What a good idea.
I must confess to liking CDs to hear what tunes sound like (being very poor
at reading dots - fine on the actual notes but poor on phrasing, length
etc - especially when new to the tune).
I find that a Midi of a tune works well enough to give a rough idea what it
sounds like if it's totally unknown - as many are to new players.
Maybe someone with the right equipment could make them and post them to a
website somewhere?
True they would be rather clinical and probably not 100% accurate but would,
at least, help a newcomer to learn (roughly) what the tune should sound
like.
I know I had some very interesting sounding tunes when I started which bore
little resemblance to the actual tunes <blush>. On the plus side, the
individual piper's style wouldn't be passed on to cause more grumbling :)
I'm already trying this with a large collection of hurdy gurdy tunes
(presently out of print) but just can't seem to make the time so do realise
the work involved.
Just a thought.
Colin Hill
----- Original Message -----
From: <rosspi...@aol.com>
To: <nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2009 6:21 PM
Subject: [NSP] first 30 tunes
The NPS has just published a small tune book inpsired by the Boulting
brothers who found they couldn't join in at a session I was leading at the
North American Pipers' Convention at Killington in 2007. They asked a
number of pipers to contribute their collection of 30 tunes that they
thought should be essential basic repertoire that everyone should know, to
help themselves and other pipers from different airts and parts when they
got together and could all join in.
The book is now printed and available from the NPS.
At the time they wanted a CD to accompany the book to help folk who found
it difficult to pick iup a tune from the dots. Unfortunately we could not
find any one to mastermind that part of the exercise and it has not been
produced yet. If any one out there is willing to collect recordings of the
tunes and is then able to produce a CD please contact Julia Say the
Secretary of the NPS to arrange this.
It has already attracted criticism from one of our pipers who is 'deeply
disappointed' that the CD is not with the book as originally planned and
who thinks that it will do real damage to what is essentially an oral
tradition. He quotes the late Tom Anderson of Shetland who 'rightly' said
'Never try to learn a tune you don't already know'. This of course is a
matter of debate,i.e. oral v learning from printed music. It is
interesting that the same piper never found any course to complain that I
had taken most of the music for the Cut & Dry#1 LP from printed souces as
there was no one alive who had those old tunes in their repertoire that
they had learnt from a previous generation. This narrow view in my mind
would prevent any advantage to be taken from Matt's recent publication of
the 1777 Vicker's MS.
I have my own views on presenting recordings of tunes with tune books as
the style of playing from the various players would be imprinted on
learners which could be a bad thing in some ways as suggesting that this
was the 'right' way to play the tunes. Maybe a neutral instrument should
be used to just demonstrate the way the tune may be played.
Colin R
________________________________________________________________________
AOL Email goes Mobile! You can now read your AOL Emails whilst on the
move. Sign up for a free AOL Email account with unlimited storage today.
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
