Re: [scots-l]ABCs
Nigel Gatherer writes: | Matt Seattle wrote: | | Nigel, are you sure you got the mode right for Cassino? Sounds | decidedly odd IMHO! | | Matt spots the deliberate mistake this week - glad you're awake, Matt! | | Yes, of course you're right. The key it's normally in is A dorian - I | think - but on the record I took it from it was played in E dorian. | Sorry for that! Hmmm ... It sounds better to me if I play it as Amix. This is the same key sig as Edorian, of course, but the tonic is clearly A. So should the c's be sharp or natural? Part of why I'd put it into Amix is that it looks and sounds like a highland pipe tune. But I suppose it doesn't have to be. Maybe I'll try it in a few other scales and see how it works. A hijaz seems to work pretty well, so maybe it's really a Turkish pipe tune? 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] Spam
Toby Rider writes: | I don't see any more spam coming through.. Does anyone see spam I'm not | catching? Yeah. But not from scots-l. ;-) 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] Skinner ABCs (was: Robt. Petrie's 2nd collection...)
Nigel Gatherer wrote: | Bev Lawton wrote: | | I am particularily looking for ABC's of J. Scott Skinner | | Not many, I'm afraid, but you'll see part of my Skinner ABC selection at | | http://www.nigelgatherer.com/tunes/abc/abc6.html | | There are currently 22 tunes there. There are also more than 700 other | tunes, mostly Scottish, but some Irish, American and other tunes too, at | | http://www.nigelgatherer.com/tunes/abc.html My Skinner collection is at: http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Scotland/by/James.Scott.Skinner/ I have only about 40 of his tunes in abc, some transcribed by me, some taken from this list or a few others. Maybe we need a Skinner Project like some of the others, to get all of his tunes into abc form. Of course, there may be copyright problems with some of them. You might take a look at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/scottskinner/, which has scanned images of his handwritten manuscripts. The page at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/scottskinner/music.shtml is the root of this part of the collection. They're quite readable. I'd bet that if we asked them, they would approve of us doing a scholarly abc transcription of the music, and they might even give it a permanent home online. (I could collect them on my site in the meantime.) Maybe I should send them a message suggesting such a project, and see what their reaction might be. And, of course, if anyone posts any Skinner tunes in abc here, I'll be one of the many who would nab them and stick them into my online Skinner directory. Be sure to include a C:J.S.Skinner line, of course, maybe spelled out a bit more if you like. Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: Introductions (was Re:[scots-l] Tune ID)
Toby Rider wrote: | Yes. I'm in the process of transitioning over to a new version of the | list server, which will stop that problem. I just haven't gotten to it | yet.. Something keeps coming up. Like for instance one of my other | servers just took a total dump yesterday. That wouldn't be lochaber, would it? ;-) Did you see the messages I sent about it? One of the funny things I just saw again from here on this MIT machine: : host lochaber.tullochgorm.com lochaber.tullochgorm.com has address 207.136.137.69 : host lochaber.tullochgorm.com Host not found. : Those two commands were only one or two seconds apart. This isn't the first time I've seen this behavior, but I haven't found any good way to ask the DNS system why it's doing this. Anyone know? (I tried responding directly to Toby, but I got a bounce that said it couldn't create /usr/spool/mail/tarider. So I guess he is fiddling with his email system. Now will this get delivered?) 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] Shetland Fiddler, The
Nigel Gatherer asks: | Do any of you play this tune in a set? What other tunes do you play | with it? | | X:686 | T:Shetland Fiddler, The | D:Altan | Z:Nigel Gatherer | M:4/4 | L:1/8 | K:D | Ac | d2 fd Adfe | defg afdf | e2 ge Beed | cdef gece | | d2 fd Adfe | defg afde |(3fga fd (3fga fd | Bgec d2 :| | cd | eAfA gAaA | faaf gfed | A2 BA cAdA | efed cABc | | dAeA fAgA | faaf gefd |(3fga fd (3fga fd | Bgec d2 || I have it in two sets, one an Any Good Hornpipe set and one for a specific dance: http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Scotland/AGH01.abc http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Scotland/Triumph.abc My version also has a note that it's a version of The Hawk, a hornpipe by James Hill. There's also a good-sized entry about it in the Fiddler's Companion. 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] Robert Petrie's First Collection abc's
| I finally completed my abc transcription of the full version (i.e., | including the cello line) of Petrie's first collection. Anyone who would | like a copy of the file, let me know. I find that the 2-voice code is a | little problematic; it works great on BarFly but needs a little editing for | correct viewing using abc2ps (as used on the concertina.net tune-o-tron | online converter for example), and won't play on abc2midi (which the | tune-o-tron uses) at all; I haven't tried it on any other abc readers or | players. I'm disappointed; I'd hoped that abc was more standardized, and I | didn't expect these problems with the code. However I'm hoping someone can | make use of this; some of the cello parts are really nice! Now, on to | Petrie's 2nd collection! -Steve Have you put it online somewhere? If not, I'd like a copy. I have a number of his tunes in my collection, and it would be nice to get his version. And see what other good tunes are there that I need to learn. 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]Nigel Gatherer's ABC Collection
| Nigel Gatherer wrote: | | I have moved my website so that it's now | | [Snip] | | Oops. That was supposed to have gone to John Chambers, not the list. | Apologies for that. That's ok; I got it. ;-) 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] Petrie's First collection abc's available
Steve Wyrick writes: | I've finally completed my abc transcription of Robert Petrie's first | collection (this version has the melody line only, I'm still formatting | the version that includes Petrie's bass line in a second voice). 52 tunes | in all, most not currently available on the web (but I'm hoping John | Chambers or someone else can help me find a place to put it so that JC's | tunefinder can pick it up). Anyone who would like a copy send me an | e-mail. -Steve Well, I could offer to put it up on my web site. ;-) I've done this with a number of collections, which was one way to develop a large collection of tunes with little effort. But greed and power aside, I've always preferred to encourage people to set up their own web site if at all possible. Or prevail on a close friend who has some web space. That way, you have personal control over it, you can organize it however you like, and you can make changes at any time. Also, I think that much of the value of the web is the way that it encourages everyone to do things their own way. A thousand flowers and all that. Or I could further my grand design on corralling the web's abc tune collections in a search for power, and put a copy on my site. 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 Rattray march
Steve Wyrick writes: | I'm trying to find some information on the tune Old Rattray. The version | below came from JC's tunefinder but I've had no luck finding anything | further. Can anyone help me with a source, composer, etc.? Thanks -Steve | | X: 1 | T: Old Rattray | R: march | M: 4/4 | L: 1/8 | F:http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Scotland/march/OldRattray_D.abc | 2004-04-20 15:54:19 UT | K: D | g fe \ | | d2 AA GF ED | FA AB Ag fe | d2 AA GF ED | fe ef eg fe | | | d2 AA GF ED | GF GA Bg fe | dA GF GB AG | F2 D2 D2 fg || | || ag fe d2 FA | GF GA Bg fg | ag fe df ad | f2 e2 e2 fg | | | ag fe d2 FA | GF GA Bg fe | dA GF GB AG | F2 D2 D2 |] Hi, Steve. Did you learn anything about this tune? I have no information at all about it. I transcribed it a few years ago from a printed page that someone gave me, so I could play the tune at a gig. It was an Nth-generation copy of a printed page, but they didn't have the book, and the page didn't have any information about the book. It's not in any of my books. There are two Miss Rattray tunes, a reel and a jig, but neither is at all like this tune. Old Rattray is a town in the Grampians, of course. Anyway, if you have any info about the tune, send me a copy, and I'll add it to the tune's header. 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 Rattray march
Steve Wyrick writes: | Hi John; no I haven't yet found anything on this. I have the other 2 | Rattray tunes you mentioned (Miss Rattray of Dalrullzian (Jig) by Petrie, | and Miss Rattray (Reel) from the Athole collection) but this is the first | time I've encountered this one. My interest is on behalf of a friend who | is a Rattray and is collecting tunes related to the clan for a Rattray | clan gathering in Blairgowrie this Summer. I wonder if I'd be correct to | assume that a tune with the name Old Rattray would have to date from | after the early 1800's, when New Rattray was established? At any rate, | I'll let you know if I come up with anything. -Steve Yeah; that seems a likely guess. I also wonder whether the Old Rattray march may be a pipe tune. As I have it, it doesn't match the range, but folding it in the obvious way works pretty well. It works pretty well in A, too, and there aren't any 7ths in the tune to worry about. But as I said, I have no information about it. If you ask google about old rattray, you get a whole lot of tourism references, plus some pages about tobacco, some in German (Ein bemerkenswerter Tabak). Nothing about a tune, though. 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] Is this site working?
| http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/FindTune.html | | I haven't been able to get in lately. There were some hardware problems on the machine, and it was up and down for most of yesterday. A disk was swapped, and it might be fixed now. Then again, it might not. We'll see. 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: A Fiddler's Book of Scottish Jigs
David Kilpatrick writes:
| ... A Scottish country dancer friend
| liked it and asked what it was - after I told him, he immediately
| recognised it, but said playing at such a slow speed had hidden the tune
| from him. To me, the slow speed brings out the beauty of the tune (which
| has a very song-like melody and is no doubt a song too) and the dance
| tempo just makes it sound like everything else!
