[scots-l] Jimmy Shand
It's Jimmy Shand's birthday! Shand discography: http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/gatherer/perf/music/shand.html X:496 T:Lucky Scap T:Lucky Scaup C:Jimmy Shand S:Parlophone F3413 Z:Nigel Gatherer M:4/4 L:1/8 K:D z2 | D2 DF E2 EG | F2 FA G2 GB | A2 f2 gfed | f2 e2 e2 f2 | D2 DF E2 EG | F2 FA G2 GB | A2 a2 gfed | f2 d2 d2 :| fg | a2 d2 b2 d2 | a2 gf g2 fg | a2 d2 bagf | g2 e2 e2 fg | a2 d2 b2 d2 | a2 gf g2 fe | A2 a2 gfed | f2 d2 d2 fg | a2 d2 b2 d2 | a2 gf g2 fg | a2 d2 bagf | g2 e2 e2 f2 | D2 DF E2 EG | F2 FA G2 GB | A2 a2 gfed | f2 d2 d2 |] -- 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
[scots-l] Re: Burns Night
Derek Hoy, of this parish, and I spent Burns night with the other Bella McNabs in the fiddler's byke at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. This was a dance, rather than a supper, although there was a haggis bar, and an outsize version of the dish was duly toasted by Stan Reeves (also of this parish, but uncharacteristically quiet of late) We attempted one song, but retired defeated by the Assembly Rooms' wholly unhelpful acoustic. It's a magnificent space, but it's not much fun to play because of the difficulty in being heard and getting a good sound. Which brings me to a question. How did they do it in the old days without amplification? This question is prompted not only by many years of struggling with the Assembly Rooms, but by an experience we had in a small village hall last year, when severe winds knocked out the power lines to the village. We carried on with the gig we were doing, un-powered, but it was not easy to be heard, or to hear each other. I know that the acoustic design of the ballroom at the Assembly Rooms is helpful for concert settings, more so if the amplifying properties of the 'byke' are used, but it still leaves me puzzled about how musicians fared at dances there. In the days before electricity were people much quieter than they are now? You could imagine a certain gentility and politeness in the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms, but you would expect other gatherings to be a bit more vigorous and boisterous. Were gatherings smaller? Did fewer people dance at a time? Were the bands bigger (I'm thinking about the pre-accordion era)? Did musicians play louder? Any thoughts? David Francis t/f (44) (0)131 557 1050 (o); (44) (0)131 669 8824 (h) 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] Jean's reel?
Hi, By toying around with the tune I thought of a pure malt set : Hughie Jim Paul/Brenda Stubberts/Jean's reel What do you think? ;-) Dominique R Dominique Renaudin a écrit: Hi, I heard it played by Phil Cunningham and Sharon Shannon on piano and button accordion. 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] projecting at dances
it still leaves me puzzled about how musicians fared at dances there. In the days before electricity were people much quieter than they are now? I think this must have been true. At Cape Breton dances today, the sound systems are so powerful that people shout to each other in order to have conversations! Obviously, if they wanted to dance in pre-amplification days they would have had to be quieter. Maybe they would stand outside the hall if they were having a serious conversation. When they danced to the pipes, which would have been quite often outside in the early days, there was no such volume problem! Were the bands bigger (I'm thinking about the pre-accordion era)? Probably for the bigger functions the bands were bigger. At least I know that McGlashan (18th c.) had a dance band, it wasn't just himself and a cello. Did musicians play louder? Yes and no. Baroque violins were not as loud as modern violins. However, you will notice that some fiddlers today have no idea how to project their sound because they've always had a microphone in front of them when they had to project. The older fiddlers must have learned to project. Also, in Cape Breton at least, they sometimes used high-bass tuning with more ringing strings, which projects more. If all else failed, perhaps the dancers could hear the stamping of the fiddler's foot! - Kate D. -- http://www.DunGreenMusic.com Halifax, Nova Scotia 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] projecting at dances
Original Message Subject: Re: [scots-l] projecting at dances From: Toby Rider [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, January 28, 2003 9:36 am To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Did musicians play louder? Yes and no. Baroque violins were not as loud as modern violins. However, you will notice that some fiddlers today have no idea how to project their sound because they've always had a microphone in front of them when they had to project. The older fiddlers must have learned to project. Also, in Cape Breton at least, they sometimes used high-bass tuning with more ringing strings, which projects more. If all else failed, perhaps the dancers could hear the stamping of the fiddler's foot! Also it might be good to mention about how there used to be alot more of fiddlers playing in teams, like the the MacLellans. Two or three fiddlers playing the same tune in high bass, can be pretty darned loud. If you listen to recordings of the generation of players who grew up before amplification was common, you immediately hear who had learned to develop alot of volume for playing dances. Winston Scotty