Can we please stop dumbing everything down to 1 or 2 #'s?

Irish Flute
1

I’m not really a great flute player, hardly so - but if something is in a key outside of the D, G or it’s associated modes I don’t have the neurotic compulsion to automatically transpose it there. It’s irritating to my ears and irreverent to the integrity of the tune itself. Please, stop transcribing Gmix tunes up to Amix - it goes from Clare to the Highlands, both of which I love, for different reasons and the tonality mixed with the phrasing is a big part of it.

This isn’t just me, I’ve heard many old-timers and even younger players gripe about it as well.

Each key has it’s own little sonic thing going for it, C and Gminor (to name a few) have very individual sounds and it breaks up the tonal monotony of sessions. Maybe it’s because I play fiddle too and was weaned on people who had party pieces in the flat keys, or maybe it’s all those years in school studying music - doing sol fege singing at 7am, but somewhere along the lines keys and their tonal qualities grew on me and I know I’m not the only one. I know of one flute player in particular who plays everything, in the traditional keys and goes on about the same thing.

Try some tunes that used to be played in C like The Skylark or The Kerryman’s Daughter that are now more common in D. Try Fred Finn’s in C - hell, just pick some old thing and try it in any other key just for the kick of it.

You may be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is and the different dimension it can add to a tune.

I really don’t mean this as a :tantrum:, :swear: or a :poke: I know there will be those who will crucify me for this post, but it’s something I’ve seen growing in session ‘repertoires’ and it’s not to everyone’s liking. Could be a potential session etiquette faux pas, just want to help people avoid the landmines. :wink:

2

Don’t know if it is really dumbing it down any more than playing a baroque tune in A=440 or changing the key to suit a singer, or folding notes to fit the range of an instrument.

However, if you have the keys, the tune doesn’t need things that open holes facilitate, it fits the tradition, etc. why not play the key that suits the piece.

3

This is only from personal experience/observation, but I think sometimes the desire to smash everything into such a small tonal box has to do with where people are in their playing. From what I’ve seen, the more advanced the players are, the more they’re open to other keys – or maybe they even just sit out and listen to others play the tune (not that mature yet, but I’m working on it). I’ve definitely seen this in our session at home; we’re much more interested in thinking through tunes than we used to be, and trying much more interesting things. We’re definitely appreciating nuances more than we used to.

This is idle speculation, but … I have to wonder about the origins of some of those tunes’ “flattening.” Could some of have been “heard” (and thus transcribed) lower because pipes, concertinas, etc. were often flatter back in the day (hey, you played what you had)? I know it wouldn’t apply to all, as certain tunes are written by fiddlers who’ve always had lower barriers to chromaticism (Porthole of the Kelp, etc.), but … ?

Regardless, you raise a good point that is often forgotten; I agree 100% that it’s good to try tunes in different keys. (And it’s also dead handy to have at least a C tinwhistle in your pack :smiley: )

4

Whistles!? Whistles are just for flute players that don’t have the chops to play the second and third registers.

5

:open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :laughing:

6

If you don’t push yourself, how are you ever going to learn? If everything is in the easiest key, there’s no incentive to figure out how to get around in other keys.

7

I don’t know … This sounds to me like a bit like complaint in search of an actual problem.

Many major-ish A and G tunes are fungible anyway, depending partly on which tradition you want to associate them with. Presumably, they’ll be transcribed in whatever key they are heard/learned by the transcriber. With, possibly, an additional written transposition into the other key to acknowledge the fungibility. That’s a characteristic of the music, not a problem.

As for other keys or transpositions, the complaint seems both (possibly) flute-centric and crass; along the lines of “I have a fully keyed flute, and I can play in alternate key X, so anyone else who won’t/can’t is stupid/dumb.”

Never mind that you may be playing with concertinas, whistles, diatonic boxes, unkeyed flutes/chanters etc. that may be diatonically restricted. They’re dumb out of luck if you decide to play a tune in an unfriendly key, or arbitrarily transpose a tune to such a key. And I assume you’re speaking of playing with others, because if you’re on your own you can play in whatever keys you jolly well like.

Never mind the finger habits and setting details other players may have worked out, conditioned by the conventional key of a tune. If you choose to execute a different key, then any fumbling that ensues is their problem, not yours, I guess. To heck with them.