This is indeed a problem with playing for dancing. The
tempo is determined by the dance, and you really have to
honor it. If there are no dancers, you are a lot freer to
play with the tempo, vary it, etc.
A fair number of the SCD strathspey dances have standard
tunes that are really slow airs. For dancing, of course,
you have to play them in a strict tempo. They don't come
out sounding like slow airs, but they don't sound like real
strathspeys, either. It does add variety to the dance
program.
For that matter, a tune that goes over quite well in waltz
tempo is Niel Gow's Lament for the Death of His Second
Wife. Now, this is obviously a bit of sacrilege, dancing on
her grave as it were. But it's a very effective waltz. And
then, when people ask you what that beautiful waltz tune
was, you tell them, and they get this confused look on
their face ...
Another interesting experiment a bunch of us tried at this
year's local Hogmanay dance (in Concord, Mass.), was the
following medley. You might note one tune that isn't
exactly a traditional Scottish air. But in fact it worked
well. Some of the dancers were singing along, and a number
had obvious grins on their faces. There were also a couple
who asked us whether that was a Beatles tune. Not quite.
Possibly the most interesting aspect was that most of the
remarks were about the fourth, minor tune. I don't think
any of the dancers had heard it before, and they really
seemed to notice it.
It did turn out to be good that we had several rehearsals;
the third tune lacks a downbeat, and we learned that the
accompaniment had to come in really strong to keep the beat
going. Anyway, this was the most-remarked-on medley of the
evening.
X: 0
T: Miss Gibson's Strathspey
T: 8x32S3
O: RSCDS Leaflet
K: A
X: 1
P: The Music o' Spey
C: J.S.Skinner
R: air, strathspey
Z: John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
N: Scottish Violinist p.35; Hardie p.55; BSFC II-3; Caledonian Companion, p.49.
N: The Fiddle Music of Scotland, James Hunter, #36.
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: A
[| E2 \
| Ac2 BA E2 E2 | DFE FA E7E2 FG | AA2 A2 F#mA2 A2 | BmB4 E7e2 E2 |
| Ac2 BA E2 E2 | DFE FA E7E2 FG | AA2 A2 E7B2 e2 | AA6 |]
[| E2 \
| E7d2 dc B2 E2 | Ae2 ed c2 de | Df2 e2 d2 c2 | E7c4 {dc}B2 ed |
| Ac2 BA E2 E2 | DFE FA E7E2 FG | AA2 A2 E7B2 e2 | AA6 |]
X: 2
P: Annie Laurie
O: Trad
R: air
M: C
L: 1/8
K: D
A7FE \
| DD2 D2 d3 c | Gc B3- B2 B2 |1 DA2 F2 BmF2 ED | EmE4- A7E2 FE \
:|2 DA2 F2 A7F3 E | DD6 A7A2 ||
|| Dd2 d2 A7e3 e | Df6 A7A2 | Bmd2 d2 Eme3 e | F#7f6 fe \
| Gd3 c Bc dB | DA2 F2- BmF2 FE | GDd- dF A7F3 E | DD6 |]
X: 3
P: As Tears Go By
C: Sir Michael Jagger, Keith Richards
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: G
|: Gz2G2 A2B2 | AA2A2 E2G2 | CG4- GEG2 | DF8 \
| Gz2G2 A2B2 | AA3A E2G2 | CG4- GEG2 | DF8 |
|1 Cz2cc c2B2 | DA3A GA3 | Gz2B2 B2A2 | EmG E7 \
| Cz2e2 e2e2 | e3E F2G2 | DA4- AGAG | F4 z4 :|
|2 Cz2cc c2B2 | DA3A GA3 | Gz2B2 B2AG | EmB3B AG3 \
| Cz2e2 e2e2 | e3E F2G2 | DA4- AGAG | F4 z4 |]
X: 4
P: Back to the Hills
N: Dedicated to Tom Fraser
C: J.S.Skinner
R: air, jig, reel
N: Skinner, SV p.41, Hardie (see fingerings) p.111 [Reverie]
M: C
L: 1/4
K: Em
F \
| EmEF GF/E/ | AmAB cB/A/ | EmBG {G}FE | (B)E2 B7{FE}^DB, \
| EmEF GF/E/ | AmAB cB/A/ | EmBe B7e^d | f2 Eme ||
B \
| Eme2 B2 | Amc3 c | EmB[gG] [fF][eE] | (B)[e2E2] B7{fe}[^d^D]B \
| Eme2 B2 | Amc3 c | EmBe B7e^d | f2 Eme |]
Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To
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Re: [scots-l] A Fiddler's Book of Scottish Jigs
Anselm writes: | Steve Wyrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | Official RSCDS tempo is 110-112, although I find in practice it can vary | somewhat depending on the figures in the dance and the skill and stamina of | the dancers! | | As well as the type of occasion, the condition of the floor, the | temperature in the room, the time of day (or, rather, night) | etc. etc. ... ... the sobriety level of the dancers, ... 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] A Fiddler's Book of Scottish Jigs
Irena Aligizakis writes: | Would a fiddler play at a different tempo for people | doing a Scottish country dance than for a stepdancer? | I'm just wondering b/c ever since I started | stepdancing I'm a lot more conscious of rhythm and | tempo and things like that in music. Yep. Step dancers usually have a lot of different tempi. But they are also usually wearing hard-soled shoes, so they are giving you the rhythm and tempo in a very audible form. You can treat them as a kind of drummer. All you have to do is listen and adjust to them. 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] A Fiddler's Book of Scottish Jigs
Bob Rogers wrote: | Cynthia Cathcart wrote: | While we're talking about reels, and since there are a good smattering | of fiddlers here, I will hazard another question: how fast are they | usually played for dancers? One organization here in the States | advertises the actual tempo of reels at 130-140 per half note/minim. | ... | Well, in the preface to Skinner's _Harp and Claymore_, the editor, Gavin | Greig, M.A., wrote regarding Strathspeys and reels, | | The tempo of the former is 1/2 note = 94 and the latter 1/2 note = 126. | This represents 20 seconds for the Strathspey, and 15 for the Reel. | These are the rates given by Mr. Skinner, and coincide with those given | by G.F Graham. Mr. John Glenn makes the Strathspey somewhat slower. | | For listening? My wife was practicing some Mozart at a tempo 1/2 note = | 152, which is really fast. I was listening to a field recording of an | American Celtic fiddler (on headphones in the next room), and his | tempo exactly matched her metronome. It sounded very fast, but not | really hurried or rushed. In general, the proper speed is very different for different kinds of dancing, and there's usually at least a 10% variation on either side of the average speed. For some years, my wife and I have been playing for a rapper sword team. They dance mostly to jigs. I've taken an electronic metronome along to a number of morris/sword events, and the typical rapper team dances at about 160. Their footwork gets really clunky and tiring if the tempo is less than about 150. Now, many musicians' reaction to this is 160? Awk!!! But actually, a jig at 160 and a reel at 120 are the same speed, 8 notes per second. 120 is about the average speed for New England contras (which we also play a lot). So anyone who plays reels for contras can play a jig at 160. I also play for a lot of Scottish (RSCDS) dances, and there the usual speed for reels and jigs is around 112. With the usual 10% variance, of course, depending on the dance and the tunes. It can be funny to watch contra musicians trying to hold down the tempo to 112. But the dancers will usually give you a lot of too fast feedback when the tempo creeps up. One thing that I like to point out to newcomers to this and other kinds of dance is that there's an interesting pattern to the speed: When playing for novices, you will need to play a bit slowly at first, and speed up as they learn the dances. But when playing for a crowd of experienced dancers, they will want you to slow down. This is, contrary to common opinion, not an age-related thing. The better dancers have learned fancy things that they like to do with the steps, and they can't do them at a fast tempo. For an intermediate crowd, a fast tempo works, because they mostly don't know the fancy things, and they also don't have the balance that slower dancing requires. But the more advanced dancers have the steps and the balance, and they'll like the music slower so they can do things with the dance. A while ago I noticed that over the weekend I'd played Stan Chapman's jig at 112 for a Scottish dance, at 120 for a contra, and at 160 for a rapper dance. The style you need for all of these is rather different, of course, but the tune works for all of them. I've also played for a lot of Irish step dancers in the past, and they have at least 6 distinct jigs, each with a different rhythm and tempo. Then there's Morris dancing, with its deliberate tempos of around 80 or 90. One of my favorite ways of educating musicians who are impressed by fast and loud is to get them to try playing along with Morris dancers. This is a crowd that is *not* impressed by fast and loud. Too fast is simply wrong. And you need to play loud enough to be heard, but not so loud that you drown the calls. And you have to learn a lot of style. And, of course, you need to learn the proper irreverent, nonchalant attitude towards it all. 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] Scottish musicians in the US
Derek writes: | The system seems designed to keep musicians out the country. So is it | affecting the music? I think so- there are now more and more US-based | 'celtic bands' and the need to import the real thing seems to have lessened. | All the celtic music I heard in the US was Irish-influenced, apart from the | pipe bands. If you want to be Scottish, it's enough to put on a kilt. In | 2000 we played at Epcot as part of a millennium thing- all the folks there | wearing kilts were Canadian :( Then there's Ambrose Bierce's definition, from his Devil's Dictionary: KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotsmen in America and Americans in Scotland. 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: Music source books
Ted writes: | Nigel: | this was an interesting response, but did you really need to send it twice? | Or is the Scots-L software acting up again? | | Anyway, I'm sure the world needs plenty more tunebooks, so why don't you | give it ago? The need for a Complete Scott Skinner has already been | mentioned, so how about it - I don't think anyone will be chasing you re | copyright. How about a Complete Scott Skinner ABC project, to put all his tunes online? When we finish it, we could do a quick conversion to PDF and publish it ... Any volunteers to start transcribing? We could start by asking people to send in what they have now, after making sure that there's a B: header line in every tune that documents the source. I also have a Ryan/Cole project going, with a few people doing that transcription. Anyone with a copy of either book and a few free hours is welcome to contribute. You're too late to get in on the O'Neill's Project; we have his 3 major tomes as ABC. (But if you know of any more odds and ends of his lying about, we'd welcome them.) In scale, neither of these comes close to Johnny Adams' Village Music Project ... 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: Music source books
