible for a fiddler/violinist [or a trombonist or a singer] to play/sing in another sort of intonation. Quoting L. Lloyd , It is easy to play out of tune, it is a superhuman feat to play 'off the note' with exactly the mistuning required for equal temperment, for we may be sure that the player has no physical means of reproducing equal tempertment with accuracy. As I said in an earlier e-mail the ear can measure the just intonation intervals but it can't measure deviations from them nor can it measure intervals which would produce other than just intonation ratios. The comment also applies to all temperments or to another sort of intonation.Add to this another complication, the equal tempered scale isn't really equal, the fifth being infinitesimally off and the third being considerable so. The pipe scale is even more unequal and impossible for a fiddler to replicate. Consider also that when you've tuned your fiddle in fifths, you have preselected the pitch of four and sometimes five of the notes in the diatonic scale in the most-used fiddle keys and they are all in the just intonation scale. In other words in order to have another sort of intonation you would have to start by mistuning your instrument to some specific rule which for the above reasons is also impossible. . Kate Dunley wrote: However, I have heard Cape Breton fiddlers use pitches between B and B-flat (especially in the high octave) when playing tunes in G mixolydian/dorian (such as Paddy on the Turnpike, which uses both B and B-flat already). And I have to say that it sounds nice to me that way, with the pitch a bit ambiguous. You get that teasing, bluesy flavour. Anyway, I don't think fiddlers play a flat C# so much in A major. I think the supernatural C happens in those tunes like the King tunes, which are in A mixolydian/dorian, in which case the example is analogous to what I described above. Alexander, do you often observe a low C# in A major or were you just going by Perlman's description? My comment: I have noticed that different CB fiddlers use different notes in tunes like Paddy on the Turnpike, i.e. tunes called double tonic tunes by some . Some use Bb, some B, and some in between. I have also noticed that some players play an F# in both the first and second turns [strains] but others F in the first and F# in the second. Pity the poor piano player. What chord is he/she to use. Given that a good fiddler is constantly checking and fine tuning his intonation and that CB music sessions are frequently impromptu, image the interplay that is going on when the piano player anticipates an F natural and or a Bb, then gets one or none. It wouldn't surprise that on the second time through each goes in a different correcting direction, or that the fiddler plays an in-between note, or that the mismatch between the two instruments sounds that way. Re low C#'s in A major, I'm not familiar with the PEI fiddlers. I have observed the same thing in CB fiddling but not among the major players. Alexander Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Tunes in A are often pipe tunes and hence might be expected to be given piping intonation. Tunes in G are never pipe tunes. So this [slightly flattened thirds] is exactly what you *would* expect if the choice were a musical one. There are pipe tunes in G. Like what? The only one I can recall ever seeing is David Glen's bizarre arrangement of Dalkeith Fair (possibly an A pipe tune long ago, but filtered through an 18th century flute/fiddle setting). Which G is the root? - they are never an octave apart on the pipes. More importantly it is impossible for a fiddler to play in the piping intonation or any intonation either than the just one. Objective measurements in recent decades (using equipment your pal Helmholtz couldn't buy, like the Stroboconn) show that the intonation string players (e.g. in string quartets) tend to use instinctively is mostly Pythagorean. Playing in meantone is routine among early music players; I dare say David Greenberg could do that even without any cues from a keyboard. Indian fiddlers can play in any raga possible within the 22-shruti system. Turkish classical players use Western fiddles to play in any of a couple of dozen makams built from a 24-note unequally- tempered set of intervals defined in Pythagorean units. The restriction you're suggesting is not built in either into the fiddle hardware or the player's brain. Assuming you have the Dover edition of Helmholtz, I suggest you look at the table starting on p.453 (among the translator's appendices) which shows the awe-inspiring variety of whole-number ratios that somebody, somewhere, has played, sung, or thought we ought to play or sing. The Highland bagpipe features in a different table on p.515; its scale turns out to be almost identical to an Arabic one, first described by the lutenist Zalzal and surviving as modern meshAqah, which suggests that widely separated cultures both found some logic in it. (Another table is pertinent to a discussion we had a few weeks ago; the lists of historic fundamental pitches beginning on p.495 show how fantastically implausible it is that anyone in Britain in the mid-to- late 18th century would have used a pitch below A=390, even for such an obscure instrument as the guittar, without saying explicitly that they were doing something really, really weird and foreign). It is impossible for a fiddler/violinist [or a trombonist or a singer] to play/sing in another sort of intonation. Quoting L. Lloyd , It is easy to play out of tune, it is a superhuman feat to play 'off the note' with exactly the mistuning required for equal temperment, for we may be sure that the player has no physical means of reproducing equal tempertment with accuracy. However other kinds of intonation provide harmonic feedback that equal temperament doesn't, so playing in those isn't a superhuman feat. Barber- shop quartets are a pretty dramatic example of amateur-feasible music with an alternate temperament (often the fundamental pitch shifts during the performance, a bug/feature of just-intonation-by-ear first noticed during the 16th century in critiques of Zarlino's theoretical scheme). The barbershop repertoire makes my toes curl but I have to admire the technique. And if you've got a reference instrument playing with you, like a gamelan, a set of smallpipes, or a harpsichord tuned in meantone, almost any adjustment is possible. As I said in an earlier e-mail the ear can measure the just intonation intervals but it can't measure deviations from them nor can it measure intervals which would produce other than just intonation ratios. The point is that there are great many alternate whole-number ratios that could be considered to represnt intervals like third or seventh; just intonation (the rule pick the smallest numbers you can with prime factors less than 7) has not historically often been the popular option. Measuring small deviations is easy: count beats or listen for difference tones. But that isn't what people do when playing; you have an intuitive, not measured, feel for when you've got the right sound, and you can develop that intuition for any one of several different tuning systems. There are early music singing groups these days that can switch between different intonation systems in the same concert, from Pythagorean for mediaeval repertoire to just intonation for the early Renaissance to meantone for the Baroque. Consider also that when you've tuned your fiddle in fifths, you have preselected the pitch of four and sometimes five of the notes in the diatonic scale in the most-used fiddle keys and they are all in the just intonation scale. If you tune in pure fifths you do *not* get just intonation pitches for the open strings, but Pythagorean ones; assuming you start at the bottom, only the G and D will be right. (Classical players don't tune in pure fifths but adjust things a bit). But for playing pipe tunes, there are only three relevant open strings - D, A
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
To Kate Dunley; Hi. Kate, Glad to read your contribution. Re your comment: In Cape Breton fiddle music, playing with drive and good timing is more important than playing in tune. My comment: Agree. However you're implying that the choices are mutually exclusive. They need not be .In fact the very best CB fiddlers play with drive, good timing AND play in tune. Kate's comment: In conclusion, although Alexander would like to see the issue of tuning as a purely scientific one, I believe that much about it comes down to a matter of opinion My comment: With great emphasis I must say no. The great contribution made by Herman von Helmholtz was precisely that he rejected the purely scientific explanation in favour of one which combined the scientific with the art of music. All of Llewelyn Lloyd's essays repeatedly reject the purely scientific approach and it is the latter's material which I have been quoting. Anyone interested should read Intervals, Scales, and Temperment and The Musical Ear both by Llewelyn Lloyd. They are a very tough read but fascinating and well worth the effort. Alexander . Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Toby writes: | I know about piper's being opinionated, however I still think | alot of fidder's are even *more* opinionated. This is especially ironic considering the tuning situation within the classical crowd. Standard classical teaching brings out the fact that tempered tuning really arose as a compromise for handling the limitations of keyboard instruments and orchestras. Groups of all strings regularly switch to just intonation, which makes them sound better in tune. This is totally accepted in classical circles, and a string player who doesn't cooperate (or can't hear the difference) is considered to be playing out of tune. Any competent violinist should be able to adjust his/her intonation to match the rest of the group. (All the while looking down at those other instruments because of their limitations, of course. ;-) So you'd think that fiddlers with a classical background would know and understand that different musical groups use different intonation rules. Traditional Scottish music shouldn't be anything other than yet another sort of intonation, to be mastered if you want to pass as a Scottish fiddler. Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, John Chambers wrote: So you'd think that fiddlers with a classical background would know and understand that different musical groups use different intonation rules. Traditional Scottish music shouldn't be anything other than yet another sort of intonation, to be mastered if you want to pass as a Scottish fiddler. You would think that this would be the case. However it so often isn't the case, that I forever swore off playing in an group with more then two other fiddles. Toby Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Jack Campin wrote: the offending notes sometimes have more to do with the fingering on the fiddle and how difficult it is to play them. Therefore, it is not necessarily the same intervals which offend in each key. This I can see because for instance, I have a terrible time playing in tune in E major. It drives me crazy. I wonder whether this is the point of using that key? By far the most popular E major tune round here is Calliope House. Wimp fiddlers play it in D and it never sounds as good that way - maybe the variations in intonation produced by the technical difficulties Kate describes could be part of what gives it its distinctive character? Yeah, I never understood why anyone would play that one in D, unless they had a flute player that was playing along with them, or some situation like that. Lack of ability is no excuse :-) That's what practice is for. Very often when people start messing with the keys on tunes, they detract from quality of the tune. Sometimes they add something to the tune, but I think it's less common that the tune is improved. Toby Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (SUZANNE MACDONALD) writes: Altering the intervals of the most perfect instrument to those of the primitive and very imperfect one makes no musical sense nor any other sense Well, both these comments come from fiddlers so what do you expect? Of course a fiddler would regard the bagpipes as a `primitive and very imperfect' instrument -- just nine notes and so on. However a fiddle isn't any good in, e.g., battlefield-scale psychological warfare, and any piper would be forgiven if they considered a fiddle `primitive and very imperfect' on that account. In summary a note whose pitch lies about half way between G and G# is not in the equal tempered scale, is not in the just intonation scale, and does not designate a tune as Scottish. It is simply out of tune. It may be `out of tune' by your scientific definition but it may still sound right to the musicians (and audience). I have Ken Perlman's book on the fiddle music of Prince Edward Island, and his transcriptions show many instances where particular players play their notes `too sharp' or `too flat'. It's their style, and they've been doing it for ages in blissful ignorance of Messrs. Lloyd, Honeyman or Gill. I suppose you could walk up to a PEI fiddler and tell them that they're playing out of tune but chances are you would just be laughed out of the kitchen to the strains of vigorous out-of-tune fiddle music. And the same thing probably applies to Scottish fiddlers. Flattening the G# may not be a sure-fire indicator of `Scottish' styling but it is something that, for various reasons, one shouldn't be surprised to encounter in the playing of many Scottish instrumentalists, and if it does occur that usually happens on purpose rather than through sloppiness. P.S. I, Alexander, am the writer of these e-mails, not Suzanne Mac Donald. Well, if that is the case then maybe you should get your `From:' header fixed. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau .. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anyway, a little bit of Unix mindset is good for any programmer's soul. And a bit of education never hurt anyone. -- Tom Christiansen Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Anselm Lingnau wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (SUZANNE MACDONALD) writes: Altering the intervals of the most perfect instrument to those of the primitive and very imperfect one makes no musical sense nor any other sense Well, both these comments come from fiddlers so what do you expect? Of course a fiddler would regard the bagpipes as a `primitive and very imperfect' instrument -- just nine notes and so on. However a fiddle isn't any good in, e.g., battlefield-scale psychological warfare, and any piper would be forgiven if they considered a fiddle `primitive and very imperfect' on that account. Actually I am convinced that the pipes are a more difficult instrument to play then the fiddle. I am married to a piper, it takes alot of practice to get them going well. Pipers have the advantage that they don't have all those obnoxious pseudo-classical crossover players hanging around trying to tell them how to play. There are no strathspey and reel societies for pipers. Just pipe bands/bagpipe playing drinking clubs. That and the Scottish music genetic bigots (You aren't from Inverness county and you aren't 100% Scottish, so your music can't be any good) are the two factors that piss me off to no end. Fortunately we've been able to avoid those sorts of elements on this list, but there are plenty of other related lists out there that are rife with opinions like that. Sigh... :-) Toby Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
In response to my Tues 19:00 e-mail Anselm Lingnau wrote: Quoting me: Altering the intervals of the most perfect instrument to those of the primitive and very imperfect one makes no musical sense nor any other sense. Anselm's comment: Well, both these comments come from fiddlers so what do you expect? My comment: I would expect them to give an honest response. In addition their response is consistent with other important sources. Anselm: However a fiddle isn't any good in, e.g., battlefield-scale psychological warfare, and any piper would be forgiven if they considered a fiddle `primitive and very imperfect' on that account. My comment: Agreed. But should I ask, What would you expect from a piper? No I won't. A grand piano, a cello, etc isn't any good in battlefield-scale psychological warfare either but utility on the battlefield isn't the criteria I would use to rate the relative merits of musical instruments. My Tues e-mail comment: In summary a note whose pitch lies about half way between G and G# is not in the equal tempered scale, is not in the just intonation scale, and does not designate a tune as Scottish. It is simply out of tune. Alselm's comment: It may be `out of tune' by your scientific definition but it may still sound right to the musicians (and audience). I have Ken Perlman's book on the fiddle music of Prince Edward Island, and his transcriptions show many instances where particular players play their notes `too sharp' or `too flat'. It's their style, and they've been doing it for ages in blissful ignorance of Messrs. Lloyd, Honeyman or Gill. I suppose you could walk up to a PEI fiddler and tell them that they're playing out of tune but chances are you would just be laughed out of the kitchen to the strains of vigorous out-of-tune fiddle music. And the same thing probably applies to Scottish fiddlers. Flattening the G# may not be a sure-fire indicator of `Scottish' styling but it is something that, for various reasons, one shouldn't be surprised to encounter in the playing of many Scottish instrumentalists, and if it does occur that usually happens on purpose rather than through sloppiness. My comments: It isn't my scientific definition and what sounds right to musicians and audiences everywhere is playing in tune. The characteristics of the human ear, which is what determines this, are all the same no matter where you live. The in tune definition is that of the greatest minds in the subject in the last century. A quote from Lloyd's The Musical Ear is relevant here: It was Herman von Helmholtz who showed what was missing in the conjectures of his predecessors about the relations between the science of acoustics and the art of music. I also have Ken Pearlman's book and note the paragraph relating to the pitch of C# in the key of A major as being half way between C and C#. If the interval between A and a flatted C# were a deliberate musical choice in the key of A major then the interval between G and B in the key of G major should also be a flatted B. It never is. Also other fiddlers also play some of the tunes listed and don't play their C#'s flat. For example if you listed the best known Cape Breton fiddlers and then listed the CB fiddlers who play the least number of notes out of tune [as I have described out of tune] guess what! you'd have the same list. I should point out that every fiddler/violinist plays some notes out of tune sometimes. I don't think ignorance is ever blissful. Your responses dealt with the general comments/conclusions which I had made but you didn't respond on the details. That is unfortunate as that is where the discussion should center. My Tues e-mail comment: P.S. I, Alexander, am the writer of these e-mails, not Suzanne Mac Donald. Anselm's comment: Well, if that is the case then maybe you should get your `From:' header fixed. My response: My apologies. I am very new to computers and am very low down on the learning curve. This discussion appears to me to be getting personal. I'm only interested in the subject itself. Accordingly, for now at least, this will be my last e-mail on list. I will respond off list to anyone as best I can. Alexander Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
