I'm trying to find Scottish
tunes which use as few notes, for use in teaching complete beginners.
We've been discussing "Come Give Me Your Hand" on the wire harp list. It's ALMOST pentatonic, but I think it goes outside the range of one "octave".
Do you know "Blow the Man Down" on your side of the pond? (I'm in America...) Six notes, but lots of pettern repeats make it a good teaching tune.
Skye Boat Song, of course....familiar as the day is long, and only 5 notes though again it's not limited to the range of one octave. Almost.
May I put on my Pedagogy Hat? Now, I don't play the fiddle, and maybe it's different from my experience. But I look more for tunes that have lots of repetition in pattern, rather than focus solely on tunes that have just a few notes. The Steve Foster tune "Oh! Susanna" for example, works real well with my American students, because it is very familiar (they already know the tune, so I don't have to teach that) and the first, second and fourth phrases are identical. Au Clair de la Lune is the same way.
Besides looking for tunes with absolute, dead-on repeated passages, I also look for repeating *patterns* (sequences and/or repeating rhythmic patterns). Skye Boat comes back to mind...the same rhythm over and over again. You learn the rhythm once, you got it. They Stole My Wife Last Night has a great repeated melodic pattern (if you ignore the gaps. I tell my harp students to pretend the gapped strings are not even there.)
BTW, anyone know what "Stole My Wife" is about? Is it reflective of some old wedding tradition, like the American tradition of decorating the newlyweds' car so they can't get away quietly for the honeymoon?
--Cynthia Cathcart
http://www.cynthiacathcart.net/