Ted writes some more: | Ted writes: | | Anyway, I'm sure the world needs plenty more tunebooks, so why don't you | | give it ago? The need for a Complete Scott Skinner has already been | | mentioned, so how about it - I don't think anyone will be chasing you re | | copyright. | | How about a Complete Scott Skinner ABC project, to put | all his tunes online? When we finish it, we could do a | quick conversion to PDF and publish it ... | | Any volunteers to start transcribing? We could start by | asking people to send in what they have now, after making | sure that there's a B: header line in every tune that | documents the source. | | Excellent idea! I'd be happy to contribute some ABCs, but not | The President. I'm not so sure about ABCs that people have | already done - I think a lot of these may be from recordings or | sessions rather than the original tunebooks. Yeah; any serious ABC transcription project is going to insist that you use the original book. All the projects that I know of have taken a warts and all approach, and tried to get as close to the original as ABC will permit. You may not play it like they did back then, but if you're going to put someone else's name on your collection, you should have their versions of the tunes. | You're too late to get in on the O'Neill's Project; we have | his 3 major tomes as ABC. (But if you know of any more odds | and ends of his lying about, we'd welcome them.) | | Which books do you already have? I have a few of his odder ones | lying about. All of the 1850, Dance Music of Ireland, and Waifs and Strays are in ABC now. I have copies of them all, and there are some mirrors around on the Web. I've read of some other books that he published, but I haven't seen them. If you want to contribute to the O'Neill's ABC archive, and have one of the others, I'd be happy to add them to the collection. But back to Skinner's music ... 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] VIRUS how to remove it.
| We got this from business friend of ours. I had this file, as they said, = | and deleted it. I am sending this to everyone, even if you haven't = | received an email from us for a long time. Someone else may have sent = | you this virus, especially as it is undetectable. Sorry if you get this = | more than once. This is one of the standard virus hoaxes, intended to trick Windows users into deleting jdbgmgr.exe, which is part of the java library on their machine. Ignore it, and don't send it on to others. 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] Internet radio
Jack Campin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: | Found this on uk.comp.sys.mac. Good news for Toby's little station... | A copyright proposal that would have meant the death of the vast | majority of Internet broadcasters (who would, amongst other things, have | had to pay between 0.4 and 0.6c per song per listener - retroactively, | too) in the US has been rejected by the Library of Congress. So Internet | radio lives, at least to fight another day. ... | I think he means just Congress, unless the library has acquired some | rather extraordinary powers lately. Well, yes and no. The Library of Congress does function as the major source of technical advice to Congress on matters dealing with publication and related topics. Most members of Congress (except for those in thrall to the publishing and entertainment industries) will go along with whatever the LoC recommends. So the LoC does have some extraordinary de-facto powers, extra-legal though they may be. This is probably one of the few Forces for Good in the ongoing battle to turn over all Intellectual Property to the big corporations. The LoC tends to be a cabal of librarian types who approve of the unwashed masses being allowed (and even encouraged) to read. The LoC is a crucial part of a fun proposal that I and many others have made concerning the attempts to force all data-copying programs to check for copyright. The obvious question is How can a piece of software determine if a string of bytes is covered by copyright? The usual first answer is Look for a copyright notice, but this is incorrect, because under US (and many other countries') law, a document need not contain a copyright notice for copyright to exist. Furthermore, documents often contain invalid copyright notices. The proposed solution to this is Look it up in the online copyright database. This would be a web site that can be accessed by any piece of software. It would act essentially as a search engine. One of the obvious places to create this database is in the Library of Congress, since they have copies of nearly everything that has been published in the US, and an impressive percentage of the rest of the world's publications. The LoC could get most of the required software from google.com. If US law requires such a check by all software, then obviously Congress will fund such an online database and publish specs for how to access it. We could then program a copyright check by simply (;-) sending the data to the LoC's system, waiting a few milliseconds (;-), and using the reply to determine whether copying is permitted. There is a precedent for this already: School teachers are learning that they can detect student plagiarism from online sources by typing in critical portions of the text to the major search sites. There is software available that packages this capability. Extending it to a general copyright check is merely a Small Matter of Programming. The fun part of this is that it would, in effect, legally require that all copyrighted works be online in the LoC's database (or in a small number of databases in other countries). Other uses of such an online repository are left as an exercise for the reader. (Can you say Trojan Horse? I thought you could. ;-) 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] Tonic Sol-Fa
Jack Campin wrote: | ... We have problems with inconsistent abc, but abc is a | paragon of standardization in comparison with tonic sol fa. | | That's not true of the notation as used in the UK. It all derives from | one source, Curwen's original texts, and uses it with no variation | whatever that I've noticed. Much more standardized than either ABC or | staff notation. It's still the most commonly used notation for Gaelic | singers. Does anyone have the URL for a spec (or user's guide or whatever)? My search didn't turn up one. Close, in the form of some online teaching docs, but digging the details of the notation out of those would be a lot of work. It looks like a fairly short doc oughta handle most of the notation. | The way I write ABC (with the beats aligned vertically in parallel | phrases or parallel simultaneous voices) is motivated by the same | sort of readability concerns as sol-fa layout; horizontal space | represents elapsed time (mostly). I don't find sol-fa any easier | to read than ABC if both are laid out with equal care. But I don't | expect to persuade the Mod of that. I do a lot of the same sort of aligning. Reading garbage abc that is all scrunched up is really annoying. Of course, a lot of it comes about because people are using GUI tools, and they're not aware of how bad their abc is. Sorta like all the garbage html that you see these days. But then, I'm one of the crowd that reads abc itself, and I like it to be readable. I'd expect most instrumentalists would find abc somewhat more readable, since sol-fa requires the extra step of mapping from scale-relative notes to absolute notes. I've played a chromatic accordion for a couple of decades, so I'm used to doing this translation (though usually in the other direction). I also have a collection of pennywhistles of different sizes, and they encourage you to internalize the same sort of relative-absolute pitch mapping. I wonder how many instrumentalists would find tonic sol-fa easier to read than abc? Assuming well-formatted text in both cases, of course. But this is probably not terribly significant, since TSF is clearly aimed primarily at singers. BTW, in the few TSF songs I found online, I noticed that the use of apostrophes and commas to indicate octave is essentially the same as in ABC. I'd guess that this isn't coincidence, and that Chris Walshaw is familiar with TSF. OTOH, it's a fairly obvious visual metaphor. 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] Tonic Sol-Fa
Nigel wrote: It was the precursor of ABC notation in the days long before personal computers and the internet. Simple, could be written using a typewriter, able to handle accidentals, upper and lower octaves, rhythm. I believe Gavin Greig used it in his collecting folk song in the North East of Scotland. Sam Henry did the same in Northern Ireland. Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains still uses it, I believe. I've googled Tonic Sol Fa and looked at a number of the sites that aren't about the shlocky group by that name. I'd say that it isn't ready for prime time on the Web. True, a lot of people seem to be familiar with it. But of the songs that I found (and there weren't many), there was very little consistency in the notation, and one would have to put out a huge effort to write code that could make sense of it. We have problems with inconsistent abc, but abc is a paragon of standardization in comparison with tonic sol fa. If people were interested in making it a useful Web notation, we'd want to try to foist a standard syntax on its users to make it tractable to software. This might be easy or difficult, depending on how the established user community reacts. Probably the best way to do it would be to form a small cabal to develop some useful software in stealth mode, together with a few web sites with a lot of the music that the users will want to download. If the online tunes and software are useful to the users, they'll probably jump on the bandwagon. Given that much of the existing user community consists of schools and community choral groups, the best idea might be to develop some java (or javascript) tools to download, play, and edit TSF files. This would make it useful no matter what sort of computer they're on. Provide songs from common songbooks for downloading, and it just might take off. 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] Jack's ABCs (was: Few Notes)