Taken to its fullest, why limit transpositions to keys like C and Gm? Why exclude transpositions to, say, C# or Ab? All 12 chromatic keys (and their enharmonics) are available on a fully keyed or chromatic instrument. If each key gives a unique tonality and phrasing, then you’re really dumbing things down if you don’t use them all. Right?

Actually, Brad, I assume you don’t mean your complaint to come across as nasty as all that. But that’s how it might seem.

I think it was Jackie Daly who suggested learning a given tune in as many different keys as one could manage, for the sake of interest and flexibility. No matter. Personally, I do take that as worthwhile. I’m also good enough that I can often transpose on the fly to adjacent keys, or to several notches around the cycle of fifths - at least on my instruments that allow that. To the point that I’m sometimes notorious for starting tunes in the wrong key. :slight_smile:

But I wouldn’t take other fine players’ inability to do the same as an aspersion on their intelligence. :really:

There are reasons of tradition, ease of execution across a range of instruments, tessitura, etc. that tunes are in particular default keys. And outside of session playing, I’d say the fungibility of tune keys is far more common than your complaint seems to imply.

8

Even with keys, if you play in atypical keys on a D flute it often sounds
like you’re struggling with it or it may not have the usual snap to it.
Maybe better to pick up a C or F flute to do justice to those tunes. I
just move over to fiddle though. But I’m thinking of getting one of those
Copley delrin C flutes.

9

It’s true. I’ve witnessed it.

He also pulls the wings off of flys and kicks only the cutest of puppies.

:smiling_imp:

10

I’m talking about tunes that are traditionally, across the board played in keys/modes other than 1 or 2 sharps. I mentioned C and Gminor because they are the most common keys outside of the 1/2# juggernaut - (there’s also a few in F too)

MTGuru - if you can name me a traditional tune in C# or Ab have at it, I’m talking about tunes in their traditional keys. Also; fungibility is subjective and can be destructive over time. For example, most fluters would be more comfy with an A reel in G but not so much the other way around. Try the Mason’s Apron in G easy-peasy, let’s change the key - now try the Fermoy Lassies in F#m, it’s playable, but awkward, we’ll keep that one in Eminor. If everything moves to the easy 1 or 2 # keys one by one, everything shifts to ‘easy keys’ and we loose the different colors that different keys and modes offer and lets face it, A is as difficult as C.

I should get into what prompted me to submit the discussion in the first place…

I was revisiting a tune I had submitted to thesession.org; a strathspey written for D-flute in Gminor, another user transcribed it to Eminor with the heading “or for fluters” (or similar)

That’s low-down, cheating the music as well as the musician - on every keyless flute I’ve ever played I can get a pretty darn good Bb with XOX XXX and the F natural is the easiest and strongest half hole (a tie with C nat but I usually crossfinger that). When this tune is put in Eminor a lot of lower notes need to be played up or fudged and it breaks up the flow and melody of the tune.

BTW - I play a keyless flute.

Some cases are just typical ‘session’ differences of settings, I can live with that - we all learn different tunes from different sources. The problem I have is when I see someone dig in their heels and refuse to even entertain the fact when told that the tune is normally played in another key. It’s bad form, especially when it’s a seasoned player trying to offer helpful advice and they are treated like an inconsequential relic from a time not only past, but irrelevant.

11

Funny, I was just thinking about asking you about that. I figured there must have been something that set you off.

Ah, OK, understood. That’s a narrower issue, for which I think you can actually use my same argument above from another angle to support it. That is, if there are musical reasons that a tune is in a particular default key, then moving it out of that key by “normalizing” it to one or two sharps strictly for ease of fingering may do injustice to those musical reasons.

To take a trivial example … A fiddler playing a GDor tune may rely on being able to double-stop the open G and D strings to achieve a particular texture and effect. Or a piper may exploit the texture of the melody sounding over a D drone as ground. Transposing to easy ADor may gain fingering at the expense of wrecking those tonal relationships - especially for the fiddler or piper.

I still wouldn’t call it dumbing down; I think that’s too harsh. It’s more that performance is often a matter of musical and practical compromises. Lose one thing, gain another. And taking those into account for both yourself and your fellow players of other instruments may involve more reflection than simply (and perhaps selfishly) going for the easier/lazier fingering. By the same token, choosing a key that sits more naturally or comfortably on a particular instrument is IMO a perfectly valid motivation as well - even if it means less comfort for one of the other instruments. That cuts all ways, because you can’t always satisfy all the instrumental and musical constraints unless you’re playing solo.

