I had a flute maker make me a little bamboo fife so that I could get a D harmonic minor scale without having to half hole or X finger. The fife goes:
Bb C# D E F G A Bb+ …
I have my confidential reasons for having this fife made for me which I cannot mention here because this is the ITM forum. However, incidentally, I am curious about there being any songs in harmonic minor scale in ITM or associated/corollary Celtic traditions.
I would be delighted to hear from you if you have any information about this.
Harmonic minor is really the result of cadence-based music (I - IV - V - I), because it imports the raised seventh into the minor scale, accounting for the major third in the dominant chord that is also the leading note into the tonic. I don’t believe that ITM is built on western-art music and its cadence structure (although many people try to impose the cadence structur on ITM, including such low forms as piano accompanyists). Anyway, the absence of cadence-based harmonic structures explains why harmonic minor doesn’t make much sense ITM and isn’t of much use.
It’s easy really. You know what a cadence is, right? If you don’t listen to the end of any piece by Handel. It’s a little chord progression that we, who have been conditioned to Western art (and pop) music find satisfying and fulfilling: it wraps up a piece or part or section nicely. It goes I - IV - V - I. In C major, that means C major chord - F major - G -major - C major (and you’re home). The real kicker here is the drop from G-major to C major, the “home” chord or Tonic. G major is G - B - D [- F if you add the seventh] and that resolves nicely into C, which is C - E - G. The G stays the same, the B leads up into the C (leading note and particularly satisfying sound), the D drops down into the C or goes up the E, and the seventh, the F leads down to the E.
Gmaj ----- C maj
f ------------> e
d ------------> e/c B ------------> c (leading tone. The B is also the major third of the G chord)
G ------------> G/C
(this is just the principle, you wouldn’t want to set it like that necessarily.) The G major chord is called “Dominant” and it lives by its major third. That is the B, and the leading tone into C. That particular note makes the cadence work (among other things).
Now, what happens if you do the whole thing in minor? C minor, of course, is related to Eb major which has four flats. So instead of a B we have a B-flat. That means that when we form the V or Dominant chord, we end up with G minor: G-Bb-D.
Gmin ----- C min
d ------------> eb/c Bb ------------> c (oh-oh! Whole step. No more leading note!)
G ------------> G/C
That doesn’t give a nice satisfying cadency feeling. So, what the heck, let’s just use G-major, and get us a leading note. The effect of that is that you bring the B-nat back into the mix. Your c-minor scale then looks like this:
C-D-Eb-F-G-Ab-B-C and that is harmonic minor.
Two problems with it: you have big interval between the Ab and the B, and it doesn’t sound very minorish up there, especially going down the scale. No problem, let’s make it:
C-D-Eb-F-G-A-B-C going up and C-Bb-Ab-G-F-Eb-D-C going down. (Let’s see Tal do that on his whistle.)
That’s called melodic minor (because it sounds great used in melody lines, I guess), and it’s a compromise between the cadence with it’s vital leading tone and the melody.
So that’s also why there are three different kinds of minor in western music.
Since none of this harmonic stuff really fits in ITM, you can forget all about it again as long as you are playing The Lady’s Pantalettes or the Virginia Reel.
Broadly speaking a leading note is a half-step below another note that it leads up to. Specifically, it is the note a half-step below the tonic, the (major) seventh. In C, the leading note is the B-nat, in G it would be the F#, and so forth.
But that is exactly the meaning. It’s a form of conditioning, and hence the old joke about two musicians who are neighbors who hate one another. Before going to bed, one of them goes to the piano and bangs: C - F - G7… (that is the cadence without the final resolution, with the leading note and the seventh hanging there). The effect is that his neighbor can’t sleep (so strong is the need for the specifically dictated answer), until at last he gets up, goes to his piano an plays a C chord.
I believe that joke refers back to Mozart. His children would intentionally play parts of scales, or broken scales, knowing that their father could not control himself, but would have to drop everything and complete whatever the kids had started playing. Geniuses are so easy to torture.
I am not able to understand this. These are my hurdles:-
You say, … imports the raised seventh …
What is a raised 7th? The 7th in a major scale is a semitone below the tonic and the major scale is the referent for all the other scales.
The 7th cannot be raised in terms of the current 12 semitone division of the octave. The 7th can only be diminished.
You say, … the dominant chord …
And which do you consider is the dominant chord in, for example, G harmonic minor scale:-
G min; A min; C min; D maj. ; D#/Eb maj. or F#/Gb maj. ?
And why?
You say, …the major third in the dominant chord …
None of the chords obtained in a harmonic minor scale result in the 7th being the third note in the chord. What do you meamn by this?
You say, …I don’t believe that ITM is built on western-art music and its cadence structure (although many people try to impose the cadence structur on ITM, including such low forms as piano accompanyists). …
And do you believe that ITM is built on a chord based system or is it, rather, modal (plainsong) in origins and development (before many people imposed the chordal emphasis in their interpretation, including such forms as guitar accompaniment)?
You say, … the absence of cadence-based harmonic structures explains why harmonic minor doesn’t make much sense [in] ITM and isn’t of much use …
Can you use this rationale to explain why Dorian Scale is not or little used in ITM? Or should I start a separate topic for that?
I am curious about there being any songs in harmonic minor scale in ITM
I’ve been through many of the old collections (thousands of tunes), and I don’t recall any that would be considered harmonic minor scale.
I’m simplifying this and going from unreliable memory, but I think the closest you get is a rare tune in E minor, with D# used in a particular manner in the cadence (reel time: | Bee^d e4 ||). However, D natural features strongly enough in the tune that the D# is the accidental. It’s far from common, and if I remember correctly, the rare occasions I’ve heard that device used by old traditional players, the note was more like sliding the E down to provide movement: it just barely reached the pitch of D# before already sliding back up to E; the effect was that it sounded like a note between E and D#.
The long and short of it is, a flute based around the harmonic minor scale is going to be less useful than one based around the major scale.
The long and short of it is that this has never been a topic about which scale flute is most suitable for ITM. That is why we all have D major Irish flutes.
It wasn’t gruffness I noticed but a very succinctly expressed statement which was, unfortunately, not salient to the topic. An apology won’t fix it. You can edit your post if you like or you can withdraw the remark in a subsequent post (as they do in Parliament).
Well, if commenting on a flute created (whether for top secret reasons or not) isn’t salient to the topic, WTF did you mention it for in your opening post?
If you wanted a discussion solely on ‘songs in harmonic minor scale in ITM’ it would’ve been far more salient of you simply to ask “are there any songs in harmonic minor scale in ITM?” instead of BS-ing on pretentiously about some confidential piddling fife that no-one but yourself could possibly give a rat’s 'arris about.
Of course, an apology won’t fix your original pretentious post. You can edit it if you like or withdraw the cobblers about the fife that isn’t salient in a subsequent post (as the pretentious onanists in Parliament do). I’m surprised anyone at all can be bothered trying to answer your questions when all you ever seem to do is take the piss or blow them off with supercilious shite like that quoted above.