Nigel Gatherer wrote: | Jack Campin wrote: | - can you handle a 200-tune file with all the tunes numbered zero? |This is to stop John Chambers' Tune Finder plagiarizing my stuff |by ripping things out of context (which he already has done with |the current version despite my explicit request both in the file |and on this list for him to desist)... | | What did he say? John is, on the strength of his usenet/mailing list | contributions, a decent, fair-minded chap with enough know-how and | ingenuity to create his tune-finding software. I'd bet that with his | considerable abilities he'd be able simply to devise a way of | preserving your material so that it isn't accessible. Hmmm ... I'd thought I did what Jack asked. To my knowledge, my abc tune finder will not return single files from his files that have X:0 for the tunes. I even fixed a bug (which I'd thought a feature ;-) in which the ABC link returned only the tunes and not the surrounding text. For X:0 it now returns the entire file, exactly as the Get link, but with text/vnd.abc as the MIME type. So I'm curious about how I done any ripping, on or off. I'd like to know how my tune finder can be used to extract just one of the tunes from Jack's X:0 files. I don't know how to do it myself. In any case, my search bot has a config file in which I can tell it to ignore a host or a URL (and anything it points to). If anyone wants only part of their abc collection indexed and made available through my tune finder, I can exclude single files or whole directories. (That paragraph was why I decided to post this rather than just sending a note to Jack. I'd like to invite people to tell me if they'd like some of their tunes excluded from my tune finder's indexes. Remember that it can only be done on a per-URL basis. One file or one directory and its subdirectories, or the equivalent with trees of web pages.) One thing I can't do, of course, is prevent someone else from using my links to download a file and chop it up. Nobody can prevent this on someone else's machine. Most abc tools that I know of have the ability to separate out parts of abc files (single tunes, single voices, just melody without chords, whatever). This is natural; music tools that can't do such chopping wouldn't be very useful. The only way I know to effectively prevent this is to not put a file on the web. Also, the main (one might say only) purpose of my tune finder is to locate specific tunes and download them. If you don't want people to do this, maybe it's best if I don't index your files at all. A few people have requested this, and I've put them in my avoid list. They can still potentially be found through the big search sites, but such sites aren't too good at specialized things like abc. | The first thing you've got to do is speak with each other. Tell him | what you want to happen and what you don't want to happen. If you feel | you've already done that, persevere: perhaps there has been a | misunderstanding. Yeah; I thought I understood what Jack wanted, and supplied it. I was obviously wrong. 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: Few Notes
Going a bit further afield, a while back as a Scottish dance, we included the following simple but beautiful tune in a medley for an air-type strathspey. Some of the dancers recognized it and had big grins on their faces. We omitted the repeat of the fourth phrase, of course, to get 16 bars. This tune goes well with Banks of Spey, and sounds great on the pipes. X: 1 T: Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika T: God Bless Africa C: Enoch Sontanga 1897 R: march Z: John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] Apr 2000 N: Enoch Sontanga was a teacher at a methodist mission school in Johannesburg SA. N: The first part is now incorporated into the South African nation anthem. M: 4/4 L: 1/8 K: D | Ddc de f2 f2 | A7e2 e2 Dd4 \ | Dff ef A7g2 g2 | Dff f2 A7e4 | | Ddc de f2 f2 | A7e2 g2 Df4 \ | Eme4 Dd4 | A7cd e2 Dd4 \ | Eme4 Dd3d | A7cd e2 Dd4 :| % This part not usually used nowadays: | Dd2 cB A4- | A8 \ | Dd2 cB A4- | A8 \ | Dd2 ef GbB4 | Emgf e2 Dd4 | A7cd e2 Dd4 |] 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] FW: Hi from Greece...
Nigel Gatherer, Crieff, Scotland writes: | My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose | (also called Low Down In the Broom) | | s .m|d :- .d|r :m |d' :- .t|l :s |l :- .s |l :d' |r' :- | | d'.r',m'|d :- .d|r :m |d' :- .t|l :s |l :- .s |l :t|d' :- | | :s |d' :m' |r':d'|l .d':- |s :m |s :- .s |f':- .m'|r' :- | | - :s' |m' :s' |m':d'|l:d' |s :m |s :- .s |l :t|d' :- || That's interesting notation. Pretty obvious how it works. Is there software that uses it? An official spec? Translators to/from abc? (ABC could use a bit of competition, y'know. ;-) 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] Pamela Rose Grant
Keith Dunn asks: | Does anyone have or know where to find abc's of a tune Pamela | Rose Grant as played by Alasdair Fraser? | I don't know who it was written by or the history behind it. Anyone know | anything about the tune? By some coincidence, I just got that from a friend at a recent dance. Great tune. Here's his version: X: 1 T: Pamela Rose Grant C: Alasdair Frazer (1995) R: strathspey M: C L: 1/8 K: F C7AB \ | Fc2 AB cB AF | Bbd2 Bc df C7eg \ | Fc2 AB cB AF | GmDG GA B2 C7AB | | Fc2 AB cB AF | Bbd2 Bc df C7eg \ | Fca Amge Dmfd cA | GmDG GA B2 || C7AG \ | FF2 fg ag fc | Bbdf FcA GmAG C7GA \ | FF2 fg ag fg/a/ | Bbba gf Gmdc C7df | | FF2 fg ag fc | Bbdc Gmdf C7g2 fg \ | Fag Dmfd Fcd fA | GmDG GA B2 |] 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] Dance in Watertown, MA (USA)
This must set some sort of record for early arrival at a concert. | Wendy, If you are there and get this, would you mind bringing both fiddles? | See you soon. I've parked down by the street. | Jeffrey | - Original Message - | From: Wendy Galovich [EMAIL PROTECTED] | To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 2:56 PM | Subject: [scots-l] Dance in Watertown, MA (USA) | | Spring Dance | | Saturday, April 6, 2002 | 7:30 PM - 12:00 AM | | Canadian American Club | 202 Arlington Street | Watertown, MA USA | | Featuring Recording Artists: | Jerry Holland, Violinist | Doug MacPhee, Pianist | | John Campbell, Violinist | | Step Dancing by Four On The Floor | | Norman MacEachern, Prompter | Also Mabou Sets | | Admission $12.00 | Complimentary Coffee, Tea Goodies | | Sponsored by John Campbell | (978) 897-7031 | 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] Tempi
Nigel Gatherer wrote: | David Francis wrote: | ...Jimmy Shand was renowned for his ability to hit the right tempo | and keep it ticking along...Beware the early Shand recordings though. | They go at an unbelievable lick. One theory is that this was to | accommodate the limited recording space available on the old shellac | records. Or maybe it was the wildness of youth | | I think the latter, Dave. I remember reading that it was at a | particular point in his career, after the Beltona recordings I think, | that Jimmy decided to study tempi and made a big effort to get it right | from then on. Or you could blame earlier recording artists such as the | Wyper Brothers; it's fairly obvious that Shand listened to their 78s a | great deal. Something else to take into consideration is the sloppiness of the recording industry with regards to tempos. I've heard re-releases of old recordings whose tempo differs by 10% or more. This is a big difference to dancers and musicians, but not to recording companies. It explains some of the strange keys that you find on recordings. Sometimes you can ask the original artists what key they played it in and adjust your variable-speed player to get that key. Otherwise, you really don't know. (You do have variable speed record and cassette and CD players, don't you? ;-) 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] Tempi
Ian Brockbank wrote: | On the terminology side, SCDers do not make many distinctions at all. | The average SCDer is hard put to distinguish between a reel (simple time) | and a jig (6/8) - subtleties such as hornpipes are beyond them. In slow | time, it's just strathspeys, even when they are slow airs or schottisches | (though they are always simple time - they can tell a waltz, although it's | not part of the standard repertoire). How true. I've seen numerous cases of dance teachers trying to explain the difference between a jig and a reel, and after listening to their fuzzy, mystical attempts, it becomes clear that they don't have a clue. OTOH, some of them understand the differences very well, including the march/reel/hornpipe distinction and how airs differ from strathspeys. I know a few dance leaders who are clear when they want hornpipe tunes rather than reels, mostly because it's natural to play hornpipes a bit slower (104-108 or so) so you can get the semi-dotted rhythm right. This is is desirable for some dances that are otherwise too hectic. Similarly, some teachers will request a real strathspey for teaching a dance that usually uses an air, because the recommended air doesn't have a strong enough rhythm and is confusing to novice dancers. After they've learned the dance, the recommended air may then be requested. As for waltzes in the standard repertoire, you can't get much more standard than the RSCDS booklets, which include: Book 4 # 8 Waltz Country Dance Book 12 # 7 The Yellow Haired Laddie Book 19 # 5 Tweedside These are the only ones that I know about, and I'd have to agree that they aren't common dances. (And the tune for The Yellow Haired Laddie is actually labelled minuet rather than waltz, though I'd predict that the Renaissance Dance crowd would object that the tune isn't a minuet at all. ;-) 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] Tempi