simply out of tune [temporarily emerging from real life to comment] Although I have great respect for Alexander MacDonald's considerable knowledge of Scottish/Cape Breton fiddle music and physics of sound production, I think that out of tune tones have their place in music. I sometimes witness my husband making use of notes which are slightly off to produce an emotional impact. (I use David for an example because he is recognized as a good musician, whereas I often could be justly accused of playing out of tune, I'm sure.) Alexander must be right in concluding that the absence of beats and the presence of resonating harmonics are pleasing to the ear, however, other more strident sounds also touch us by piquing our interest and emotions. Surely this is one reason why traditional musicians don't always correct their intonation. Nevertheless, Alexander makes a good point about the particular notes which tend to be played out of tune on the fiddle. Whereas I always looked at thirds and sevenths etc., Alexander noticed that the offending notes sometimes have more to do with the fingering on the fiddle and how difficult it is to play them. Therefore, it is not necessarily the same intervals which offend in each key. This I can see because for instance, I have a terrible time playing in tune in E major. It drives me crazy. Another point to think about is David Greenberg's idea of a hierarchy of importance for each musical tradition. In classical music, it may be considered by many to be more important to play in tune than to play with feeling (you can disagree with this, but most people won't pay money to go hear out-of-tune classical music and they'll flinch over any deviation from what's accepted). In Cape Breton fiddle music, playing with drive and good timing is more important than playing in tune. A fiddler could be so good that a few off notes don't really matter. In conclusion, although Alexander would like to see the issue of tuning as a purely scientific one, I believe that much about it comes down to a matter of opinion. - Kate D. -- Kate Dunlay David Greenberg Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada http://www.total.net/~dungreen Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Pipers have the advantage that they don't have all those obnoxious pseudo-classical crossover players hanging around trying to tell them how to play. There are no strathspey and reel societies for pipers. Just pipe bands/bagpipe playing drinking clubs. Are you kidding? Just like any other group, the piping world is full of people telling other people that they're doing it all wrong! (I'm not even in it and I know this.) They can't even agree on the history of their music! When people love something, they tend to have strong opinions about it. The problem is that sometimes this turns into intolerance of the opinions and practices of others. - Kate D. -- Kate Dunlay David Greenberg Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada http://www.total.net/~dungreen Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Alexander wrote: If the interval between A and a flatted C# were a deliberate musical choice in the key of A major then the interval between G and B in the key of G major should also be a flatted B. It never is. You've never tuned a guitar by ear then. One of the nice things about the fifth tuning on violins, mandolins etc is the welcome absence of an open string third interval. If you tune the G-B interval (3rd and 2nd strings) of the guitar to the best possible open string harmony by ear, you end up with flat B. I play the small 18th c wire-strung guittar and here the instrument is tuned to a hexachord - two triads with major thirds, cegc'e'g'. If you tune it by ear without using the frets, and try to get the major third right it is almost invariably flat. A beat-free, harmonious sounding major third interval is definitely flat and to be correct you have to train your ear to accept a slightly harsher interval (if you don't then the open string fails to agree with the fretted note corresponding to it, which sounds awful). David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Kate Dunlay or David Greenberg wrote: Pipers have the advantage that they don't have all those obnoxious pseudo-classical crossover players hanging around trying to tell them how to play. There are no strathspey and reel societies for pipers. Just pipe bands/bagpipe playing drinking clubs. Are you kidding? Just like any other group, the piping world is full of people telling other people that they're doing it all wrong! (I'm not even in it and I know this.) They can't even agree on the history of their music! When people love something, they tend to have strong opinions about it. The problem is that sometimes this turns into intolerance of the opinions and practices of others. - Kate D. I know about piper's being opinionated, however I still think alot of fidder's are even *more* opinionated. Some Cape Bretoner's who play the fiddle vicariously through other people (my great grandfather played and my brother plays, so that makes me an expert :-) are even more opinionated then 99% of the pipers and fiddlers that I know. I know you can think of a few people that are like that Kate! :-) Besides, even if pipers are *just* as opinionated, they're alot more fun to hang out with in groups then fiddlers. Especially the one's here in California. However, what could I possibly know about Scottish music, fiddlers, or pipers. I am after all here in California. I should be addressing everyone as dude and administrating the longboards-rule mailing list :-) Ha..ha..ha.. Sometimes I wonder if those people actually really do love the music, or enjoy playing the music, or whether they just use it as a vechicle to try to force their opinions on other people. It seems like it's almost an ego thing with them. Plus I'm sure it also gives them a convenient way to pass time during long, cold winters. Fortunately alot of better players are more open to the possibility that people who live more then 5 miles away from them might actually be able to play something worth listening too.. Toby Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
the offending notes sometimes have more to do with the fingering on the fiddle and how difficult it is to play them. Therefore, it is not necessarily the same intervals which offend in each key. This I can see because for instance, I have a terrible time playing in tune in E major. It drives me crazy. I wonder whether this is the point of using that key? By far the most popular E major tune round here is Calliope House. Wimp fiddlers play it in D and it never sounds as good that way - maybe the variations in intonation produced by the technical difficulties Kate describes could be part of what gives it its distinctive character? === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Pipers have the advantage that they don't have all those obnoxious pseudo-classical crossover players hanging around trying to tell them how to play. There are no strathspey and reel societies for pipers. Just pipe bands/bagpipe playing drinking clubs. Yep, but the piping world does have its own kind of authoritarianism that it is only recently, and only partially, managing to shake off. For years the prevalent culture was that if you weren't playing in the latest-and-greatest style out of Edinburgh Castle you weren't anywhere; and a lot of local piping styles have been lost as a result. In some sort of way, fiddlers have always taken the early-music ethic on board after a fashion, i.e. even if you aren't playing like Niel Gow did, you consider the way he played to be worthy of respect and worth knowing about. Whereas the Army-inspired piping perspective on somebody like Angus Mackay or Donald MacPhee is that they were irrelevant dusty old codgers who didn't have the chops to hack it in the modern world, and consciously trying to play in their style would get you nul points in any competition. I would love to hear some of those big nineteenth-century marches played on the low-pitch pipes of the time, with the relatively small bands that were the rule in the Crimean war period and using rope-tensioned drums. Try that at a Highland Games and you'd be laughed out of town. (Rumour has it that an analogous approach to piobaireachd could get you duffed up in a Glasgow back street, but perhaps we should take that to alt.conspiracy...). === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
In response to my comment; If the interval between A and a flatted C# were a deliberate musical choice in the key of A major then the interval between G and B in the key of G major should also be a flatted B. It never is. David Kilpatrick wrote: You've never tuned a guitar by ear then. My comment: David you've missed the point completely. The reference was to fiddlers known tendency to play middle finger notes approximately mid way between the index and ring fingers as was described in Perlman's book on PEI fiddlers giving a flat C# in the key of A major; and that if this were a deliberate choice of interval then when playing the same or a similar tune in G major they should play a flatted B so as to get the same interval but they don't. Therefore the former interval choice wasn't a musical one but rather what Honeyman calls slovenly fingering. Alexander Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
