I must give you an ABC lesson someday. You’re a perfect candidate to master the notation, and it’s probably one of the few things I could teach you.
Ah, OK. So the second two are anticipated. The bare ABC would be |cA2A- Azz2|.
Well, we live in an age and circumstance where people like ourselves have the ability and luxury of stepping outside the traditions, viewing them with an ethnographer’s eye, and choosing what and how we play. We’re meta-traditionalists, as it were.
But I’m thinking of an archetypal situation where tradition is not a conscious choice as much as a natural part of the physical and cultural environment as the air you breathe and the language you speak. Playing a learned melody, whatever the source, by the lights of your own internalized traditional aesthetic is both natural and right. And I worry that it’s too easy for us meta-musicians to focus on what’s lost, rather than on what’s gained or what simply is. It’s just a matter of perspective.
When I play Ashokan Farewell as a straight waltz for contradancers, I doubt they’re grumbling about the loss of strathspey snaps. They’re simply enjoying a nice waltz.
Yes big Davy! Hear the turns, which you’ll hear in the Scottish “slow strathspey” style. However, some of the “Scotch snaps” were left out. The recording I have of the composer playing this tune features these “Scotch snaps” in various places, including the pairs of pickup notes, the first of each pair being cut or “snapped”.
Well I did a search on YouTube but could not find a clip of either Da Full Rigged Ship or Da New Rigged Ship played as Tom Anderson plays them. I did find a clip of Aly Bain playing them both straight, quite unlike Anderson, from whom Aly learnt them.
These tunes are open to a variety of interpretations. That is one of the beauties of traditional music. You can play a tune in a variety of different styles and find something in the tune.
Aly Bain plays the Full Rigged Ship in a manner not unlike a slowish Northumbrian Jig.