Fitzgerald, Donald Angus Beaton, John Campbell and Donald MacLellan all tended to play seriously loud. That really comes across on those old recordings, which are basically raw, one take deals. You get the feeling that Angus Chisholm and Mary MacDonald didn't spend as much time playing for dances, because there's alot more variation in dynamics within their playing, also some of the stuff they do wouldn't work for dancing, but it's oh so wickedly good and creative.. Of course I could be wrong about Angus and Mary beag, because my observations are based entirely on ancient passed down recordings. I'm still surprised that more CB dance players haven't adopted electric fiddles for live performances, as alot of the American Country Western and jazz fiddlers have. They really sound alot better at high volumes then some of those crappy old microphones, and you have the freedom to move around more. It sucks being stuck up next to a mic. It makes my back start to ache after awhile, and I am just 30-years-old! If I were about 30 years older, it would probably be an ordeal to play the entire gig that way. Those internal clip-in mics, although they sound by far the best, are limited by the volume at which you start to have feedback problems with the amps/PA system. So they're good for a gig in a small Church or a venue smaller then a dance hall or club. I hate to say it but some of the cheap amp setups I've heard make acoustic fiddles sound like minature trumpets with bad attitudes. I think it's better to sound slightly electric but still sound like a fiddle and have no feedback problems, then to not sound like a fiddle at all. Toby -- Toby Rider ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That puts it not unto the touch To win or lose it all. - James Graham, Marquis of Montrose -- Toby Rider ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That puts it not unto the touch To win or lose it all. - James Graham, Marquis of Montrose 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] Jean's reel?
Hi, By toying around with the tune I thought of a pure malt set : Hughie Jim Paul/Brenda Stubberts/Jean's reel What do you think? ;-) That set wouldn't be my style :-) If I were doing a set with Jean's reel and I wanted to change keys from G major to something else. I think I'd start with Jean's reel as the first tune in the set and then play something in D. Going from an A modal tune to a G maj. tune usually works good, but for some reason I feel like Jean's reel wants to be the first reel in a square set. Maybe it's just the character of that particular tune. In my mind I'm trying to hear what I think might go good with it, and I keep hearing Jenny Dang the Weaver, or that reel I think it's called Catching Rabbits? When I get home tonight I'll try them and tell you if I'm just hearing strange things in my head or not :-) 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] Re: ABC question
Steve, You know how that tune is supposed to sound right? I'm sure you do. There's like at least 4-5 recordings of that tune I can think of off-the-cuff. So just take the notes and make them sound like the tune is supposed to go. Tap your foot, or use a metronome and the timing should be pretty obvious. Heck, since it's a slow air, you have all kinds of freedom to bend the timing and tempo. You don't even have to stick to strict meter. Just make sure you're looking your guitar-player or piano player in the eye so they know when you're about to take liberties :-) I've long since given up on getting precise accuracy out of abc's. It's a pleasant surprise when they're dead on, and you always know who's abcs will usually be perfect. Usually Jack's are spot-on, because precision seems to be an important element of his personality. Most of the time though, I just use them to either give me a rough idea of the notes, or else to confirm what I think I've figured the notes out to be, off the recording.. Rita Hamilton wrote: I got a copy of Rose Among the Heather from the Chambers website. HOWEVER, it has, if you look at the GIF file, only 1/8th notes. However,if you play the midi file, it has 1/16th's and dotted 1/8/s. What's going on? I'm not sure what's going on but here's the text file he has posted along with the midi and gif files: X: 1 T: the Rose Among the Heather R: strathspey Z: John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] M: C L: 1/8 K: D G2 \ | DFA AF GGB BG | DFA DF A7E2 G2 \ | DFA AF GGB dB | A7AF GE DD2 :| A2 \ | Dde dB Af dB | AF df A7e4 \ | F#7fg fe GdB dB | DAd A7ec Dd2 || A2 \ | Dde dB Af dB | AF df A7e4 \ | Dfe dB BmAF dB | A7AF GE DD2 |] (I removed a line with URL info from JC's header because it screws up some abc readers). If you paste the above text into the Tune-O-Tron converter at http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html you'll get a pdf output with the correct rhythm. I suspect the method he's using for notating the dotted rhythm ( and instead of /) is causing the problem but I don't know for sure. -Steve -- Steve Wyrick -- Concord, California 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] Re: Burns Night