David Kilpatrick wrote: The sharpened note is not out of tune. It is imitative of the *correct* sharp pitch of the appropriate note on (in this case) Border pipes. Each type of bagpipe - great Highland, Scottish smallpipe, Border, Northumbrian and to a lesser extent the more elaborate and almost microtonal Irish inventions which look crossed with a clarinet - not only has a traditional overall pitch which often isn't A=440, but also a traditional relative pitch for each tone. To my ear the modern highland bagpipe usually sounds most 'normal' and the conical bore Border pipe the most extreme, but I've heard Northumbrian ones which are similar - one local player has a vintage set which gives him space at sessions, since no-one can join in with anything he does without retuning. Many fiddle tunes are also pipe tunes, and fiddlers take great pride in playing them in a manner which makes this ancestry audible. Part of the skill in doing that lies in imitating the tones (sorry, I don't like using the word 'note' instead of 'tone' in the context of a pitch) of the pipes. And that is one thing which can make a style sound 'Scottish' . My comment: We need to define what is in tune . It is the absence of beats or roughness or dissonance, which is caused by a lack of unisons in the low harmonics. Playing a note on the fiddle imitative of a pipe note does not mean it is in tune. Further the human ear cannot measure deviations from a tuned note, a tuned note as I have defined it. Further still, as you and others have pointed out, the flatted seventh note is a different pitch in different pipes and further still again the intervals in the highland pipes have and are undergoing changes for years. Even, then, were a fiddler able to accurately play the flatted note, which one would be considered authentic or traditional , the modern one or the ancient one or the multiplicity that have existed between the two, or even the multiplicity that now exist in the modern pipes. [For more on this see Llewelyn Lloyd's quotes below] Here are some quotes from others relevant to this discussion. 1. The Bagpipe Scale, an essay by Llewelyn Lloyd published in the The Monthly Musical Record. A. Quoting another source he says there was no scientific principle adopted in boring the holes of chanters, and that only about one in every six made turns out useful. B. He reports that on tests conducted on eight chanters all eight had significantly different pitch differences in at least one interval. 2 .The Strathspey, Reel, and Hornpipe Tutor by William C Honeyman. A. No one can be a good strathspey player who does not play strictly in tune. There is even a scientific reason why a strathspey player should in some cases be more strictly correct in his intonation than any other violin playerSlovenly fingering of semitones is at all times irritating to any one with a sensitive ear. . B. The Scottish bagpipes [are a] primitive and very imperfect instrument. However he says its eccentricities and peculiar school of composition even when that music was intended for the violin.. will haunt purely Scottish and Irish music through all time. 3. From The Book of the Violin edited by Dominic Gill The violin is one of the most perfect, as well as the most acoustically complex, of all musical instruments. Altering the intervals of the most perfect instrument to those of the primitive and very imperfect one makes no musical sense nor any other sense and so I conclude as I did in my last e-mail: In summary a note whose pitch lies about half way between G and G# is not in the equal tempered scale, is not in the just intonation scale, and does not designate a tune as Scottish. It is simply out of tune. Alexander P.S. I, Alexander, am the writer of these e-mails, not Suzanne 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
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
[high G in the pipe scale] The sharpened note is not out of tune. It is imitative of the *correct* sharp pitch of the appropriate note on (in this case) Border pipes. Yeah, but. This is a modern guess. Surviving old Border chanters have often had this note drastically recut to sharpen it, as if the expected pitch (and presumably the repertoire of tunes being played) had changed a lot over the years. It isn't clear that in-between was seen as the ideal place to be, just that it suited later tunes better than the flat seventh, even if you couldn't chisel and file it all the way up to G#. I don't think the definitive explanation of what's going on here can be purely in terms of instrument characteristics. Even purely vocal melodies sometimes demand that the low G be definitely natural while the exact pitch of the high one doesn't matter very much; nobody makes pipes with a sharp low G, though it's just as easy to do as the normal construction. Saying a choice of pitch is a result of the way pipes are made begs the question of why the pipes were made that way in the first place. Which is a matter of music rather than carpentry. Odd thing is that similar brief bursts of 'drone' occur in smallpipe playing What do you mean? The actual drones don't do brief bursts; are you talking about using a chanter note as a secondary pedal by filling in the subsidiary beats with it? [ringing strings on fiddles] Now I may be told that exactly the same things happen in Irish or English, Welsh or Appalachian music (or if Jack's reading, Turkish) so this may not be Scottish style. Doesn't have to be exclusively Scottish to be Scottish... You certainly do get the same thing in Appalachian fiddling (listen to Bruce Molsky), and in Scandinavian styles. You don't in Turkish playing on either kind of keman (a word used for both Western fiddles and for an instrument from Central Asia resembling the Chinese er-hu), as they are played in as vocal a manner as possible. You get a LOT of it in Black Sea fiddling (using the kemence, shaped like the old European kit) but as that's tuned in fourths, played with lots of double-stops and three- strings-at-once bowing, it sounds really different; the least vocal music imaginable, with the highest metronome speeds ever found in the field anywhere, accelerating up to 900bpm in one of Picken's transcriptions. English in former times I'm not sure about. The English were the first people in the British Isles to use the fiddle for folk music, and if we are to believe the illustrations in Playford's books from the 1650s, the kind of fiddle they used was the kit. Did English kits of this period have flattish or highly arched bridges? There must be surviving examples. Not sure there any 17th century kits surviving that were definitely used in Scotland, though the instrument must have got here. === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Jack Campin wrote: Odd thing is that similar brief bursts of 'drone' occur in smallpipe playing What do you mean? The actual drones don't do brief bursts; are you talking about using a chanter note as a secondary pedal by filling in the subsidiary beats with it? Probably. It usually sounds very droney or bass. Sort of punctuative farting. When I think about it is can also happen with what sound like random, loud 'noises off' which are clearly deliberate and not bass. It's an effect or technique I really like but have never tried to copy on a guitar :-) [ringing strings on fiddles] Now I may be told that exactly the same things happen in Irish or English, Welsh or Appalachian music (or if Jack's reading, Turkish) so this may not be Scottish style. Doesn't have to be exclusively Scottish to be Scottish... You certainly do get the same thing in Appalachian fiddling (listen to Bruce Molsky), and in Scandinavian styles. You don't in Turkish playing on either kind of keman (a word used for both Western fiddles and for an instrument from Central Asia resembling the Chinese er-hu), as they are played in as vocal a manner as possible. You get a LOT of it in Black Sea fiddling (using the kemence, shaped like the old European kit) but as that's tuned in fourths, played with lots of double-stops and three- strings-at-once bowing, it sounds really different; the least vocal music imaginable, with the highest metronome speeds ever found in the field anywhere, accelerating up to 900bpm in one of Picken's transcriptions. Help! Throw all those books from 300 years ago with 72-80 bpm as the natural state of human musical speed out of the window. What do they drink to go with this? English in former times I'm not sure about. The English were the first people in the British Isles to use the fiddle for folk music, and if we are to believe the illustrations in Playford's books from the 1650s, the kind of fiddle they used was the kit. Did English kits of this period have flattish or highly arched bridges? There must be surviving examples. Not sure there any 17th century kits surviving that were definitely used in Scotland, though the instrument must have got here. I always wonder whether instruments have changed, or artists just couldn't draw them. I think the MOMI website (Museum of Musical Instruments) has some examples of the ambiguity of f-hole shapes, body lengths etc in old woodcuts. David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
David writes: | I always wonder whether instruments have changed, or artists just | couldn't draw them. I think the MOMI website (Museum of Musical | Instruments) has some examples of the ambiguity of f-hole shapes, body | lengths etc in old woodcuts. In some historical circles, looking for howlers in artistic works is an ongoing game. Artists historically have often been somewhat contemptuous of mere technical detail, and often painted things that are physically absurd or impossible. Musical instruments are among the most common examples, especially stringed instruments. I've seen any number of drawing or paintings of stringed instruments whose necks were at an angle to the top of the body, so that the strings would have to bend at the junction. For a more subtle one, you sometimes see bows drawn at an angle to the string. But players always learn that the bow must be at a right angle to the string to get a good sound. Such things have nothing to do with the musical culture or tradition; they're a matter of basic physics. So you can't trust artistic representations of musical instruments, unless you know that the specific artist was up to the task. Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
