>> ...does anyone have anyone good recommendations of recordings of >> Scottish "mouthie" players? > Donald Black is a contemporary player with at least a couple of CDs. > There isn't a great deal else available. > So who are the Scots moothie players? [Donald Davidson, Willie Fraser, > Davy Marshall] > Who else would make this list?
Bryce Johnstone (recording c.2000 titled "Combine"). And Tommy Basker from Cape Breton, if his CD ("The Tin Sandwich") is still available. >> The music should be the same regardless of the instrument. If playing >> it on a certain instrument requires certain modifications, like is the >> case for some tunes to work on wind instruments of certain keys, then >> that is fine. There's a good bit more to it with moothie tunes. You have a couple of problems transferring stuff for fiddle or tubular woodwind. Wide leaps are one - the octave leaps that are a doddle on a flute, the drops down to low A you can do on the pipes by just moving a couple of right-hand fingers, or the string-crossing alternating-pedal stuff you can easily do on a fiddle can all be impossible on a moothie, you can't move it fast enough. The other problem is mode; on a moothie, mixolydian tunes mean playing in a different "position" with the tonic up a fourth from its usual place on the instrument, and minor keys suck. You can't play in the minor for very long before your lungs give out; Iain Grant tells me he once saw Willie Atkinson pass out on stage from hyperventilation when playing a long minor-key slow air. By now I know what not to try with the moothie players I play with ("The Inverness Gathering" is a no-no) but it's taken a long time to find out. I really love these idiosyncrasies, you see the music quite differently when you approach it with an instrument that has different technical problems. e.g. try playing "Hamnataing" on a stringed instrument tuned in fourths - aargh. But it might have been written specially for the clarinet. =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html