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
[scots-l] Peter Milne tunography?
Has anybody ever compiled a list of the compositions of Peter Milne? It's the sort of thing Murdoch Henderson might have done, but if so I haven't found it in any of his papers. === 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] Peter Milne tunography?
Jack Campin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has anybody ever compiled a list of the compositions of Peter Milne? It's the sort of thing Murdoch Henderson might have done, but if so I haven't found it in any of his papers. I don't know, Jack. Henderson said that only 24 of his airs have previously been printed, whilst about a dozen more are known to us... I hope that he did list them somewhere because I'd hate to think the dozen more are lost or forgotten. Here's ten: The Marchioness of Huntly Aboyne Castle The Countess of Crawford Jas O Forbes John McNeill's Reel The Marquis of Huntly's Reel The Pride of the Dee Waltzes The Pride of the Don Waltzes Bonnie Glen Tanar The Shakin's o' the Pocky (with JSS) -- 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?
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] ABCs
Oooh, I'm delighted--thanks, Nigel! I love sites like these! Kate - Original Message - From: Nigel Gatherer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 3:58 PM Subject: Re: [scots-l] ABCs Kate wrote: Hello Listers Hello Kate! Does anyone know of a site where I might find ABCs for Scottish tunes in general, but especially for bagpipes? Or even just the sheet music? I've found some of the more popular ones, but I'm looking for Bonawe Highlanders, Captain Lumsden, and Donald's Return from the Wars-- can't find them anywhere. I have about 270 ABCs on my website (see URL below), most of them Scottish, but I'm not sure there are very many pipe tunes. One of the tunes you're looking for, Bonawe Highlanders is there, but not the others. I've been meaning to learn Donald's Awa tae the Wars for a while, but haven't. I've got it on some records, so I'll look at it some day. Oh, another site you should look at is Jack Campin's. He's got loads of great tunes in ABC format, and if I remember correctly, loads of pipe tunes. http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/purrhome.html Actually I've just had a look at my abc list, and there's a fair number of pipe tunes. Good luck, Kate. -- Nigel Gatherer, Crieff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nigel's ABC Pages: http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/gatherer/scottish/abc.html Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html 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] ABCs
Does anyone know of a site where I might find ABCs for Scottish tunes in general, but especially for bagpipes? Or even just the sheet music? I've found some of the more popular ones, but I'm looking for Bonawe Highlanders, Captain Lumsden, and Donald's Return from the Wars-- can't find them anywhere. From Harry Bain's index: Bonawe Highlanders: 11, 34, 75, 89, 106 Captain C.R. Lumsden: 79 Donald has Gone to the Wars (is that what you meant?): 46, 76, 90, 106 11: Army Piping Manual v1 34: Scottish Pipe Band Assoc book 1 75: Glendaruel Collection 79: GS MacLennan Highland Bagpipe Music (v1, there never was a v2) 89: Royal Scottish Pipers' Society book 90: The Piper's Delight 106: Seaforth Highlanders book The Seaforths book should be quite easy to find, and has two of your requests. GS's is the least accessible - I can get the tune for you from it later in the week, if you haven't found it meanwhile. I'm intending eventually to ABC-ify all of GS's tunes, bit by bit and in full detail, either as I learn them or as I'm asked for them; pointers to tunes not mentioned in the Gordon Highlanders book would be helpful. I don't have easy browsing access to a complete run of Piping Times; they've probably mentioned unpublished or obscurely published ones. The Army Manual is surprisingly rare - never reprinted since the 1930s. === 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] old books (was ABCs)
Speaking of old books, I found one in my mother's house. (She died recently, quite tragically, in an auto accident, so if you think my book is a pointless, useless piece of garbage, please don't tell me.) Mom left nothing but trash, mostly, but this one book crawled out from under a pile of magazines and papers and caught my eye. It is not dated. Called Scotland Calling in 50 Scottish Songs, it has both staff notation and sol-fa. For someone who has only a vague knowledge of sol-fa, this is rather like finding the rosetta stone. The book was published by Mozart Allen, 84 Carlton Place in Glasgow. Lots of standard stuff, like Scots Wha Hae and Auld Lang Syne, but a couple of tunes I don't already know (which you all probably know like the back of your fiddle, so I won't embarass myself by listing the ToC). I *shall* embarass myself by admitting I don't know the arranger, who is Mr. C. MacKay Collier. Does this clue help date it? Any pearls of arcane knowledge out there on the list? I imagine this book must have belonged to my Grandfather Ogilvie. Mom never worried herself about her roots. I wish I knew how old it was. Probably not very. But I'd be interested to know if it was one of the few things Grandad's parents brought with them when they came here from Scotland. If I knew the age of the book, I could speculate... --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] ABCs
Does anyone know of a site where I might find ABCs for Scottish tunes in general, but especially for bagpipes? Or even just the sheet music? I've found some of the more popular ones, but I'm looking for Bonawe Highlanders, Captain Lumsden, and Donald's Return from the Wars-- can't find them anywhere. My ABC SCD collection is online at: http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Scotland/ There are a lot of pipe tunes, as you might expect, but they aren't marked as such in any special way. I'm not a piper. I do play for a lot of Scottish dances, mostly on accordion, and pipe tunes are quite popular with the dancers. My versions are SCD versions, of course, aimed at players of the usual dance-band instruments, so they lack the complex ornaments you'd expect at a piper's site. I don't have any of the three tunes you asked for. Sorry. Maybe they'll show up here in a day or two ... 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] unsubscribe
Was that for me? [EMAIL PROTECTED]