You don't [get ringing-string effects] in Turkish playing on either kind of keman (a word used for both Western fiddles and for an instrument from Central Asia resembling the Chinese er-hu), as they are played in as vocal a manner as possible. Brainfart. Keman means a Western fiddle or a thing like a vielle/rebec. The Central Asian doodad is a rebab. All three are played in similar vocal-melodic style. You get a LOT of it in Black Sea fiddling [...] the least vocal music imaginable, with the highest metronome speeds ever found in the field anywhere, accelerating up to 900bpm in one of Picken's transcriptions. Help! Throw all those books from 300 years ago with 72-80 bpm as the natural state of human musical speed out of the window. What do they drink to go with this? The local mind-bender is deli bal (mad honey), a psychedelic honey derived from the flowers of _Rhododendron ponticum_, the Pontic azalea, which also happens to be the commonest kind of rhododendron in Scotland. The flowers are supposed to have the desired effect even without being run through a bee. I have no personal experience of what that effect is. Apparently there is a description in Xenophon's _Anabasis_ but I haven't found it. The dances that go with this kind of fiddling are the usual Middle Eastern line or circle type, though you can't do much but pogo up and down or wobble enthusiastically during these ultra-fast breaks. Think of a fusion of Morris dancing and hard house. if we are to believe the illustrations in Playford's books from the 1650s, the kind of fiddle [English folk fiddlers] used was the kit. I always wonder whether instruments have changed, or artists just couldn't draw them. No artist could confuse a kit with a normal-shaped fiddle. The soundbox is only half as wide. === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
SUZANNE MACDONALD wrote: All of this brings us back to the beginning of this discussion, the pitch of the seventh note in a Scottish fiddle tune, specifically G# in the key of A major. The pitch of the seventh note is dictated by the ratios of the just intonation scale. Playing this note somewhere between G and G# is something which violin instruction books warn teachers is a natural tendency, is something which many fiddlers do and is an example of what Lionel Turtis refers to when he says but how many do not [play in tune]. In summary a note whose pitch lies about half way between G and G# is not in the equal tempered scale, is not in the just intonation scale, and does not designate a tune as Scottish. It is simply out of tune. If I can go back to something I said a long time ago at the beginning of this thread, which grew into the current discussion/argie, and which I've already repeated once: The sharpened note is not out of tune. It is imitative of the *correct* sharp pitch of the appropriate note on (in this case) Border pipes. Each type of bagpipe - great Highland, Scottish smallpipe, Border, Northumbrian and to a lesser extent the more elaborate and almost microtonal Irish inventions which look crossed with a clarinet - not only has a traditional overall pitch which often isn't A=440, but also a traditional relative pitch for each tone. To my ear the modern highland bagpipe usually sounds most 'normal' and the conical bore Border pipe the most extreme, but I've heard Northumbrian ones which are similar - one local player has a vintage set which gives him space at sessions, since no-one can join in with anything he does without retuning. Many fiddle tunes are also pipe tunes, and fiddlers take great pride in playing them in a manner which makes this ancestry audible. Part of the skill in doing that lies in imitating the tones (sorry, I don't like using the word 'note' instead of 'tone' in the context of a pitch) of the pipes. And that is one thing which can make a style sound 'Scottish' - back to the original difficult question. Combined with other refinements of style, tempo, bowing, ornaments etc. If it's worth another comment from a non-fiddler but occasional repairer of old fiddles, my friends tell me the following also applies (after attempting to play my repaired fiddles): Pre-watershed date in fiddle design - apparently around mid-19th c - the fingerboard is closer to the body and the bridge much lower. Also, the radius of the fingerboard may be a little flatter. I've had a couple of these old fiddles and sorted them out, but 'orchestral' or classically trained violin players don't like them. They prefer the modern design where the angle of the neck is much steeper and the bridge is pretty high, lifting the strings well away from the body. It permits clean bowing of individual strings. The old flatter design is better for playing against the chest, instead of under the neck, and lends itself to drone-effects as it's relatively hard to avoid playing two strings together unless you bow right next to the bridge. Since Scots country fiddles were made, or imported, with the flatter 'old' geometry until some time after this had changed, some of the 'drone hits' you hear in traditional playing (slightly random but rythmic with it!) are really just a result of this. Players with modern orchestral fiddles where the strings are more widely radiussed, using a modern trained bow action, now have to learn to hit these deliberately. Odd thing is that similar brief bursts of 'drone' occur in smallpipe playing and in some squeeze box styles, apparently the pipe thing is another 'feature of the instrument' occurrence, not sure about the squeezeboxes or whether they are just imitating the effect by hitting a bass or chord button briefly. Now I may be told that exactly the same things happen in Irish or English, Welsh or Appalachian music (or if Jack's reading, Turkish) so this may not be Scottish style. But it's certainly a feature of Border fiddle playing, combined with a robust attack, if recent recordings are properly representative. David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
On Wednesday July 12,10:27, Wendy Galovich: Please don't be offended but I have concluded that you haven't read or do not understand the two quotes which I included in my last e-mail. Um.. Actually I did read and understand them, and my own conclusion is that the main problem here is one of semantics and context.. more on that below. The last line in the Turtis quote bears repeating here, I am concerned that we may be boring others on the list with this discussion. If you wish to communicate further perhaps we should do it off list. Not yet. I have a question for you that I would like to ask in the forum of the list, because I think it would benefit many of us, if you would be so kind as to answer it; it has to do with the semantics issue, and revolves around the definitions of the following terms: - tempered scale - alternate scale I am not disputing exact scientific/musical definition of the tempered scale (which is not new information to me or to most of the rest of the list), nor am I challenging your comments about alternate scales per se. But the practical reality here is that English language is such that we often we find ourselves having to use it in an imprecise way, not out of ignorance but simply because the language lacks a specific word or short phrase to precisely describe the particular concept we're trying to express. We're in the midst of just such a situation, where the above terms end up getting used, with the intent of a slightly different definition, as follows: 1) tempered scale: a scale structure in which the individual pitch intervals are *approximately* 1.059, but with fine adjustments to correct each note so that it is in tune, in relation to its neighboring notes. (This is the concept I had in mind when I said that the CT and MA fiddlers tend to stick to the tempered scale. 2) alternate scale: a scale in which the pitch of one or more of its notes deviates from the tempered scale as described in 1). My comment: The Llewelyn Lloyd quote which I referred to says in effect that equal temperment should not dictate to our ears where it has no right [e.g.in string playing and singing]. Why then would you begin the scale discussion with 1, the tempered scale, which doesn't apply and then modify it in some way to produce 2. the alternate scale. When you alter the tempered scale with fine adjustments to correct each note so that it is in tune, in relation to its neighboring notes, by definition you don't have a tempered scale, you have the scale which is used in unaccompanied singing and in string playing. Naming this scale presents the difficulties you referred to re of the vagaries of the English language and also because the literature on the subject has not standardized its definitions. I have seen it called the pure scale, the just scale and the just intonation scale. Llewelyn Lloyd prefers the latter. Its requirement is that the interval between pairs of notes be a specific arithmetic ratio, a ratio that is not possible on a fixed pitch instrument such as the piano. For example when tuning your fiddle, D to A for example, [which gives you two note in the just intonation scale] the ratio is 3/2. Your ear isn't interested in arithmetic, but it recognizes the unison notes produced by the second harmonic A, an octave above the open A on the A string and the third harmonic on the D string which is the same A. This will only occur when the ratio of the open A to the open D is exactly 3/2. When Lionel Turtis says A note infinitesimally flat or sharp lacks the rich, round, penetrative, luscious sound that only a note perfectly in tune will give you, he is referring to flat or sharp as measured against the just intonation scale. All of this brings us back to the beginning of this discussion, the pitch of the seventh note in a Scottish fiddle tune, specifically G# in the key of A major. The pitch of the seventh note is dictated by the ratios of the just intonation scale. Playing this note somewhere between G and G# is something which violin instruction books warn teachers is a natural tendency, is something which many fiddlers do and is an example of what Lionel Turtis refers to when he says but how many do not [play in tune]. In summary a note whose pitch lies about half way between G and G# is not in the equal tempered scale, is not in the just intonation scale, and does not designate a tune as Scottish. It is simply out of tune. Alexander P.S. Toby Rider wrote: Sigh.. This whole what makes a style 'Scottish'? question has come up so many times on this list in the past, that it makes me sad and tired just to think about it :-) To put it bluntly, you have to be either not be listening, or totally unfamiliar with the style to not hear it. I don't know of anyone who can listen to a set by Tommy Peoples and get him confused with Alasdair Fraser. My comment: While I can understand that What makes a style Scottish may have come up on this list
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
