Jack Campin wrote: > I have been trying to transcribe a rather obscure, and as far > as I know never-before-transcribed, piece of tablature from a > Scottish manuscript of about 1680.
Always trust Jack to come up with good an unusual music - and interesting challenges :)
> The MS gives no clue as to > what instrument it's for or what the tuning is, ...
Hmmm...
I may shed some light on that, but first - in case anybody has abctab2ps - here's Jack's original tab translated into abtab
X:1 T:Cowgate gigue M:none L:1/4 K:Bmin Clef=french4tab [,d][,c][,b]ba[,d][,][,]cb[,][,]e[,,d]\ [,,d]|[,d][,c][,b]c|[,c]dcbb:|\ |:[,c][,d][,e]b[,b][,b]([,c][,b][,a][,b][,c]) [,a][,,c][,,c][,c][,d][,e]b[,b][,b]bcab[,c]\ [,d][,e]b[,b][,b][,][,c]([,a][,b][,c])[,a]\ [,,c][,,c]bcde[,d][,e]b[,,c][,d][,c][,b][,b]|]
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Now for the instrument:
Fifths-tuning seems to be the only one that works.
Diatonic frets is pretty obvious too. This almost certainly means it's a small instrument.
Diatonic frets create one problem though. I don't know if anybody else spotted the error in Jack's abc transcription. Here's the correct one:
X:2 T:Cowgate gigue M:6/4 L:1/4 Q:3/4=100 K:G Minor BAG dcB|=e2d g_EE|B2A G2=e |Af=e d2d:| ABc dGG|AG/F/G/A/ FDD|ABc dGG |d=ec d3 | ABc dGG|AF/G/A FDD|def gB/c/d|DBA G2G|]
This doesn't sound very good to my ears at least.
There are two possible solutions to that:
*"Half-frets" - The first string has chromatic frets, the other ones diatonic. But this seems to create more problems than it solves, and besides the manuscript seems to be about a hundred years too young for that. So a more likely answer is:
*No frets - the player was supposed to know that some of the notes should be fingered slightly lower on the fingerboard. (I don't know of any other examples of French tablature would be used for a fretless instrument, but if it was used (and why shouldn't it?) using the letter a-e for *fingering* seems a very likely solution)
So, we have a stringed instrument that: *is relatively small *has four strings *is tuned in fifths *doesn't use the fourth string very much *doesn't have frets *is used for playing jigs *was known and used in late 17th century Scotland Now, what on earth could that be? ;-)
Assuming a tuning of GDAE (mind you, it's just a wild guess!) here's what we end up with.
(Btw, I've also made a few rhythmic changes to Jack's transcription and halved the note values since 6/8 seems to be a more likely time signature than 6/4 for a late 17th century jig)
X:3 T:Cowgate gigue M:6/8 L:1/8 R:jig K:Bmin V:1 dcB fed|g2f bGG|d2c B2g |cag f2f:| |:cde fBB|cB/A/B/c/ AFF|cde fBB |fge f3 | cde fBB|c3/A/B/c/ AFF|fga b3/d/e/f/|Fdc B2B:|
X:4 %%tabrhstyle grid T:Cowgate gigue M:6/8 L:1/8 R:jig K:Bmin V:1 dcB fed|g2f bGG|d2c B2g |cag f2f:| |:cde fBB|cB/A/B/c/ AFF|cde fBB |fge f3 | cde fBB|c3/A/B/c/ AFF|fga b3/d/e/f/|Fdc B2B:| V:2 clef=french4tab [,d1][,c1][,b1] b1a1[,d1]|\ c2b1 e1[,,d1][,,d1]|\ [,d2][,c1] [,b2]c1|\ [,c1]d1c1 b2b1:| [,c1][,d1][,e1] b1[,b1][,b1]|\ ([,c1][,b/][,a/][,b/][,c/]) [,a1][,,c1][,,c1]|\ [,c1][,d1][,e1] b1[,b1][,b1]|\ b1c1a1 b3| [,c1][,d1][,e1] b1[,b1][,b1]|\ [,c3/]([,a/][,b/][,c/]) [,a1][,,c1][,,c1]|\ b1c1d1 e3/[,d/][,e/]b/|\ [,,c1][,d1][,c1] [,b2][,b1]|]
Frank Nodberg http://www.musicaviva.com
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