David Francis wrote: You could imagine a certain gentility and politeness in the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms, but you would expect other gatherings to be a bit more vigorous and boisterous. Were gatherings smaller? Did fewer people dance at a time? Were the bands bigger (I'm thinking about the pre-accordion era)? Did musicians play louder? Any thoughts? Yes - it's impossible for anyone brought up today to have any idea how people even 200 years ago 'heard' the world round them. I guess we get some impression by getting into mountains, etc, but even then a road 20 miles away can create a ground level of noise. Apart from rivers, the sea or the wind the background noise of 18th c Scots city life must have very cacophonous and not the sort of level drone of traffic, computer fans, central heating pumps and stuff we have taking up the first few decibels of our ear sensitivity. People talking, hooves and iron rimmed wheels on cobbles, dogs barking, artisans working with tools etc. And all that against a background of genuine silence - and in the country, just real silence with every shepherd's pipe or ploughman's call heard from miles away. I would guess they were more finely tuned to distinguish music from the noise of life, because they were not used to hearing it all the time and hearing it loudly, which we are. Many of the favoured domestic instruments of the time were pretty quiet, even the pianos when they first arrived were very gentle beasts by modern standards, and fiddles are supposed to have been softer in tone before the 'redesign' lifted the bridge and raked the neck with higher string tension. Guitar family instruments were much quieter too. Maybe people did speak more gently and take more care not to be noisy. My grandfather was still a Victorian in spirit and his house was always very quiet, raised voices and we would be told to stop shouting, radio on a very low volume. And Victorians lived in a noisy industrial age, he worked in shipyards and I'm sure they were not quiet at all. I seem to remember seeing, somewhere, an Victorian engraving of a singer performing with a kind of horn like a gramophone horn or the bell of large wind instrument. It might have been a cariacature lampooing the huge orchestral brass instruments which were being invented. 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] Re: Burns Night
David Francis wrote: Which brings me to a question. How did they do it in the old days without amplification? Well. Two years ago at Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, I was at Celtic Grove 1, and the PA system went down. Full Moon Ensemble was playing. Daniel, the fiddler, stepped down off the stage and continued playing. Everyone could hear him -- we just had to listen more. Another GMHG story: I played with a random, assorted, and unpaid for group of musicians (a wee dram to the first person to identify the reference) on two seperate nights. The star tallent was the same on both nights. The attenence was much greater on the night the button box dropped in. I don't think the explanation is that everyone came to hear accordian. I think it's just the sound of that instrument carries better. I actually go to other games too, just most of my good stories go with Grandfather. From an acoustics standpoint, 76 of a given instrument sound about 3x as loud as one. There really isn't strength in numbers, other than filling in when one drops out, or making up for acoustic deficiencies in another's instrument. Symphony conductors specify more or fewer of a given instrument to control texture. Or at least that's what I've read. In the 18th century, cellos were common in dance bands. Maybe because the bass cuts through -- esp. if he's in a corner. They had easy parts too. Bob Rogers South Carolina 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] Re: ABC question
I was attempting to address that, not get into any philosophical discussion about the advantages and failings of standard notation or the best way to learn a tune. JC's abc text file does match the midi file so I assume there's a glitch in the software Jack used to produce the gif file. Ah, but you know how much I love philosophical discussions! :-) 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] Re: Burns Night
Carla and Bob Rogers wrote: Another GMHG story: I played with a random, assorted, and unpaid for group of musicians (a wee dram to the first person to identify the reference) on two seperate nights. The star tallent was the same on both nights. The attenence was much greater on the night the button box dropped in. I don't think the explanation is that everyone came to hear accordian. I think it's just the sound of that instrument carries better. Are you referring to the music that takes place in the campground after all the tourists go home? I had heard that there was great music at the campground, so two years ago I pitched my tent on top of the mountain. The first evening I wandered around looking for a good music session to join. I found a few musicians who knew old-timey tunes, and a smaller number who knew a few Irish tunes, but I never connected with any Scottish musicians. The second evening I went to the Scottish Country Dance at Lees-McRae College, and returned to my tent a little past midnight. I could tell from the noises that there was some wild partying going on, but it sounded like African or Native American drumming with a few bagpipes thrown in. I didn't even bother to cross the road to check it out. If there had been any fiddles, or even accordions, they wouldn't have been able to hear each other. Is there something I missed? Jerry Agin Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