Toby wrote: | John Chambers wrote: | OTOH, some of them understand the differences very well, including | the march/reel/hornpipe distinction and how airs differ from | strathspeys. I know a few dance leaders who are clear when they want | hornpipe tunes rather than reels, mostly because it's natural to play | hornpipes a bit slower (104-108 or so) so you can get the semi-dotted | rhythm right. This is is desirable for some dances that are otherwise | too hectic. | | I still don't like the way that SCD'ers like strathspeys played. :-) It | sounds good with certain strathspeys, but it ruins other ones. It robs | them of their drive. Yeah, but that's nothing compared to what is done to airs. I mean, ruining a good, slow, meandering air by playing it in strict tempo with neat 8-br phrases -- Jeez! ;-) But no matter what, when playing for dancing, ya does what the dance requires, and make the best of it. You can always play the tune right in your living room or for a listening audience. I might also mention that a few dance leaders are clear about wanting shottish tunes for some strathspeys. One that's common around here is the Glasgow Highlanders. The feel is different, and the dances that want shottishes should also usually be a bit faster than strathspeys. Of course, most of the dancers don't have a clue about the difference. But some of them will start doing Highland step-dance things during such dances if the tune has the right feel. We had an advanced SCD workshop here a few weeks ago that went over just this topic. The approach was Here's a cool thing to do when appropriate. It doesn't interfere with the dance, and it's fun if you can do it. 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] Tempi
Anselm writes: | John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: | (And the tune for The Yellow Haired Laddie | is actually labelled minuet rather than waltz, though I'd predict | that the Renaissance Dance crowd would object that the tune isn't a | minuet at all. ;-) | | It's not a waltz, either. When that tune was new the waltz hadn't been | invented yet. True. But then, people routinely play a lot of 17th-century tunes as waltzes. Hereabouts, several of O'Carolan's tunes are considered waltzes by a lot of the Contra and SCD gang. The Yellow Haired Laddie tune does work for a waltz, while it doesn't really fit a minuet very well. The RSCDS booklet treats it as a waltz-time tune, despite their labelling it as a minuet. The really curious one of the dances I listed is Tweedside, which has 6-bar phrases. The two tunes in the RSCDS booklet have different phrasing. The first tune has parts made up of two 3-bar phrases, while the second has three two-bar phrases. There are a very small number of RSCDS dances that have phrase lengths other than 8 bars. 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] Reel ID Please
Nigel Gatherer commented: | Manuel Waldesco wrote: | Nigel Gatherer said: | Also I like to share tunes. | | Ok then, let's introduce another sort of musical tradition, there you | go an Aragonese tune! | | T: Tatero | O: Aragon | | [Snip] | | ??? Heh. Maybe what we should do is everyone take note of the tradtunes mailing list, which is officially dedicated to traditional tunes from anywhere and everywhere. This tune should have been posted there. The list is at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tradtunes/ 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] Wake Up Call
Steve Wyrick wrote: | John Chambers wrote: | Hmmm ... So none of them could find the tune, either. | Maybe it was a tune known only to Miss Milligan. | | The RSCDS usually publishes the title tunes along with the dances so I'd | think it would be available. Maybe it's just not a very interesting tune? | I'll keep my eyes open for a copy of Miss Milligan's Miscellany. -Steve It won't help. I've seen the MMM books, and they contain only dance descriptions. They suggest tunes by name, but don't contain the tunes. Even their regular booklet series does a bit of this. They typically have a tune or two on the left-side page, but they will often suggest one or two alternative tunes by name. This is typically done for pipe tunes. 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] Wake Up Call
Just a comment from a couple of weeks back: I did take versions of the two tunes called Gramachree along to the dance event, and it was pretty much agreed that neither of these tunes was what was needed. The jig was out because the dance is a strathspey. The air was a more likely fit, since airs are sometimes used for strathspeys. But we just couldn't make it sound right. So we picked some random strathspey tunes that we knew, and the dancers seemed happy. Maybe there's a version of Gramachree that we don't know of, that would work for an air-type strathspey. The usual sources for Scottish dances seem to imply that Gramachie is a tune that everyone should know. But none of us seem to know it, and it isn't in any of our books. The dance was published by Miss Milligan (Miscellany v.2) without a tune, and she also implied that the tune was well-known. Maybe I should ask on the strathspey list, for future reference. | Looks like a minor spelling problem. According to Andrew Kuntz: | | GRAD(H) MO CROID(H)E. AKA and see The harp that once through Tara's | halls, Gramachree, Gramachree Molly, Will you go to Flanders, | Little Molly O. Irish, Air (4/4 time). D Major. Standard. AB. Roche | Collection, 1983, Vol. 1; No. 28, pg. 15. | | Recognise it now? | | Ted | | | -Original Message- | From: John Chambers [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] | Sent: 28 November 2001 21:52 | To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Subject: Re: [scots-l] Wake Up Call | | Nigel writes: | | I demand that: |... | | OK, you get the idea: unless this mailing list really is as dead as | | Patie Birnie's mare, let's get some action going. I've never known it | | to be as quiet as this. Me? Oh no, I've no time for such frivolities. | | Talk to me, people! | | Heh. One question that just came up here: Can I play a tune called | Gramachie? Well, no, I can't, because I can't find it anywhere. My | Tune Finder has never heard of it, and none of the pile of trad tune | books on my shelf seems to contain it. The title sounds somehow | familiar, but I can't think of how it sounds. Anyone out there know | it? Got an abc version? 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] Wake Up Call
Steve Wyrick writes: [about Gramachie] | I know I've danced this dance but I don't remember anything about the tune! | I checked the RSCDS DanceData database web interface, which lists the dance | along with recordings of music for it. You might be interested in checking | out what tunes other musicians have recorded for it; maybe some of those are | more available. Here's the URL for the DanceData entry: | http://www.strathspey.org/dd/dance/2631/view . If you click on the track | entries under Tunes you'll go to the tune list for each recording. What's | interesting to me is that of the 3 recordings listed, none includes the | title tune in the set! Hope this helps. -Steve Hmmm ... So none of them could find the tune, either. Maybe it was a tune known only to Miss Milligan. 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] Wake Up Call
Nigel writes: | I demand that: ... | OK, you get the idea: unless this mailing list really is as dead as | Patie Birnie's mare, let's get some action going. I've never known it | to be as quiet as this. Me? Oh no, I've no time for such frivolities. | Talk to me, people! Heh. One question that just came up here: Can I play a tune called Gramachie? Well, no, I can't, because I can't find it anywhere. My Tune Finder has never heard of it, and none of the pile of trad tune books on my shelf seems to contain it. The title sounds somehow familiar, but I can't think of how it sounds. Anyone out there know it? Got an abc version? 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] Maggie Brown's Favourite
Nigel Gatherer writes: | John Chambers wrote: | ...New England contra-dance musicians (who consider it Irish)... | | So, for that matter, do Irish musicians. Even if it were Nathaniel | Gow's composition it, along with hundreds of Scots-origin tunes, can be | regarded as Irish because it has been absorbed into that tradition. It | doesn't exactly work the other way around. Take a tune like The Rakes | of Mallow which is obviously an Irish tune in origin (Mallow is a town | in County Cork): it has been played for centuries in Scotland and is | part of our traditional repertoire, but would we call it a Scottish | tune? | | Consider this can of worms opened (are you ready, Ted?). Well, I wouldn't consider it a can of worms at all. They're just following one of the oldest and most universal musical traditions: If you hear a good tune, steal it. After a generation or two, your people will consider it one of their traditional tunes. And it will be. 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] Maggie Brown's Favourite
Nigel Gatherer writes: | John Chambers wrote: | | Well, I wouldn't consider it a can of worms at all... | | Can't you tell when I'm trying to whip up a juicy thread? :-) Oh, sorry, uh, I guess it's really a can of worms. Big, fat ones that would make good troll bait. (Hmmm ... Do trolls eat worms? I don't know what they eat.) 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: scots-l-digest V1 #420
| In a message dated 6/9/01 8:47:14 pm, UnknownSender@UnknownDomain writes: | | Huh? I've pulled up bracken with my bare hands, and I've never had | any such problems. Bracken stalks only extend a short distance into | the ground, and then rapidly split up into small roots. They pull out | very easily, leaving the roots behind. Granted, you might have a | problem with hundreds of them, as with just about any sort of plant, | but light gloves would take care of that. | | Maybe you're thinking of some other fern species. | No - I trained in Botany and Horticulture, and do know the difference between | bracken and other fern species. | I grew up in a heavily bracken polluted area in the south of England, and | repeat that bracken stalks can lacerate the hands if pulled without gloves. | That is, after the stalks harden up about mid season. I agree that they are | soft early on in the season (at which time they can be cooked and eaten like | asparagus, I have read). | I was Head Gardener of a very famous garden on the west coast of | Scotland for a while, and we had large areas of bracken there: neither my | gardens staff nor the local forestry workers who came in to cut the wilder | areas of the gardens with the scythe would have dreamt of pulling bracken | stalks without leather glove protection. | Nicolas B., Lanark, Maybe you have rougher bracken thereabouts. Most of my esperience has been with North American kinds. OTOH, I've seen some in Scandinavia that seem very much like the bracken around here. Bracken ferns are common to the entire north temperate zone, of course, but there are a number of different species. One warning I read a few years ago: Fern sprouts are a common part of the Japanese diet, and lots of species are eaten. A study was done to try to explain the distribution of several kinds of cancer that have irregular geographic distributions in Japan. One thing that turned up was a strong correlation between stomach cancer and eating bracken sprouts. They said that no other fern showed a correlation with stomach cancer (or any other disease), just brackens. So they recommended not eating bracken until more studies had been done. Now I live in New England, where fiddlehead ferns are common in stores in the springtime. These aren't bracken ferns, so they're probably quite safe. 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] FW: looking for abcs