12

One thing that does irk me at times is when a fine player will sit out, for example, a DDor tune simply because a couple (sometimes literally a couple) of F-nats may occur somewhere in the tune setting.

Again, not a dumbing down, but maybe a lack of confidence. You convince yourself that “I don’t play DDor tunes” or whatever, and so you don’t, even if you can.

Something like this happened to me at a session not long ago. The set we were playing suddenly switched IIRC to a CMaj tune. The fluter (and good friend) next to me started to put down her flute when I (playing guitar) looked at her and said teasingly, “Aw c’mon, you’ve got keys!” At which point she picked the instrument up again and did a perfectly A+ job on the tune. Afterwards, I had to sort of apologize because it might have seemed that I was trying to shame her into playing. But that really wasn’t it. It was more a vote of confidence in the abilities that I knew were there, not hiding candles under bushels, that sort of thing.

13

Why bother? It’s all right at your fingertips on any simple system flute to begin with.

Playing the whole tune an octave higher runs it into the fife-o-sphere and not too many people have a low B footjoint. especially one that produces a solid (as strong as a hard D) B-note.

14

ok, let’s play everything in B# and E# major and their relative modes. How about C## and F## major? Now that’s really smart music. :party:

15

I agree and it’s what I’m talking about… I heard one whistler put a dirt easy D dorian tune into E dorian and 50% of the people didn’t even recognize it 'til they hit the b-part. The player tried to say D dorian was too hard, we told the person to give it a shot. The next week they had it and were glad we pushed them in a new direction.

16

Oh, that’s it. You’re on buster. :swear:

:smiley:

17

PS here’s the tune http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/11092

On my keyless flute I use XOX XXX for Bb OXO XXX for C natural and lo and behold, there are no E’s so this tune can also be called G Dorian. (or hexatonic sans 6th for the pedantic)
When I play F naturals I use a half hole XXX XDO and I use a cut (t2) when I don’t want a slur between the E and F. FWIW when I need to play a roll on an F nat I use two cuts (t2 t3) in the rhythm of a roll, like a pipers doubling - something like this
XXX XDO
XOX XDO
XXX XDO
XXO XDO
XXX XDO

This tune is actually a lot harder in E dorian/minor due to accidental D#'s which are where I draw the line w/o keys.

18

Aw c’mon, man, you have … fingers! :laughing:

Seriously, the D# leading tone should be easy-peasy with or without keys. I’d take the inability to execute the octave leaps in Em as a more serious musical problem.

P.S. Besides, might not the F#s (in Gm) be an editoral “correction/improvement” in Ryan’s/Cole’s? Fiddler’s Companion has the setting from Howe’s with F-nats.

P.P.S. How come your ABC on TheSession has K:Gdor, but the dots show two flats? Not that it matters for the gapped Es. I guess the ABC was changed after the dots were rendered?

19

Another anecdote: A fiddler friend at one time had in her favorite session repertoire a disproportionate number of AMaj tunes which also tended to drop to the G string (i.e. below D). And she was often disappointed when the whistlers, fluters and pipers dropped out and left her playing alone. But she nevertheless kept introducing those same tunes, with the same result.

So eventually one day came “the chat”. And it turned out that she genuinely had no idea what was going wrong. She had no experience whatsoever of the wind instruments, and no concept of diatonic fingerings, register breaks, lowest notes, etc. … nada. A bit of education was all she needed to see beyond the fiddle shell and turn her thinking and repertoire around.

As with so many session problems, it’s better to talk things out and educate others if you can, than to let things stew and end up with an explosion. And I should heed my own advice more often. :blush:

20

I think I find it more puzzling that you think tunes have correct “traditional” keys than the fact that someone might transpose or change a setting to exploit an effect or ease of fingering for their chosen instrument.

Printed sources are not Gospel nor are recordings.
I remember meeting an older box player who was proudly playing “his version” of the Mason’s Apron in F. He couldnt get his head around the fact that it was Michos setting and Micho only played it in F because he was playing a c whistle.
He was shocked I could play the same setting when I took out the c flute.
He learned from it Frankie Gavin afterall.

He also didn’t approve of the Emin setting of Toss the Feathers
but he was a funny old fellow with some strange ideas about the music.