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Violan Masurkka


DaveM

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I started looking at the Finnish tunes Jack Campin was nice enough to post here I'm looking at it from from back to front.

I got to Violan Marsurkka (3rd from last in the pdf) which is notated with dotted-eighth/sixteenths.

The examples I've found on Youtube, like this accordion one or this ensemble one seem

like they they are more like straight eighths.

 

Should this tune, or Masurkkas in general, be swung?

Edited by DaveM
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I think there should be an element of dotted-ness and swing to Mazurka playing but perhaps 'should' is too strong a word. There are bound to be regional differences in the way mazurkas are danced... notice I use the spelling common where I live. Taking a quick look through a couple of local tune books, here in France, I see that some tunes are written dotted and some not but when we play them for dancing they all get a swing pulse.

 

Perhaps it is best to watch the dancers to get an idea of how much swing and where the rhythmic emphasis should be .

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I'm not sure if I changed anything in that one, but I usually notate mazurkas as 9/8, since that seems to be a commoner way to play them, even when they aren't written that way.

 

As Geoff says, you need to find out what the dancers prefer. It's easy enough to switch between swung and straight.

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...I usually notate mazurkas as 9/8, since that seems to be a commoner way to play them, even when they aren't written that way...

 

This is a sneaky question, and perhaps a little irrelevant, particularly as it involves a crossover from

a thread on melodeon.net, and the tune I mention ain't a mazurka (AFAIK).

 

JC recently posted a 9/8 transcription of 'Latt om Foten' on mel.net. I had been trying to do the job

myself using the illustration of the hand-written score on that thread. I was trying to write the ABC in 6/8

based on what I (thought I) could see there. So, how 'legitimate' is it to change the time signature of a

melody and what are the reasons? Is it largely because of the 'dance factor' which JC mentions, or are

there other considerations?

 

My apologies if this is a bit off the original topic, but I've sometimes been a little puzzled by seeing the

same melody in different time signatures (a random example: 'Brighton Camp' in 4/4, 2/4 and 2/2).

 

Ta.

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That handwritten version of "Latt om Foten" was in 3/4. 6/8 would be completely wrong, there are three beats to the bar. (If it isn't a mazurka, what else could it be? - the dancers in the Girona video are mazurkitating to it).

 

Changes between 2/something and 4/something are often to make the tempo sensible. Reels and strathspeys both have about 100 beats per minute. That usually means notating reels in 2 and strathspeys in 4. A metronome speed of twice that would be too many ticks to take in.

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1) That handwritten version of "Latt om Foten" was in 3/4. 6/8 would be completely wrong, there are three beats to the bar. (If it isn't a mazurka, what else could it be? - the dancers in the Girona video are mazurkitating to it).

 

2) Changes between 2/something and 4/something are often to make the tempo sensible. Reels and strathspeys both have about 100 beats per minute. That usually means notating reels in 2 and strathspeys in 4. A metronome speed of twice that would be too many ticks to take in.

 

Numbers in quote added by me.

 

I've been trying to learn a little more about music by creating ABC scripts from examples

of printed/written scores. Clearly, I have some way to go...

 

1) Yes! I'm just starting to get to grips with time signatures. A basic mistake on my part - must

be more careful!

 

2) Understood!, In particular the comment about metronome speeds.

 

Thanks.

Edited by lachenal74693
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Since I usually don't have any dancers around to constrain me, I guess that I can swing them as much or a little as I like.

 

I used the Finnish spelling in case it was a regional style thing -- maybe Finns are just more straight-laced than the French?

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