| I've been lurking for awhile on the list. I'm a beginning fiddler with more | background on other instruments (hammered dulcimer and mandolin). Can | someone direct me to a site that explains how abc notation works? I'd love | to take a look at the tune below and others that have gone by but haven't a | clue as to how to decipher this stuff. thanks, fran strong I have a collection of links to ABC docs, mine and others', at http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/doc/ If anyone knows of others, send me the URL. In particular, we've had some questions about documentation in languages other than English. It could be useful to have a list of these, too. 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] Lord Breadalbane's March
Nigel Gatherer writes: | I've been looking for a 6/8 tune for beginners (all suggestions | welcomed) and came across this lovely tune. Pinning the mode down is | beyond me - can anyone help? | | X:296 | T:Lord Breadalbane's March Well, I printed it out and showed it to a few friends. We pretty much agreed that it was in D and Em. The lack of any c's means you can't say precisely which sort of major and minor scales, but that doesn't matter. It's a neverending tune, since it doesn't end with a resolution. It's a good example of a counterexample of the usual rules for determining the key, by looking at the notes that it starts and ends on. But there are other tunes like this, too. Anyway, here are the chords we worked out. There was a bit of dispute over some of the A chords. I think it sounds ok if most of them are just Em chords, but it sounds better with the A chords. The A in bar 12 seems to be needed. And, of course, I tend to just play plain A chords on my accordion, though A7 sounds ok for all of them. One bit of trickiness is that it does start on a clear D major chord, but this is somewhat hidden by the fact that the only actual d is a relatively insignificant note. Also, to end it, you'd probably want to cadence on the extra measure | Dd6 |] Anyway, it's a good pipe march. I wonder if anyone knows anything about its origin? X:1 T:Lord Breadalbane's March B:Songs of Scotland Without Words, J T Surenne N:Transposed from another key (no shaps or flats) Z:Nigel Gatherer [EMAIL PROTECTED] M:6/8 L:1/8 K:D d \ | DABA fed | GBAB dBG | DABA fed | EmBee A7e2d \ | DABA fed | GBAB dBG | DABA fed | EmBee A7e2 || d \ | Emefe afe | Dfef fed | Emefe afe | A7efe e2d \ | Emefe afe | Dfef fed | Dafe fed | EmBee A7e2 |] 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] Tune Archive
Nigel Gatherer writes: | John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | | | There must have been a few ABC notated tunes in the Scots-L | | archives. Would it be desirable/useful/easy/worthwhile to consider | | collecting them together? | | Actually, I've been doing that since early in 2000. Counting the tune | you just posted, I have 49 tunes. They're at: | http://trillial.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/mirror/scots-l/ | | I've just gathered the ones I've kept, and they number 140!. I can put | them on my web site or perhaps they could be housed on the Tulloghgorum | site? Or do you think I should ask permission from the Z: names? Och, | it's all so complicated! Well, I wouldn't expect that you should have to hunt down transcribers for things posted to a mailing list. I'd think there would be an assumption that tunes posted to a list like this will naturally be saved and played by the readers. Why would you post a tune here, after all? One thing that's a bit of a bother is that people post ABC tunes that lack things like the S and Z lines. You really should give proper credit to sources and transcribers. You can often figure this out from the English text, but this information is very easy to lose. We should be encouraging people to put such info in the ABC headers, so it will get carried along with the tune. It's probably a good idea for any online tune archive to include a notice that if any of the tunes are copyrighted, the owners should contact [email addr]. You should offer to remove tunes if the owner objects to them being online in ABC. You should also suggest that an alternative is to keep them online, with a copyright notice plus an email address or URL in the ABC headers. My experience is that tune composers usually approve of online ABC versions, once they understand what ABC is. Most people like their tunes being played, after all. And if the tune contains a pointer back to the copyright owner, it functions as a sort of free ad that makes it easy for people to find more tunes by the same composer, and to quickly get permission if they want to use a tune for some lucrative commercial purposes. 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] Tune Archive
Toby writes: | I've been thinking about this for awhile. About putting up an ABC | respository on the web that has an easy web-based interface that allows | anyone to post an ABC tune to the appropriate tune category, and all the | tunes are stored on the back-end in some database, like MySQL or | PostGres.. | Maybe I can get John Chambers, our resident PERL genius to help out | with the coding. I think I'll call it http://abc-tunes.cyberhub.co.uk | | John, are you up for this idea? Sounds interesting. I've done a bit with online tune entry, though I haven't much advertised it. It could be fun to work on something a bit more general. Using a real database would be an interesting challenge. I haven't done this, mostly because I really can't install and run a database engine on this machine where I have an unprivileged guest account. (Actually, they have given me a few privileges so I could take care of a few things that would otherwise bother the admins. ;-) One question would be how to organize a user-contributed tune classification scheme. There are a lot of ways that one might like to organize tunes. I wonder what a good UI would look like for this? 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] Tune Archive
| On another mailing list, John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | | I wonder how many more musical mailing lists have tunes in archives? | | There must have been a few ABC notated tunes in the Scots-L archives. | Would it be desirable/useful/easy/worthwhile to consider collecting | them together? Actually, I've been doing that since early in 2000. Counting the tune you just posted, I have 49 tunes. They're at: http://trillial.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/mirror/scots-l/ I'd encourage others to do this, too, for any lists they're on. It can take a bit of time to put the ABC tunes into a usable form. The problem is that you tend to get tunes posted without a title, by someone wondering what the tune is called. Then you get a bunch of replies that give the title and maybe other information about the tune, all in English. No software can ever extract this information. So you hunt down the replies (which aren't always recognized as a thread by mail readers due to mangling of the subject or message-id lines), and you do a bunch of editing. My Tune Finder does have a couple of mailing-list archives in its list of places to search, but it is quite unsuccessful at extracting ABC tunes from them, for the above reasons. It does a much better job when someone has taken the time to combine the messages into one ABC file with the info in the header lines. This takes sufficient work that I find myself being lazy and missing some of them. And I'm not sure I always find all the information that people post. So I'd encourage others to do the same, and put the tunes on their web site. This could be a useful resource to future musical historians. For that matter, it can be useful to people today. 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] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
Wendy writes: | I'm not a big fan of electronic tuners either - my favorite tuning device | is a tuning fork.. no batteries to run down, and no annoying little needle | jumping around alternately indicating both sharp and flat on the same string. I'm not a fan of either, though I own two of each. They both lead to groups that are less well in tune than they'd be without the gadgets. What I've seen all too often is someone with an untunable instrument, typically piano or accordion, plays an A, but there are a few dummies with tuning forks or electronic tuners that take the attitude I'm in tune and the piano or accordion is out of tune. The result is that the group is out of tune. Electronic tuners do have the advantage that they can be calibrated to an untunable instrument. As a keyboard player, I've found that it can be useful to become familiar with how one calibrates the common models. I can sometimes sneakily calibrate them when the owner isn't looking. Then they think they're tuning to A=440 when they're actually tuning to my instrument. But sometimes I can't get away with this, and there's no good way to get the group in tune. The worst culprits seem to be fiddlers, who often have the attitude Damded if I'll tune to an accordion. (Since I'm also a fiddler, I can get away with such an observation. ;-) -- He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue. -- Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella 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] Silvery Voe
