Hello Colin
What I am trying to get across is precisely the fact that the tunes
themselves were played as rants at musical gatherings with no
suggestion of dance involved. Yes, there are similarities to the polka
rhythm but Rant tunes tend to be crotchet rich and have, to my ears,
quite a different feel (as anyone familiar with Will Taylor's rendition
of the Pearl Wedding or Nancy Taylor will realise - polkas they
ain't!). Dancers can indeed just get on and rant along to most reels.
In fact 3 Rothburys ago I Ranted the whole of a very long Dashing White
Sergeant set to full-on reels played by 422. Not as satisfying as rants
but acceptable and more fun than a gym workout.
It was the labelling of tunes such as "Whinham's Reel" and "Lamshaw's
Fancy" as marches which I found particularly misleading. Perhaps
calling them Polkas would have closer to the mark.
It's funny you know, but back in the late 70s I remember a
music evening at the Dickson's near Wooler when John Dagg chipped in
over a similar reel/rant discussion instigated by something the
"Toonies" (in this case represented by Foster Charlton) had
said. Foster had apparently suggested that there were so many notes
in such and such a tune that it had to be a Reel not a Rant . John's
comment, "I don't give a doodies [sic] how many notes it has you can
still give it a good rant rhythm", remains etched in my memory. This
discussion is far from new and only goes to emphasise the differences
in understanding and approach across a mere 40 miles of countryside!
Regards
Anthony
--- On Wed, 11/3/09, rosspi...@aol.com <rosspi...@aol.com> wrote:
From: rosspi...@aol.com <rosspi...@aol.com>
Subject: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes
To: anth...@robbpipes.com
Cc: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu
Date: Wednesday, 11 March, 2009, 4:20 PM
Dear Anthony,
Since you are now on the List I feel I can respond to your fascination
with gobstoppers and tomato soup. I was going to comment on what you
were saying about playing Rants and how deeply disappointed you were
that none of the tunes in the 30 tunes collection were called RANTS. I
think the reason is simple enough in that the rant is a dance step and
not a specific tune rhythm. A tune with that rhythm consistently
throughout the music would be a polka. The tune Hesleyside Reel only
has it specifically written into the music at the end of the four bar
phrases in the A part and at the end of the tune. The dancers however
are stepping throughout the tune so in calling it a reel we were not
wrong only in not mentioning in the forward that Julia wrote that tunes
like this can and maybe should be stepped with a rant step. I have been
playing this tune for many years now with the High Level Ranters and
concentrate on keeping a good bouncy rhythm along with other tunes that
can be called reels or hornpipes like the Morpeth Rant and leave the
dancers to get on with their footwork.
Cheers,
Colin R
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Robb <[1]anth...@robbpipes.com>
To: [2]john_da...@hmco.com; [3]rosspi...@aol.com
CC: [4]...@cs.dartmouth.edu
Sent: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:52
Subject: Re: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes
Dear Colin, John et al.
I think we should be distinguishing between Regional and personal
styles here.
Reels in the most of the British Isles (and elsewhere) have a pulse
which can be interpreted as:
Gob-stopper, gob-stopper, gob-stopper, gob-stopper.
In Northumberland many of these tunes would be played as Rants which
have a pulse:
Tomato soup, tomato soup, tomato soup, tomato soup
There is much room for personal interpretation on top of this basic
style difference. Letting people hear these differences is important.
As for so-called "bad habits" these must surely be/have been pleasing
to the players themselves at some point and are therefore valid in
their own right even if others may find them displeasing. Copying these
personal idiosyncracies is one thing, and each player can decide this
for themselves, ignoring the regional accent completely is another
thing altogether!
I would say go for it Colin, a person with your background can not help
but make a valuable contribution to the body of piping knowledge.
As aye
Anthony
--- On Wed, 11/3/09, [5]rosspi...@aol.com <[6]rosspi...@aol.com> wrote:
From: [7]rosspi...@aol.com <[8]rosspi...@aol.com>
Subject: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes
To: [9]john_da...@hmco.com
Cc: [10]...@cs.dartmouth.edu
Date: Wednesday, 11 March, 2009, 1:12 PM
Dear John,
No, it would not do at all for me to play the tunes as20I would be
imprinting my own style, whatever that is, on the tunes with all the
bad habits of gracing I have picked up over the years.. This would also
apply to other pipers who have learnt from 'the old guys' and have
developed a personal style of their own perhaps. Opinion would be
divided as to who is the best and my solution of using a mechanical
device to demonstrate a tune aurally for those who are unable to do
this from the printed source would at least- and it would be the very
least- give those folk an idea on how to tackle playing a tune and then
go to a player or a recording of a player to get the spirit of the tune
infused into it.
Colin R
-----Original Message-----
From: [11]john_da...@hmco.com
To: [12]...@cs.dartmouth.edu
Sent: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:26
Subject: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes
Perhaps, you could make the recordings yourself, Colin. That way the
bench would be quite clearly marked. It would seem likely that there
could be all sorts of interpretations of a tune, or bad playing
technique, if the sound source were another instrument.
