cboody

My brain quit functioning about an hour ago so I can't think of titles, but check out the many 6/8 "pipe marches" that exist in the Scottish tradition. That's the source of Atholl Highlanders and Hundred Pipers, but there are many many more that you might find more interesting. Try Jack Campin's site for some possible tunes.

Not to muddy the discussion or anything : It is probably best to consider meantone and just intonation as solutions for a single "major scale," or at least for closely related scales (like G and D or perhaps F C G and D). Those tuning solutions are optimized for nice thirds within the diatonic scales. Yeah you can extend the concept to a chromatic situation, but the solutions get less and less useful as you move away from the note upon which you base the tuning. The last part of the previous sentence brings up another issue: You need to select the starting pitch for your meantone instrument. Probably for trad players that would be G or D. If you use C you will already have a less than "as good as it can be" third in one basic chord in G and in two basic chords in D. The Vallotti article mentioned above will help in understanding that issue and will also shed some light on my contention here that meantone is essentially a diatonic solution. As to tuning to meantone vs. ET or some other system: What listeners and players respond to is the accuracy of unisons and the acceptability of various other intervals, thirds and fifths being the most noticeable for most folks. Most folks don't discriminate pitch differences less that 10 cents (and surely not less than 5 cents) when two notes are presented separately and without any harmonic situation given. They do much better presented with a unison of two pitches or with fifths and thirds. You can retune your instrument to whatever tuning and perhaps it will satisfy you better. In a group situation with other instruments ET it will probably not bother. That is so because in many cases our perceptions will adjust what we hear to what we want to hear. Consider the 7th in the bagpipe scale. It is conveniently perceived as major or minor (relative to the fundamental note of the chanter) depending on what mode you happen to be playing in. Psychoacoustics is a fascinating field! A little example from my past: I had a fine chamber choir with two well trained musicians singing tenor. One "heard" the kind of a third just or meantone intonation might have. The other heard "Pythagorean" thirds, as large or larger than the ET thirds. Every time the tenors had the third on the end of a piece they refought the battle as to which was correct! In sum: diatonic tunings are really nice to listen to, and many musicians playing instruments like violins learn to adjust their tuning "on the fly" to the key center they are playing in at the moment. For those of use "stuck" with chromatic instruments that can't be retuned while playing and on which we play in many keys ET is an acceptable solution as are the solutions discussed in the Vallotti article. But mean and just "just" won't work well. OK...flame proof suit donned.

Mendelssohn is using the term in relation to the term "Lied." If memory serves Mendelssohn's title was "Lieder ohne Wörter" (if my German is still in place). Not the same as song in our discussion at all. So, I guess your "reducto ad absurdum" argument doesn't work.

Take the issue to thesession and see what they say. Or, check previous discussions of it over there. I'm not saying they'll agree with me, only that it would be interesting to know and I'm not going to take the time to do it. After all, there's nothing wrong with differing opinions.

Love it! So songs are not music... Well I've heard some singers...

Irony = sarcasm in some parts of the world. Ah! I'm enlightened. Now this business about song: There are multiple meanings to the term. "A song" is not the same as "song" and neither necessarily completely equates to "singing." I suppose one can go on to detail the different meanings historically and culturally of those words, but I don't think that is germaine (sp?) to this discussion. Anna Russell once called folk song "The uncouth vocal utterance of the people." A silly way to put it but the definition is not far from what is usually meant in the trad world. Yes you have ballads and sean nos singing and lilting and mouth music, each of which can stretch the definition in a different way. But in general, at least for me, the differentiation between tune and song is very simple: one uses the voice and one doesn't. If one plays Star of the County Down one refers to a tune. If one sings Star of the County Down it magically becomes a song. I suppose one could think of a melody as a tune and the addition of lyrics and voice creating a song. I'm a bit uncomfortable with that though. Rather I just think of "voice-no voice." And, I agree with those who have found that the folks who usually confuse the two are most often those without much experience in the trad world.

Very nice. Thanks for posting and good luck with the band!

Please rub my nose in the irony. I certainly don't see it; which seems ironic since I tend to use it often.... As to the rest of the discussion: I suppose distinguishing between "tune" and "song" could be disappearing from the language just as "awesome" no longer means anything much, "ballad" as pointed out above has changed meaning, no one seems to distinguish between "between" and "among" any more, and weather forecasters seem unable to use all the syllables of "temperature." That doesn't mean that I won't continue to fight a read guard action though.

