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Starting To Harmonise On English


peelypost

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Greetings,

 

I feel that I am getting a basic handle on my English Jackie and am wanting to start adding some harmony lines to the lead tune. :o

 

The tunes in my tutorial books only have intermittent diads and all of the online tunes only list the lead line, so I'm feeling like I don't know where to go from here. There seems to be a huge jump from where I am to the type of stuff I hear from the best players. Should I gradually increase the rate of diads, or start composing a harmony line for the whole tune? What tends to be successful?

 

Also, it seems that abc notation is monophonic - is there an easy way of posting a harmony line here, to see what others might think of it? I guess that I need to resort to images of score or recordings, but it would be nice to avoid attachments if possible.

 

 

Neil.

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Also, it seems that abc notation is monophonic...

Not quite. Although the last "official" version of abc, version 1.6, is indeed monophonic, most of the software that interprets it has moved beyond that and support multi-voice abc. I use BarFly (for Macintosh) for most of my abc work and I just pasted one of my multi-voice files created there into the window at the Tune-o-tron abc converter and it worked fine (except that for some reason the t-o-t showed the lower voice staff above the upper voice staff).

 

Even abc v1.6, by the way, can handle multiple voices if they have the same rhythm (that is, if you don't mind the simultaneous notes all sharing the same stem). For instance, instead of writing C and displaying a C, you could write [CEG] which displays a single note stem with C, E, and G heads.

 

Edited for typo and minor edits.

Edited by David Barnert
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This might interest you:

 

On C.Net recorded Tunes Link page Danny Chapman (Ratface) posted Tunes for Louise. It's a zip file full of recordings.

 

From the enclosed text file :

"Note (for anyone that isn't Louise Lundberg): Most of these tunes I recorded for Louise to give her some ideas on how to play more than one note at a time on the English concertina. I've recorded some others as well... "

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My girlfriend is just starting to learn the harp, and got given "Frere Jacques" to learn. Anyway, it's quite entertaining to play that as a two-part round on the concertina - start with the tune in C on the right hand side, then come in with the second "voice" an octave down on (middle) C on the left.

 

Some guitar music works well - in particular:

 

- music arranged for guitar from lute - e.g. music by Dowland.

 

- some 19th century guitar music (Sor, Carcassi, even Regondi!)

 

You can probably borrow some books containing guitar music collections from a library - then you can just try playing everything and see what works!

 

However, you need to do a few things:

 

- Adapt the low notes in the guitar music to fit on a treble (either by shifting them up an octave, changing them, leaving them out, or transposing the whole piece!)

 

- Miss out some notes in chords to stop the sound being too "thick" - closely spaced chords can sound bad

 

- Be careful not to drown out the upper voice with the accompaniment. To do this you need to be able to play the lower voice(s) independently of the upper voice - in particular using shorter notes. As an example, play a scale (legato) in octaves - normally it's hard to hear the upper voice. Now play it again, but make the upper octave legato, and the lower octave staccato - now you can hear both voices.

 

I've (hopefully) attached an example of the last point - a Bourree and Minuet by Krieger, both in two parts.

02_Krieger.mp3

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This is magnificent - thanks!

 

The zip file of tunes for Louise is exactly what I need and far more than I could have hoped for. I don't suppose you know where I can find the music to My Lady Cullen? I can't find it on the session.org

 

I found another useful set of tips at Martin's intro to the concertina on YouTube - lesson 9ish, I think (sorry not to be more specific!).

 

If I'm feeling brave I might even record a first attempt at adding some chords once I have a version I can play reliably.

 

Neil.

Edited by peelypost
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I don't suppose you know where I can find the music to My Lady Cullen?

 

I'm pretty sure it is a Playford tune...

 

This seems quite short which may mean there is another part, but I hope this helps.

 

- John Wild

 

T:My Lady Cullen

M:C|

L:1/8

Q:120

K:DAeol

A2A2 f3f|gfed ^c3c|d2d2 A2f2|e4 d4||

A2A2 c3c|F3G A3c|B2G2 G2A2|B^c d6||

Edited by John Wild
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