Last night I played tunes with a friend, an ear player who grew up in
Morpeth, was active in the folk scene in Northumberland for many
years
before moving here. He plays stringed instruments, so the popping
pipe
sound goes nicely with the slurry strin
g sound. He doesn't play any of
the tunes note for note the way they appear in the books, because he
picked them up by ear, having heard many from the time he was a lad.
If I said, look, you're not playing that tune correctly, it would be
like the anthropologist telling the tribesman in New Guinea he's
hunting monkey incorrectly.
One tune in particular, "The Hesleyside Reel", is very difficult for
me
to play at his tempo without cutting out some of the notes. Was it
written for the pipes? It's a lovely tune, but my right hand's
ligature doesn't like it very much unless I play it at a rambling
pace.
Now, I realize, if I had Chris Ormston's technique I could do it
properly, but I never will (I'm not alone, am I?). If the choice is
mucking up the tune or adapting it to fit my technical abilities,
what's a guy to do?
John
[13]rosspi...@aol.com
03/10/2009 10:40 AM
To
[14]j.gibb...@imperial.ac.uk
=C
2 cc
[15]...@cs.dartmouth.edu
Subject
[NSP] Re: First 30 tunes
Dear John,
When I was saying that I thought the tunes in the 'First 30 Tunes'
might be better played on some other instrument than the small pipes
to
give an idea of how the tune went it was to avoid the copying of
pehaps
bad playing technique from pipers who had contributed tracks for the
CD. I had no experience of using ABC copies of the tunes to generate
audio copies but it seems to be a relatively straightforward way of
getting the printed tunes out there to be heard. At the moment the
NPS
is only interested in producing a CD to accompany the '30 tunes' book
but as we have most of the other tunes that are in our publications
in
ABC form it could be applied to all those tunes that beginners have
difficulty in lifting off the page.
As you say the main problem is in finding someone to do the job.
Colin R
-----Original Message-----
From: Gibbons, John <j.gibb...@imperial
.ac.uk>
To: 'colin' <[16]cwh...@santa-fe.freeserve.co.uk>;
[17]...@cs.dartmouth.edu
<[18]...@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:41
Subject: [NSP] Re: First 30 tunes
An abc pipers' tunebook should ideally -
* Not be a copy of a printed source. It might affect its sales.
Let
alone copyright questions.
* So should be mostly traditional unpublished material.
* It could contain new tunes too, if submitted by the composer -
copyright again.
* It should be communally authored - wait for a single author
and
it
will take a long time, and will mirror his taste; be it
excellent
or otherwise, someone will disagree! It is a view of the
tradition
that we are after, not just Joe Bloggs' bit of it.
* Abc's could be submitted to the nsp mailing list, and someone
web-literate could put it online.
* So we need a willing able volunteer.
* Here the plan falls to the ground.....
John
-----Original Message-----
From: nsp-request+j.gibbons=[19]ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu
[[1]mailto:nsp-request+j.gibbons=[20]ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On
Behalf
0 Of colin
Sent: 10 March 2009 16:23
To: [21]...@cs.dartmouth.edu
Subject: [NSP] Re: [NSP]Re: irst 30 tunes
I'm glad you wrote this.
I suggested something similar but my post never appeared (that
happens
quite
often and yes, I did send it to the list, not the person who posted
it).
As I said there, I've been trying to do something similar with a
book
of
hurdy gurdy tunes but some other player beat me to it by playing
all
the
tunes on the piano and making it available as an mp3.
The cries of "ah, that's how that bit goes" continue to echo.
Colin Hill
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike and Enid Walton" <[22]mikeande...@worcesterfolk.org.uk>
To: <[23]...@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 6:53 AM
Subject: [NSP] [NSP]Re: irst 30 tunes
>
> If tunes (the "first 30" in the current context, but it holds
for
all
> the NPS tunes) were posted in "abc" format on the NPS website,
it
would
> enable people with the necessary programs to print them in
whatever
>
format they wished, hear them as midis, transpose them etc. It
might,
> of course, reduce the sales of NPS books.
>
>
>
> I thought about this when we were playing tunes on F chanters
at
> Halsway with other musicians. The music books proferred by
pipers
were
> of course no good to the other musicians unless they were
really
expert
> at transposing on the hoof.
>
>
>
> Mike Walton
>
> --
>
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> [2][24]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index..html
>
--
References
1. mailto:nsp-request+j.gibbons=[25]ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu
2. [26]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
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References
1. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=anth...@robbpipes.com
2. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=john_da...@hmco.com
3. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com
4. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu
5. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com
6. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com
7. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com
8. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com
9. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=john_da...@hmco.com
10. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu
11. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=john_da...@hmco.com
12. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu
13. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rosspi...@aol.com
14. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=j.gibb...@imperial.ac.uk
15. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu
16.
http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=cwh...@santa-fe.freeserve.co.uk
17. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu
18. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu
19. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu
20. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu
21. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu
22.
http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=mikeande...@worcesterfolk.org.uk
23. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=...@cs.dartmouth.edu
24. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index..html
25. http://uk.mc11.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ic.ac...@cs.dartmouth.edu
26. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