Jack Campin writes: | [Tom Anderson] | I don't have the full story, but I remember reading that there | has been an ugly struggle over the rights of his music. | | If the Shetland Times has any say in the matter, don't expect them | to hand over anything free of charge. Remember their lawsuit over | the rival Shetland paper's website? (The first litigation in the | world over plagiarism on the Web, if I remember right). Interesting. I haven't read anything about this story. I had noticed that when I checked various Shetland historical and cultural web sites, I didn't seem to see much mention of him. This did strike me as curious, considering what he did for Shetland's history and culture. Maybe this is the explanation. This is not surprising, of course, but it is a bit disappointing. Tom was one of the people who was really dedicated to bringing Shetland's traditional music to the world. He did a lot to get people involved, especially young people. It's somewhat of a shame that corporate financial interests would interfere with his work. This probably means that I should only use his trad tunes, and try to avoid the ones that he wrote, unless I can get explicit permission to use them. So far, I haven't received any replies to the messages that I sent to a few Shetland sites (including the Shetland Times). This is another example of something that I've suggested a few times in the past: One of the effects of things like ABC on the Internet will be to strengthen the position of traditional music. The world's archives are moving to the Net quickly now, and we are reaching the point that a lot of people use it as their first source of information. If I'm looking for a tune, I'm more likely to use one that I find than one that I don't find. Since there's pressure to not put new music on the Net, I'm more likely to find older music for which there's no copyright problem. And since I'm always under time pressure to find something, what I'll use will more and more be the older material. A quick check with my tune finder with several of Tom's compositions and trad tunes in Ringing Strings shows that this is true now. The trad tunes that I asked for are mostly there (though not always in his versions). His compositions mostly aren't there. So people using the Net to find tunes are less likely to find his compositions than they are to find the trad tunes that he published. Yet another in a long list of examples of why the current concept of intellectual property is doing more harm than good. Well, maybe in another century, someone will discover Tom's tunes in some hard-copy archive and introduce them to the world. I'll go on to something else. There's no shortage of things to keep me busy ... 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] Silvery Voe
| John Chambers wrote: | | ...it's on page 37. Here it is... | | Without intending to be aggressive or confrontational, I'm curious | about your stance on this, John. It's a modern tune composed by a | someone who has been dead well short of 70 years; it can be found in a | currently available printed collection. Do you feel that it's OK to | publish it? Hmmm ... Good question. I'd think there are possibly two answers in this case, which may or may not be similar. From what I know of Tom, having only met him a couple of times at musical events and not being anything more than a casual acquaintance, I'd say it's pretty obvious that he would have approved. It was always clear that he was mainly motivated by a desire to get as many people involved with the music as possible. Thus, in Ringing Strings he says about the tunes I hope that fiddlers find something interesting in some of them, and if they get as much enjoyment from playing the tunes as I have had from composing them then I will be very happy. Then he adds Tune up, let's play and dance. This does seem to be consistent with everything else he ever said or wrote. On the other hand, since Tom is gone, his works are now presumably in the hand of various others who may or may not have this generous sort of attitude. In particular, publishers often take a less than open view of people sharing the contents of their publications. There are many cases of publishers taking a radically different attitude than their authors. So maybe it would be worthwhile to inquire about who now owns Tom's tunes, and whether they view the tunes as a source of income or as Tom's gift to the world. A bit of checking on the net didn't quickly turn up information about who now owns the tunes or publications. As near as I can tell, Hand me Doon the Fiddle is out of print. Ringing Strings is for sale by a few outlets, and is probably in print, but it's not in the catalog of the Shetland Times, the publisher of my copy. They do list a book called The Tom Anderson Collection which I'm tempted to order even without seeing what's in it. I wonder who might have it? Or maybe I should just order it from the Shetland Times. One curiosity is that I found a number of references to the Shetland Musical Heritage Trust, including a comment that they're the current publishers of Tom's music, but their web site doesn't seem to mention him anywhere. I also tried to locate some of the names in Ringing Strings, such as Robert Innes and Ian Holland, without much luck. Robert was at the University of Stirling, but they don't list him anywhere, so I suppose he's moved on. Anyway, I've sent off a few email messages about Tom's books and tunes, and maybe I'll get some responses. I've thought for some time that I'd like to see his tunes, both his compositions and his collections of trad tunes, online. The latter we could just do, of course, but we'd want to get permission for the former. Now that the world's archives are rapidly moving online, a good way to memorialize Tom's contributions to the music of Shetland and Scotland would be to make a Tom Anderson site. If his conservators agree ... 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] Silvery Voe
Philip W writes: | From: Keith W Dunn [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Subject: [scots-l] The Silvery Voe | I've searched the web over and can't find the abc's or a gif or jpg of | this tune, The Silvery Voe. It's a Shetland tune on Tom Andersons/Aly | Bain's CD The Sliver Bow. Does anyone have this in one of these | formats? Orcould you point me in the right direction? AND | What's a Voe? or even a Silvery Voe | | Voe is verry common word on the maps of Shetland. See Sullom Voe, the | location of the large Oil Terminal, which is perhaps the most famous. From | the map a voe seems to be a body of water such as an inlet or sea-loch - | similar to fjord perhaps? | | Hence the Silvery Voe. I think this is a Tom Anderson Tune and it might be | in Ringing Strings or one of the other collections in the same series. Yup; it's on page 37. Here it is, with Tom's explanation, and with the somewhat unusual positioning of the pickup to the second part: X: 1 T: The Silvery Voe C: Tom Anderson 1966 B: Ringing Strings p.37 Z: John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] N: When the full moon shines down on a Shetland voe in winter the sea appears to be N: shining silver. Composed in the winter of 1966 when driving along Weisdale Voe. N: In the key of F major, as that key to me is always a silver colour. From a tape N: recording of Tom by a student. M: C L: 1/8 K: F C \ [| A3G F2C2 | D2F2 C4 | D2B2 C2A2 | (BA) GF G2C2 | A3G F2C2 | (D2F2) D3B | AC3 B,2G2 | F4 F2 :| AB | (c3A) (f3A) | B3c/d/ (c3A) | B2(dB) A2(cA) | (BA) GF G2AB | (c3A) (f2A2) | B2cd (c3B) | AC3 (A3G) | F3E kFG kAB | (c3A) (f2A2) | B2cd (c3A) | BkdcB AkcBA | (BA)GF G2C2 | F3G F2C2 | D2F2C2B2 | AC3 B,2G2 | F4-F4 |] 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] Is there anybody there? (was: Dumbarton's drum)
Nigel Gatherer (I think) wrote: | John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | Flowers, Ross (MTO) writes: | | Aha! I see it - just before | | [Snip] | | Not fair, John, to attribute my genius to that plagiarist Flowers. ... Sorry 'bout dat! It is amazingly easy to get such quotes wrong. It's also easy to let the mail reader figure it out, and then you can blame the software for getting it wrong. | OK, lurkers, your time has come. All you folks who have never (or | rarely) contribute to the list, speak now. Introduce yourselves, tell | us something about yourselves. Where are you? What is your interest in | Scots music? Yeah; I wonder how many lurkers there are. It's normal for lists to be dominated by a handful of voices, who seem to be having a discussion amongst themselves with few clues that there are hundreds of others (not to mention the Echelon/Carnivore folks ;-) listening in undetected. Maybe we should also ask the lurkers to post their current favorite tune ... 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] Dumbarton's drum
Flowers, Ross (MTO) writes: | Aha! I see it - just before | Dumfries House - good old Gore! | A fine old reel (but that high c | Does not endear the tune to me). | So there you are, it might confuse; | The song or reel, you have to choose | If it's the former, let us know; | If it's the latter, see below. | S: Loose sheet in my collection (possibly from RSCDS) Clever! The tune is indeed in RSCDS booklet 5 (dance 2), but it's in F/Dm, which turns that high C into a high Bb. Neither key works for the pipes, but then, it's not obvious how you would fold this into a pipe tune. Is there a pipe setting of this tune? Here's my transcription from the RSCDS page: X: 1 T: Dumbarton's Drums B: RSCDS 5-2 B: Playford 1697 B: McGibbon 1763 M: C| L: 1/8 K: F |: FG | FA3c C7ABGA | FF2cd c2BA | GmGFGA BAGF | D2de C7d2cd | Ff3g agfd || | FcAcd f3F | GmGAfd AmcAGF | DmD2de d2 :: cd | Ff3g fgag | f2ab a2gf | | Gmgfga bagf | d2ga C7g2fd | Fcdfg (Bb)agfd | FcAcd Dmf2fg | Amagfd |cAGF | DmD2de d2 :| (Let's see if this makes it through without line wrapping. ;-) 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] FW: Edinburgh Shetland Fiddlers Society
Ian writes: | Hi John, | ... and I'd like to know (or be reminded occasionally) about others | out there that I should link to. | | Okay. http://www.scottishdance.net/ - resources for Scottish Dance, | (mainly SCD highland, with some ceilidh and general), including | groups (including Scottish Music groups), dance bands, hints and tips, | links, dances, events, and probably other things I've forgotten. That one was in my list, but I did take the opportunity to investigate some of the nearby links, and found that there has been a bit of renaming and/or reorganizing going on in rscds sites. I think I have most of them straightened out, though a few seem to have just disappeared. Funny how difficult it can be to keep up with changes on the web. Any other relevant sites out there that have changed their names in the past few months? 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] FW: Edinburgh Shetland Fiddlers Society