On Wednesday 11 July 2001 15:40, you wrote: Wendy Galovich wrote: Please don't be offended but I have concluded that you haven't read or do not understand the two quotes which I included in my last e-mail. Um.. Actually I did read and understand them, and my own conclusion is that the main problem here is one of semantics and context.. more on that below. The last line in the Turtis quote bears repeating here, I am concerned that we may be boring others on the list with this discussion. If you wish to communicat further perhaps we snould do it off list. Not yet. I have a question for you that I would like to ask in the forum of the list, because I think it would benefit many of us, if you would be so kind as to answer it; it has to do with the semantics issue, and revolves around the definitions of the following terms: - tempered scale - alternate scale I am not disputing exact scientific/musical definition of the tempered scale (which is not new information to me or to most of the rest of the list), nor am I challenging your comments about alternate scales per se. But the practical reality here is that English language is such that we often we find ourselves having to use it in an imprecise way, not out of ignorance but simply because the language lacks a specific word or short phrase to precisely describe the particular concept we're trying to express. We're in the midst of just such a situation, where the above terms end up getting used, with the intent of a slightly different definition, as follows: 1) tempered scale: a scale structure in which the individual pitch intervals are *approximately* 1.059, but with fine adjustments to correct each note so that it is in tune, in relation to its neighboring notes. (This is the concept I had in mind when I said that the CT and MA fiddlers tend to stick to the tempered scale. 2) alternate scale: a scale in which the pitch of one or more of its notes deviates from the tempered scale as described in 1). Both of the above are *rough* working definitions, if you will, employed for the sake of being able to discuss the concepts described without having to use the entire description each time; I'm well aware of what you've already said about each. In truth I've seen quite a few occasions on a number of lists where pitch intervals have been discussed using that framework, by participants who were well aware of the scientific and musical theory behind them, and understood that they were using the terms in a very loosely-defined way, but did so because they *needed* an agreed-upon parlance for discussing the *concepts* in 1) and 2). So what we really need, if we shouldn't be using those particular terms to describe those concepts, is a better set of terms. I am personally not aware of any terms that fit this particular need, but it's pretty clear to me that we have to do that before any productive discussion of the concepts can occur. Can you help with that? Thanks, Wendy Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Sigh.. This whole what makes a style 'Scottish'? question has come up so many times on this list in the past, that it makes me sad and tired just to think about it :-) To put it bluntly, you have to be either not be listening, or totally unfamiliar with the style to not hear it. I don't know of anyone who can listen to a set by Tommy Peoples and get him confused with Alasdair Fraser. Even my Chinese mother, who knows nothing about Scottish music can hear the differences. The key is in repetitive listening and mimicking. Hundreds, thousands of times, over and over. Just like learning a new language. Even sub-dialects are pretty easy to pick out after just a little while. John Campbell sounds nothing like Alasdair Fraser, just like Oscar Peterson sounds nothing like Liberace. You can even tell when listening to my favourite instrument in the world, the accordion very big smirk. Sharon Shannon sure doesn't sound like Phil Cunningham. If you don't know who any of those folks are, sounds like what we really need to do is post a discography online and not waste time trying to prove the obvious :-) All of these written/verbal definitions are really just like walking outside, pointing a straw at the ocean and saying if you get out there and swim long enough, you will end up reaching Japan. That of course tells me nothing about what kind of journey that might be, which is what is really important. You have to get into the water. It's all entirely about the journey, all about the process, the results are just a byproduct. I am certain that if you were to follow anything I just said, that very quickly the questions would answer themselves. Toby On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Wendy Galovich wrote: On Wednesday 11 July 2001 15:40, you wrote: Wendy Galovich wrote: Please don't be offended but I have concluded that you haven't read or do not understand the two quotes which I included in my last e-mail. Um.. Actually I did read and understand them, and my own conclusion is that the main problem here is one of semantics and context.. more on that below. The last line in the Turtis quote bears repeating here, I am concerned that we may be boring others on the list with this discussion. If you wish to communicat further perhaps we snould do it off list. Not yet. I have a question for you that I would like to ask in the forum of the list, because I think it would benefit many of us, if you would be so kind as to answer it; it has to do with the semantics issue, and revolves around the definitions of the following terms: - tempered scale - alternate scale I am not disputing exact scientific/musical definition of the tempered scale (which is not new information to me or to most of the rest of the list), nor am I challenging your comments about alternate scales per se. But the practical reality here is that English language is such that we often we find ourselves having to use it in an imprecise way, not out of ignorance but simply because the language lacks a specific word or short phrase to precisely describe the particular concept we're trying to express. Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
This is also to do with the fact that the twelfth-root-of-two (or 1.059) ratio applies to `physically ideal' strings that have no diameter. If you look at a piano with the various lids and covers off you will find that this is obviously not true, especially for the bass notes. It turns out that a piano tuning must be `stretched' somewhat for the piano to sound in tune with itself on account of these deviations, and good piano tuners are supposed to cater for this. As a pianist, I don't know what to make of all this varied-interval business. On the one hand, I'm half glad that I don't have to worry about it; on the other hand it seems that I can't really play Scottish music, which I think is a pity :^( There's nothing to stop you tuning a piano to just intonation, meantone or whatever, and fortepianos used for early music are sometimes tuned that way, with Werckmeister III being the most popular alternative and the most likely tuning that Nathaniel Gow grew up with (presumably the tuner still makes some compensation for string stiffness as described above, but early piano strings were lighter so there is less to correct). Much of Terry Riley's music in the last few decades has been for pianos or other keyboards tuned in just intonation. If you stuck to playing in G, D and A, going back to Gow or forward to Riley might even improve the sound of the piano for Scottish music. There was a spectacular example of tweaked piano tuning on Radio 3 last week; a concerto for piano and gamelan orchestra by Lou Harrison, in which the piano was tuned to match the gamelan. Really nice piece. A Scottish answer to that might be getting a gamelan made tuned to the pipe scale so it could play along with a pipe band. I hereby trademark the band name Shotts and Dyak Head for the result. === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Wendy Galovich wrote: U.. the statements you made in the paragraph to which I was responding: that in a literal sense it is impossible to play *exactly* in, or tune an instrument *exactly* to, equal temperament, because we aren't even capable of hearing the minute differences in pitch to enable us to do that. At least that is what I understood you to be saying, but if not, please correct me. Comment: Actualy that is not what I was saying. We are able to detect differences in pitch but can't measure them. The human ear measures musical intervals by tuning in the unison harmonics produced by the two notes. Some are easy to do, such as the fifth, the third is more difficult, the tempered semitone is impossible, either exactly as you say or inexactly. The reason for this is that there is no unusuin harmonic in two notes separated by the ratio 1.059 or any of its aritmetic multiples. That is why the piano tuner tunes the instrument in the manner I described in a previous e-mail. Um.. First, if you're going to quote me, I'd very much appreciate if you'd do me the courtesy of including enough of the quote so that what I originally said is clear. Maybe you misunderstood the context I was referring to.. was that why you omitted the rest of the paragraph when you quoted me above? Anyway, for clarity's sake, here it is again, this time in its entirety. Especially pertinent to the point I was trying to make is the last sentence: This is obvious if you're going to break the tempered scale down to that degree, but it doesn't address the context of my original comment, which was a response to your assertion about fiddlers playing, as you said, out of tune. From the perspective of common sense it's clear that in that context we must necessarily speak of tempered or alternate scales as far as they are discernible *by the human ear*. Comment: I had not intended to misquote you. My appoligies if that was what was conveyed. Tempered scales and alternate scales must be dealt with sepapately. The equal tempered 12-note chromatic scale with which we are familiar is the one defined by the ratio of a semitone being 1.095. Deviations from this, although discernable as being a different pitch ,do not constitute