I have a hard time following that sort of transcription.
It varies from tune to tune, how to fit tunes that go below bottom D onto the whistle.
Sometimes itās just a couple notes that can be raised the octave and all is fine. Sometimes we wind players even forget that such tunes HAVE notes below bottom D because weāre so used to how they sound with those notes raised (The Banshee etc).
But sometimes the only way to have the melody make sense is to transpose the tune into a different key. So this tune is in G? Maybe transposed to D and played on a Low G whistle it fits better? I wouldnāt know until I could see the tune in normal writing.
I have a hard time following that sort of transcription.
This type of ABC notation was only ever designed as an easy way to exchange tunes over the net. Not for reading. A plethora of ABC software is freely available to help you follow āthat sort of transcriptionā by translating it to staff notation.
OK, Phill, here ya go - this is what Iād do with it:
T: Lament For The Death Of The Rev. Archie Beaton
T:āoctave foldedā whistle/flute setting - where two notes on one stem, play either to taste, maybe vary between.
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Gmaj
Bc|d3 d dc BA|G2 B2 D3 G|E2 GE [Dd]3 B|A6 Bc|
d3 d dc BA|G2 B2 D3 G|E2 cA F3 D|G6 :|]
BA|G3 B [Dd]3 [Dd]|B3 A G3 [Ee]|[Dd]2 [Gg][Ee] [Dd]3 B|A6 BA|
G3 B d3 d|B3 A G3 [Ee]|[Dd]2 [Gg]B A3 B|G6 BA|
GBdG Bdga|b3 a g3 e|d2 ge d3 B|A6 Bc|
d3 d dc BA|G2 B2 D3 G|E2 cA [Ff][Dd]cA|G6|]
As Iāve added in the subtitle, where there are two notes on one stem (the pairs in square brackets when you convert this into staff notation) you have a choice which you play - maybe all the top ones, maybe some low and some high - and of course you can use low or high as a variation on repeats. Iād probably mostly play all the high ones (where there is a choice) as a basic version.
I have also removed the rather unhelpful written-in ornamentation.
Wow, thanks Jem. I am looking forward to giving that a try. We have guests this weekend, so I probably wont get a real try for a bit. I am still insufficiently confident to try these rearrangements(?) myself, but I will be able to see what you have done, and maybe guess why.
Yeah, MIDI renditions are soulless, but I find them helpful to get the rhythm. I can get pitch from the dots, but have not mastered reading the rhythm. Of course I prefer a human renditionā¦ but rest assured that the MIDIs are ignored once I get the basic rhythm.
MIDI will give you the notes but itās biggest weakness is that it does not even hint at a proper rythm. Neither does staff notation. The only way to study rythm is to listen {lots) to competent players.
Dick
Thanks for that Jem the Flute. With normal notation I can āsingā the tune in my head as I look at the music (yes I had to do sight-singing in college, annoying then but useful ever after).
Itās interesting to hear, for example, Paddy Carty play tunes that go below bottom D, and how he handles them. Itās been a while since I listened to his album, but as I recall he only popped the necessary notes up the octave, playing all possible notes in their ācorrectā octave, no matter how jagged the resulting phrase was.
Most curious is when he played tunes that had a sequence like D C# D or D C D in them. When I was playing a keyed flute I would always use the footjoint keys to play the low C or C# in these cases. If I was playing a keyless flute, or whistle, or pipes, I would play a semi-cran/bottom D roll there. But Paddy would play Bottom D middle C Bottom D which always sounded a bit odd to me. (Photos of him appear to show the footjoint rotated so that the keys arenāt within reach.)
For whatever reason playing Bottom D B Bottom D seems smoother and we all play tunes like that all the time, where a B below bottom D is raised the octave but itās surrounded by Bottom Ds that we leave alone.
I face these issues all the time on the Highland pipes, but the other way round: tunes that have High B in them, but the pipeās highest note is A. If the tune goes High A High B High A, Iāll drop the whole sequence an octave to smooth out the phrase.
(BTW Jem youāve probably seen the YouTube video of the guy attempting to do various regional accents where says āJones the fish catches the fish. Jones the bread bakes the bread.ā His American accents are particularly awful.)
Nah, havenāt had that misfortune - not going hunting either!
BTW, if you want to see the original version in staff notation, you must by now know about the Tune-o-tron Converter - just paste Phillās original ABC into itā¦
aww, the bad American accent videos were removed from youtube. i always hear people do āfakeā Chinese language, and i would love to hear someone who doesnāt speak english try to āfakeā it. a lot of ādudeā and āhamburgerā i imagine. thatās what were about if TV serves me correctly.
Enjoy! I hope it helps. I am, of course, reading from the dots and you can probably hear the computer humming and passing traffic on the road outside! The first time through I play the low alternatives from the dots I provided above with pretty minimal/basic/required articulation/ornamentation. The second time I play the higher ones and add a bit more optional/complex ornamentation and a little variation other than just the octave shift stuff.
Itās not a bad tune, though Iām not at all sure Iāll bother to learn it. It probably goes a little faster than this āfor realā - doesnāt seem a very seriously miserable lamentation, even this drawn out!
Wow, thanks Jem, very kind and thoughtful of you. I am looking forward to listening to this, but we have a slow connection and a miserly download limit . Any chance you could post just the audio?
The tune sounds really nice in the hands of a fiddler at our local sessions - thatās what inspired me to search out the dots. I am also likewise investigating āNancyās Fancyā (as it were). Of course that does not mean it will sound good on a whistle, in my hands. But it is another challenge.
Oh, and I can now hide/play behind everyone else during āKing of the Fairiesā - so I am improving slowly. Only two years and I can do almost one whole session tuneā¦
Sorry, Phill, no way available to me to extract the audio from the video - would have to re-record it, and no more time for it just now. If anyone else has the technology, feel free! Just set it to download while you have dinner or some such.
Thank you, Jem. I have been playing the folded tune and have the basic skeleton in my head now. I will record the local fiddler who introduced me to the tune, and see what I can manage playing along.
As a quick confirmation, folding moves the unreachable note and the rest of the phrase it is in up (or down) one octave. The skill lies in finding the phrase boundaries. Would that be a fair summary?
As a quick confirmation, folding moves the unreachable note and the rest of the phrase it is in up (or down) one octave. The skill lies in finding the phrase boundaries. Would that be a fair summary?
Depends on how you want to approach it. In this case I would not raise the whole phrase like Jem does. Iād just raise the few notes below the staff and leave it at that, that fits nicely. As far as I can see I follow common practice in my approach (compare Kevin Crawford playing Coilsfield House for example, which moves along similar lines as this one), but there are no absolutes, taste and what fits dictate what you do.