| | I'm writing to you to announce the arrival of our web-site: | | http://www.edinburgh-shetland-fiddlers.org | | I would be grateful if you would provide a link to it from your site. | | Done. It's in my page of Scottish links at: | http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Scotland/ScottishLinks.html Hmmm ... My first reaction on getting this was: Oops! I fell for the old trick of replying to the list rather than to the sender. But then it occurred to me that in this case, it might be good if everyone made the same mistake. I certainly don't mind people linking to my site, and I'd like to know (or be reminded occasionally) about others out there that I should link to. For that matter, I really ought get around to checking to make sure that the links I have are still correct ... 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] abc matters and the Calvert Collection - Kelso 1799
Philip Whittaker [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: | | Maybe there is something in this abc format I thought. So I tried a few | tunes from the Calvert Collection of 1799(?). I tried all the features | that were on offer and was very pleasantly surpised. I manged to notate | just about everything I wanted. It seems to cope with most effects. ... | The collection has nothing like the importance of the Aird Collections | which it is suggested Burns used as source for many of his tunes. I am not | sure that abc is the best medium for it as some tunes have second parts | and good bass lines. There is the local interest and 200 year old version | of well kent tunes. I suspect that lots of people here would like to see the collection transcribed and online. I notice that your email address looks like the same machine, or maybe a near neighbor, of Neil Gatherer's. Maybe you should talk to him about setting up a web directory for the tunes. He could probably make a lot of useful suggestions. Some abc software does multi-part music now, though it's not very well standardised. If your program doesn't, it's no big deal. Just enter the parts as separate "tunes", with different X: numbers, and add something like "(harmony)" or "(bass)" to the T: lines. This will print in a usable form, as separate parts. Transforming it into abc that uses the V: lines would then be quite easy. Some more 18th-century music collections online would be interesting to a lot of us. 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] another place for Rob (or maybe Nigel) to visit
David wrote: | John Chambers wrote: | Jack Campin writes: | | Maybe the Kirghiz got it from Persia, but I can't see how any chain | | of influence could have transmitted an instrument design from Persia | | to Scotland in the Middle Ages either. | | Not much mystery there, actually. The Norse were trading through | Russia down to the Black Sea by at least the 800's. They spread all | sorts of things along their trade routes. | | And unless I'm mistaken, the Rus were Vikings in origin and European Russia owed as |much | to Nordic influence as Scotland and England did, only a bit earlier. You're not at all mistaken. Part of the story is that in much of eastern Europe, there was a custom of hiring town managers from far away, so that they wouldn't have family and financial ties locally and could be impartial in how they ran things. Since the Norse were often sailing up and down the rivers, a lot of them managed to hire on as town managers. Many settled there permanently. Historians use this as the conventional explanation of all the Nordic names, customs and construction techniques throughout the area. About the only connection to Scottish topics is that in this case, "Norse" seems to have meant anyone who learned the language well enough to sign on and travel with them. This seems to have included a lot of people from the British Isles, not surprisingly, as well as from the rest of northwestern Europe. 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] another place for Rob (or maybe Nigel) to visit
Jack Campin writes: | Maybe the Kirghiz got it from Persia, but I can't see how any chain | of influence could have transmitted an instrument design from Persia | to Scotland in the Middle Ages either. Not much mystery there, actually. The Norse were trading through Russia down to the Black Sea by at least the 800's. They spread all sorts of things along their trade routes. 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] The Unfortunate Rake
David writes: | I have my mother's old banjo tutor of Cowboy Songs from around 1930 and it's got the | Streets of Laredo in there, definitely with a copyright on it, not bothered to check |whose | as the book is buried in a music stool somewhere. However you will not be playing it |in | the same key and no doubt a couple of notes will be fractionally different in |duration, | and it's based on an earlier traditional tune, so there is little risk unless you |CALL | your tune anything associated with a copyright version. Indeed. Maybe the best idea is to call it "The Bard of Omagh", and note in the text that it's a variant of the earlier tune "The Unfortunate Rake" and the later American ballad "The Streets of Laredo". This will make it obvious to anyone claiming a copyright that they are making a fraudulent claim on a much earlier tune. Chances are if you present them with the names and dates of the earlier publications, they'll realize that they can't get away with it, and you'll never hear from them again. 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] The Unfortunate Rake
| ... But, I've got the same problem with "The Bard" as I do | with "The Rake": finding a copy of it with a pre-1927 date! I have a book | here that claims the Bard was written in 1801 by Thomas Campbell, but I need | some kind of "proof" of that. Even if it's a facsimile re-print of an old | book containing that title, melody, and I'll take whatever lyrics I can find | at this point! It's in O'Neill's "Music of Ireland", published in 1903. It's tune 363. The tune is slightly different from Streets of Laredo, but it's obviously the same tune. 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] Sailor's Wife jig
Kate Dunlay wrote: | | I think for The Sailor's Wife Em is a more usual key than Dm. | | Not here it isn't - people play it in D minor or not at all (despite | it being in print in E minor for well over a century). | | I have only heard it played in D minor as well. There are 23 abc versions on the Net, all in D minor. Or D dorian, of course, though the tune doesn't seem to have any 6ths at all, so never mind. Well, there are three that are labelled "K:c". But they are in D minor, too. Maybe I should put up a version in E minor. 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] Andy Dejarlis Jig
| | All those Irish flute players try to put everything in D :-) The key of | E is a beautiful key, especially on stringed instruments. Are you | familiar with the tune "Cameron Chisholm's Strathspey", it's an | excellent dark tune on E. It's fairly recently written. Unfortunately I | don't remember who wrote it because I learned it off of ear from one of | David Greenberg's hometapes. Hmmm ... I found two different tunes with this title, one is on Brenda Stubbert's web site and attributed to Maybelle Chisholm: http://www.cranfordpub.com//tunes/CapeBreton/Compliments_to_Cameron.htm The other is by Brenda Stubbert: http://www.cranfordpub.com/tunes/abcs/stubbertarchive.abc It's tune number 12. It's called a march, but it's really more of a strathspey-time (slow) march. They're both good tunes, but neither is in E major. The first is in E dorian; the second in D major. 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:Music writing programs
Andrew Catford wrote: | unsubscribe | | John Chambers wrote: | | Nicolas B., Lanark writes: Nah; I don't think I'll do that! I doubt if Nicolas will, either. But you can if you like. 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] music notation
Both of these illustrate my previous point, that some people (mostly dance musicians in my experience) really like having the bar lines and notes aligned. Their reason is that it makes the phrasing of the music clearer, which improves readability. Meanwhile, others voice strong objections to this on aesthetic grounds. My conclusion would be that good music software would cater to both of these disparate crowds, and make such alignment possible for those who like it. This would be more useful than software that imposes one group's preference on the other. It is a bit disappointing that aesthetics and practicality seem to be in opposition here. Ted remarked: | This sounds very similar to the approach taken in the two volumes of | Irish Traditional Music published by CCE Craobh Naithi. It's some of the | clearest notation I've encountered. | Cynthia Cathcart wrote: | ... but in the book I've been working on, I adjusted the placement | of the pick-up notes so that my bars DO line up exactly. It's a book for | beginning players, and I wanted to make clear the repeated | patterns in some of the pieces I chose. ... | My point is, well, yes, the pick up notes make it a little more | challenging, | but it's easily gotten around. And I think it's worth the extra | effort if it makes the music clearer. 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] Music-writing program?
| I know there are several people on the list who typeset and publish | Scottish music. What do you use for laying it out? What are the | pros and cons? Well, I only "publish" on the Web, but you might be interested. What I have is a collection of music for Scottish Country Dance at http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Scotland/ The first paragraph has a "ABC listing" link. If you follow it, you will get (somewhat slowly ;-) a listing showing all the tunes, and a lot of acronyms along the left for different graphical file types. Click on a PS link for a whole file, or EPS for a single tune, and you'll get back a page of postscript that you should be able to paste into just about any fancy word processing program. What I do is just send them to the nearest laser printer. But this might give you an idea of what can be done with free software. Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