a different scale. Also common sense is based on a person's education, knowledge, life expereiences, etc. In other words it is frequently not common at all When I said break the tempered scale down to that degree, I wasn't being *literal*, but simply merely pointing out that the level of precision you're referring to is overkill in a discussion that was originally about using alternate scales in one's playing. Comment: There are two separate issues here. Firstly you are saying that playing the notes which conforms to the ratio which defines the equal tempered scale is overkill. It fundamently is not. Secondly, referring back to the type of tune which began this discussion, a tune in A, altering the pitch of the seventh note so that it is somewhere between G and G# does not condtitute a different scale. Similiarly playing a tune which conforms only approximately to the tempered scale is not playing in another scale. Please don't be offended but I have concluded that you haven't read or do not understand the two quotes which I included in my last e-mail. They are based on the work of Herman von Helmholtz, who is considered the father of the science of accoustics, who Encyclopedia Britanica describes as one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century and on subsequent work by Alexander J. Ellis and Llewelyn S. Lloyd, the latter of whom was a Grove's consultant, writer of a text book on the subject, and the author of approx 50 essays on the subject in learned journals.The last line in the Turtis quote bears repeating here, I am concerned that we may be boring others on the list with this discussion. If you wish to communicat further perhaps we snould do it off list. Alexander Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
I'm correcting errors in my just sent e-mail unusuin should read unison and condtitute constitute. I also left out the Tertis last line quote.It is .A note infinitesimally flat or sharp lacks the rich, round, penetrative, lucious sound that only a note perfectly in tune will give you. Alexander Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (SUZANNE MACDONALD) writes: That is why a piano tuner has to achieve this objective by listening to the interplay between repeated fifths and fourths. Even employing this method and with infinitely more time than a fiddler has to play a single note, it has been demonstrated that the best piano tuners deviate somewhat from the ratio. This is also to do with the fact that the twelfth-root-of-two (or 1.059) ratio applies to `physically ideal' strings that have no diameter. If you look at a piano with the various lids and covers off you will find that this is obviously not true, especially for the bass notes. It turns out that a piano tuning must be `stretched' somewhat for the piano to sound in tune with itself on account of these deviations, and good piano tuners are supposed to cater for this. As a pianist, I don't know what to make of all this varied-interval business. On the one hand, I'm half glad that I don't have to worry about it; on the other hand it seems that I can't really play Scottish music, which I think is a pity :^( Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau .. [EMAIL PROTECTED] We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it, and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.-- Mark Twain Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Anselm Lingnau wrote: As a pianist, I don't know what to make of all this varied-interval business. On the one hand, I'm half glad that I don't have to worry about it; on the other hand it seems that I can't really play Scottish music, which I think is a pity :^( The use of crushed notes, semitone slurs and little passing notes on the semitone adjacent, either higher or lower, can create the right sort of 'feel' on the piano. I also believe that some composers use particular chord intervals or keys because they create harmonics, or sound more appropriate. I do know for certain that playing on an electronic (Clavinova) piano in the keys of D or A, which are those used most often in the session music I know, sounds totally wrong. For some reason keys like E flat or C minor sound far better - the black note keys seem to have better intervals. I have not tried using the 'transpose' function on the keyboard to shift Eb down to D. Tony McManus was playing some Scottish pieces on guitar at a local concert last month, and for one piece he used almost nothing but touched harmonics - that gave the intervals a different sound. David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Wendy Galovich wrote: This is obvious if you're going to break the tempered scale down to that degree. Comment: 1. What is obvious? 2. I didn't break anything down. The ratio 1.059 is by definition the interval of a semitone in the equal tempered scale. More about this later. Anselm Lingnau wrote: This is also to do with the fact that the twelfth-root-of-two (or 1.059) ratio applies to' physically ideal' strings that have no diameter. If you look at a piano with the various lids and covers off you will find that this is obviously not true, especially for the bass notes. It turns out that a piano tuning must be `stretched' somewhat for the piano to sound in tune with itself on account of these deviations, and good piano tuners are supposed to cater for this. Comment: 'Physically ideal' strings requires definition and all strings have a diameter. See below also. The following are two quotes taken from firstly Intervals, Scales and Temperment by Lewelyn Lloyd. Lloyd was an advisor to Groves Dictionary of Music, a twenty volume publication considered by many the bible of music. In a foreword to the book a Mr. Kenneth Van Barthold, who was a professional pianist, a teacher of the pianoforte at Trinity College of Music and head of the music department at the City Literary Institute. On the subject of 'pitch' or intonation he writes: What has happened is that the keyboard has come to be the arbiter of intonation. Many a singer is brought up suddenly by a bang on the piano. But piano intonation equivocates; the sounds are impure, many of the overtones lost or damped on purpose, and every interval except the octave out of tune [and many octaves are 'stretched' for added brilliance]. This then is the arbiter we use; more, it is for many students their first contact with the quality and classification of tonal intervals and harmonics. The dangers to the sensitivity of the ear are obvious. We cannot put the clock back. Equal temperment provides the most effective compromise so far discovered. It is ignorance of the nature of this compromise which is inexcusable, as is the assumption that it should dictate to our ears where it has no right [e.g.in string playing and singing].This means, Wendy, that if the Connecticut and Massachusetts fiddlers were doing what you have said they are doing, i.e., playing in the tempered scale, they would be playing every note except the octave out of tune. My second quote is on the same subject and is taken from the book My Viola and I written by Liomel Turtis. Turtis was one of the greatest violists of this century and a noted string teacher. He writes: Perfect intonation is the rock-foundation of the string player's equipmentFaulty intonation in most cases is the result of utter carelessness,.Most of us who profess to play a string instrument have 'good ears', that is sensitive to true intonation, and what is more, most of us are capable of discerning and attaining this. But how many do not.. 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...A note infinitesimally flat or sharp lacks the rich, round, penetrative, lucious sound that only a note perfectly in tune will give you. Alexander Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
On Tuesday 10 July 2001 13:54, you wrote: Wendy Galovich wrote: This is obvious if you're going to break the tempered scale down to that degree. Comment: 1. What is obvious? ..U.. the statements you made in the paragraph to which I was responding: that in a literal sense it is impossible to play *exactly* in, or tune an instrument *exactly* to, equal temperament, because we aren't even capable of hearing the minute differences in pitch to enable us to do that. At least that is what I understood you to be saying, but if not, please correct me. 2. I didn't break anything down. The ratio 1.059 is by definition the interval of a semitone in the equal tempered scale. More about this later. Um.. First, if you're going to quote me, I'd very much appreciate if you'd do me the courtesy of including enough of the quote so that what I originally said is clear. Maybe you misunderstood the context I was referring to.. was that why you omitted the rest of the paragraph when you quoted me above? Anyway, for clarity's sake, here it is again, this time in its entirety. Especially pertinent to the point I was trying to make is the last sentence: This is obvious if you're going to break the tempered scale down to that degree, but it doesn't address the context of my original comment, which was a response to your assertion about fiddlers playing, as you said, out of tune. From the perspective of common sense it's clear that in that context we must necessarily speak of tempered or alternate scales as far as they are discernible *by the human ear*. When I said break the tempered scale down to that degree, I wasn't being *literal*, but simply merely pointing out that the level of precision you're referring to is overkill in a discussion that was originally about using alternate scales in one's playing. However, that doesn't mean it isn't useful information. I did very much enjoy the refresher on string properties and equal temperament.. thank you for posting that! Wendy Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For harp you would assume that tuning using an advanced electronic tuner set to the same kind of temperament used for virginals, I gotta get one of those tuners! What I do on my clarsach is tune with the aid of a tuner (it saves time) and then I play a couple of pieces and adjust some of the intervals, until it sounds right. So I can't really say which tuning system I'm using. I'd love to find out if I am getting close to an established system. I don't do pure Pythagorean because I like to have sweet sounding 6ths. --Cynthia Cathcart Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For harp you would assume that tuning using an advanced electronic tuner set to the same kind of temperament used for virginals, I gotta get one of those tuners! What I do on my clarsach is tune with the aid of a tuner (it saves time) and then I play a couple of pieces and adjust some of the intervals, until it sounds right. So I can't really say which tuning system I'm using. I'd love to find out if I am getting close to an established system. I am planning to get one myself as I have a spinet to tune. My regular music shop in Edinburgh has a whole range - I think the name might be Fisher? - and the version with a whole set of stored 'temperaments' is very expensive - around $200 compared to the usual $30. But my existing tuners have lasted for years, and been very reliable, so I think owning one of these would be a lifetime investment and very valuable. Apart from anything else, it would probably be accurate enough to measure the fretted note pitches on my 18th century guittar, which are different from the intervals on a modern instrument. David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