Another solution to this if the person reads bass clef: Change the key signature as described above and read the music in the bass clef but up an octave. This is also easier than it sounds...if you're comfortable with bass clef. BTW the Bari Sax is actually playing an octave and a sixth lower than written. So, in the example above of playing the C in the third space of the treble staff the sounding note is actually the Eb in the third space of the bass staff.

Wait a minute! "correct and the North American usage?" What difference are you talking about? Did I just misread things? It seems to me that everyone was agreeing that "song" implied words and sung and "tune" melody without words. As someone said "No Words, No song." Where was there some other definitions implied? I suppose maybe, being American, I am reacting to the "correct vs. American" remark. But truly I want to understand. I've heard everyone from bluegrassers to old-timey to Irish Trad players gently correct folks to make sure they don't embarrass themselves by calling "tunes" songs. I've never been across the pond, so I don't know about there. Can someone help me understand why I'm confused about this discussion??? Thanks!!

Yes all this effort is useful. Thanks for doing it. The ones on the collection site seem better than those posted to concertina net, but that could be because I didn't spend much time with the ones at c-net. I've a couple of small suggestions which, depending on how you are doing the scanning might help in the future. 1) If your scanner has a black and white setting experiment with it. You may be able to get a nice clean image without the background created by the old paper. 2) bmp is a very space consuming format! If you can scan to pdf or jpg you should get as high a quality with less space taken up YMMV thought! 3) You can play with the "dots per inch" settings on the scanners to minimize size too, but you have to be careful to avoid going too far so that expanding the size to print larger doesn't get all jagged. Please understand that this is an attempt to be helpful, and not to complain about your efforts. Those are only to be lauded.

Isn't this what folks are looking for?? http://www.juliettedaum.com/concertina.html Or, is that the partial collection??

Frank, I'm in Mound just a bit north of you. I'd be happy to look at the instrument though I'm no expert. You might check out the Czech Concertina Clug in New Prague too. If it is a Chemnitzer style concertina they could doubtless help you out (http://www.concertinaclub.com/). Good luck!

If you are using a Mac Barfly will do the transposing for you. There's a common PC program that transposes too, but the name escapes me.

Jim, you have a point. I should have said the MEANING is nebulous. Given that change I'll stand by my previous comment. Seems to me that nebulous and mutually contradictory pretty much end up in the same place...YMMV.

Yeah I guess I'm a musician in most folk's terms because of years of musical training and years of teaching and conducting music. I don't think I'm much of a musician as far as the concertina is concerned though. I agree with the poster who feels the question is not a good one because the definition is so nebulous. I like the Robert Shaw reminder about "amateur" better: He would say first that the word comes from the same root as the word for "love." And then he would remind everyone that there is no implication at all about ability implied in the term. Certainly I've known professional musicians who were "amateurs" and some who were not. And, even some who weren't really very good musicians!!! And, I've known amateur musicians who could play at a level well beyond many professionals. I've even know some folks who don't play anything who are, in my opinion, musicians in the sense that they respond to music and hear what is going on. To me those are the keys to the definition of a musician. Boy is this a wandering post!

You've probably got a deal. write me at cboody @ mchsi.com (without the spaces) or PM me here. I don't want to discuss details on the forum! Chuck Boody

Thanks, I'll file and remember. Chuck Boody

Thanks for all your hard work Paul. I've long since downloaded your book and the abc files. Truly a nice labor of love. Given your comments about chords I'll take a look through things to see if I notice anything. And, I'd highly recommend you leave the Tunebook in some format and then and a second one (or a supplement or whatever you choose to call it). Otherwise those of us who've gotten onve version or another will never be sure what we have and so various versions will start to exist adding confusion for everyone (except you of course!) Chuck Boody

I'm edging up to trying an anglo (I already play English quite well) and am concerned about getting off on the right foot. What with in row, cross row, C row home and G row home I figure I should get some guidance about teaching materials. I've done some searching here but haven't found much beyond "I like XXX." I realize this is a contentious issue, but surely many of you have opinions. BTW I've years of music making behind me in a variety of guises. I don't need anything that spends effort on notation or such things. I need information about the playing methods and tunes selected to guide the user through learning the method in question. My playing would probably be mostly in Celtic traditional musics (not just Irish), and as soon as I'm secure about an approach to the instrument I'll probably go to learning tunes by ear, and then use the teaching materials to delve into adding harmonies, drones and the like. Thanks for your thoughts. Chuck Boody

I sent you a PM...