David Kilpatrick in response to Janice Hopper wrote: Another point is the use of slightly microtonal sharps/flats and instruments which are not in modern equal temperament. This is why most Scottish music sounds utterly, totally wrong on electronic keyboards; even the accordion, which is well loved for dance music, has a temperament which is not compatible with correctly played Scottish fiddle, or with traditional pipes (some modern pipes are set up to play more compatibly with other instruments). A good reason for NOT accompanying a solo singer is that left unaccompanied, the singer will use the natural vocal temperament and intervals, and when this happens some of the classic Scots tunes take on a special quality and beauty which they don't have if forced to a piano scale.. When learning a reel in A major with a fiddler, I had to question a 7th frequently used: was it a minor of major, G or G sharp? Neither - it was a note similar to the G on smallpipes and distinctly sharper than a standard minor 7th. So on the guitar this needed a sort of 'bluesy' bend upwards. It is written as a minor 7th in the music. I believe that these are separate and unrelated problems. The first relates to centuries of musicians' struggle with scales with which to play music; i.e. the Pythagorean scale; the mean-tone scale; the tempered scale, etc. They are not related to Scottish music exclusively but to all western civilization music and to at least some extent to music throughout the world. The problem results from the fact that when our scale is constructed from the two intervals, octaves and fifths, which are most pleasing to the human ear, a discrepancy occurs. When moving in 12 fifths and 7 octaves from a common note, say C, the final notes are both C but differ in pitch by a small amount called the Pythagorean comma. In the equal tempered scale this discrepancy is distributed equally among the twelve notes of the chromatic scale. The result is that every note in the scale is slightly our of tune; with, for example, the interval of a fifth being very close to correct and the third considerably off. A second problem occurs because even in a scale constructed using pure intervals the notes must be mutable so as to make the concords exact [For example in the interval of a fifth the ratio of the fifth note to the first must be exactly 3\2.] The compromise reached to deal with the problem[s] is the tempered scale. However the problem only occurs in fixed pitch instruments such as the piano. It does not exist in the fiddle or violin if you prefer that name because the player can adjust the pitch of the note to suit The piano [and its predecessors] has so dominated western civilization music that we tend to use it as a basis from which to compare, etc. We should not. Re When learning a reel in A major with a fiddler 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; G#'s on the E and D strings are frequently played flat to correct pitch, C and G [naturals] on the A and E strings are played sharp,etc. This is due to the combination of those notes being physically difficult to execute in the early stages of learning to play the instrument and subsequent inattention to the need to listen with the consummate attention required to play precisely in tune. The fiddler to which you refer playing the 7th note [G] in the key of A neither sharp nor flat is typical. There is an added complication in Scottish music because many of the tunes are in A mixolydian requiring a G natural and are often played in sequence with A Major tunes requiring a G sharp This, I think, further confuses the issue. Alexander Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Wendy Galovich wrote: 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. ... My comment: It does turn up in other fiddle traditions. The Connecticut and Massachusetts fiddlers cannot be playing,as you say, in the tempered scale because that is impossible on the fiddle. That would require each ascending note in the chromatic scale to be be exactly higher in pitch over the preceeding note by the ratio 1.059 and larger intervals to be exact arithmetic multiplies of this ratio. The human ear cannot do this. That is why a piano tuner has to achieve this objective by listening to the interplay between repeated fifths and fourths. Even employing this method and with infinitely more time than a fiddler has to play a single note, it has been demonstrated that the best piano tuners deviate somewhat from the ratio. John Chambers wrote responding to Wendy's note: 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. My comment: The seventh note when played [or sang] in tune lies between the two tempered sevenths. As with the fiddlle it is impossible to sing in the tempered scale for the same reason. Alexander Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
In a message dated 7/7/01 10:01:13 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What about Shetland tunes? Those are allowed in SHSA competitions. A different style of playing than a lowland air, naturally. Your advice to yourself to listen to recordings is the best advice. Also try and hear some live performances. --Cynthia Cathcart Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] What makes a style Scottish?
Janice Hopper wrote: What's the definition of Scottish in style? Maybe I just need to go back to my CDs and listen a while longer. I think it's not so easy for many of us USians to recognize Scottish style. It's a good bit harder for me to recognize the Scottish musical accent in music than it is in language. So Allison Kinnard's comments as quoted by Rita are not helpful to me, Janice in Georgia feeling a little argumentative this am It has a lot to do with how the emphasis is placed on tones relative to their place in the melody, I think. Someone has mentioned a website with midi tunes for a lot of folk songs and tunes which is costing its originator $150 a month due to traffic. This site - can't remember what it's called - is a labour of love but relatively useless for conveying the music, since the tunes have been put into MIDI just as written on paper. The result is that they don't have any of the rythm or emphasis which is present when a real singer or player handles them, and in some cases you hardly recognise the tune. Useful though ABCs played through Barfly etc are, they have the same fault and a real live performance is so very different. I've come across examples of written music which use ridiculous 1/32nd notes and complex instructions to convey emphasis, hiatus, changes of pace for Scottish music. The original early notation for the same sort of tunes often turns out to be nothing more than a bunch of quavers on a stave (and sometimes without the courtesy of a time signature). Another point is the use of slightly microtonal sharps/flats and instruments which are not in modern equal temperament. This is why most Scottish music sounds utterly, totally wrong on electronic keyboards; even the accordion, which is well loved for dance music, has a temperament which is not compatible with correctly played Scottish fiddle, or with traditional pipes (some modern pipes are set up to play more compatibly with other instruments). A good reason for NOT accompanying a solo singer is that left unaccompanied, the singer will use the natural vocal temperament and intervals, and when this happens some of the classic Scots tunes take on a special quality and beauty which they don't have if forced to a piano scale. The solution in the guitar world is to adopt a drone accompaniment style typically in DADGAD tuning, and to stick to specific keys or fingers, using a capo to change (this follows the tradition of 250 years ago). For harp you would assume that tuning using an advanced electronic tuner set to the same kind of temperament used for virginals, or a vocal natural temperament, would be better than tuning to modern equal temperant. Fiddlers are lucky, they can play using natural temperament. When learning a reel in A major with a fiddler, I had to question a 7th frequently used: was it a minor of major, G or G sharp? Neither - it was a note similar to the G on smallpipes and distinctly sharper than a standard minor 7th. So on the guitar this needed a sort of 'bluesy' bend upwards. It is written as a minor 7th in the music. This is only part of it and I am only on the fringes of even telling when something is right. I am informed by those who do when I am, or am not, playing or singing in Scottish style. The general opinion is that I don't, and when I do not play in English style, generally go towards Irish. So my experience of this is mainly based on people telling me that I do it WRONG. David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
