Usually when the discussion of modes comes up I fall asleep or go mad, but I recently got a book that explained modes simply, so I thought try to get across my understanding of the subject.
We’ve had several threads on this, but I found Eskin’s explanation the best starting point from my understanding.
The standard mode for classical music is Ionian. Play a D scale on your D whistle and it’s Ionian mode. The steps in the scale are tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone. Five tones plus 2 semis make 12 semis in total and we’re back on D. Great.
Now for the other modes. Using the same D whistle, with 2 sharps built in, you can play in other modes.
Start on E note and go up to E. That’s Dorian mode.
Start on F# and go up to F#. That’s Phrygian.
Start on G and go up to G. That’s Lydian.
Start on A and go to A. That’s Mixolydian.
Finally start on B and go to B. That’s Aeolian.
So…as Michael said, many Irish tunes are not in standard Ionian mode. Dorian and Mixolydian are the most common alternatives, so you will see tunes apparently in D major (two sharps in the key signature) but starting on an E like Cooley’s Reel or Eanach Chuin , or an A like (insert tune starting on an A).
The most helpful method I’ve run across presents the modes in terms of the note of the scale where they start:
Ionian (major) - Do
Dorian - Re
Phrygian - Mi
Lydian - Fa
Mixolydian - Sol
Aeolian (minor)- La
Locrian - Ti
Locrian is not one of the traditional modes, someone just made it up for completeness. I’m sure there’s a mnemonic for the list out there somewhere.
Mixolydian and Dorian are so prevalent in Irish music (As pointed out by Michael and Martin) that they’re sometimes referred to as “Irish major” and “Irish minor.”
As you can tell, the modes are very old: The Greeks named them, after regions of Greece that they associated the moods of particular modes with. So Locrian was not just made up for completeness. The Greeks were great music theorists, and they considered the instruction of youths in music to be of the utmost importance. Some modes, for instance, were considered unfit for youths because of the detrimental effect they would have on their moral development. Others were considered particularly wholesome.
It is my impression that using the Greek modes (which were also very important in what we call Early Music) to conceptualize Irish Traditional music is a relatively modern thing. It is certainly an improvement over the need to stick everything into minor or major a hundred years ago (which leads you to see A-major signatures, three sharps that is, for tunes that have no c-natural or c-sharp in them). But it is one of those things: You can understand more thinking about Dorian and Myxolidian than you can with Major and Minor, but I am getting the sense that there are things you are still missing about the music. I can’t tell you what that is because I haven’t understood it yet. But I think that most of those in whom the music has reposed for the past 150 years would have cared not at all about Ionian, Dorian, Myxolydian and Aeolian.
We forgot to mention Bloomian mode, where every tone up is accompanied by a semitone down, and Milneran mode, where you get a lot of duff notes but no actual music.
Bloomfield is probably very right there, I would say that traditional musicians play it by ear as it were and don’t bother too much about modes. Some musicinas have good taste and know instinctively what the right notes are. SteveJ once blew up a strom here about playing an F in the Knotted Chord, yet ‘the genius’ [Steve’s words] Bobby Casey uses the F in it and it doesn’t sound out of place at all. Seamus Ennis was once asked did he use a C sharp or Natural in his version of the New Demesne. ‘A C natural as it should be’ he replied, yet he uses three distinctively different intonations of the C in the tune. The Blackhaired Lass is another example of ear vs reasoning. Bloomfield once quoted this tune as having c sharps throughout, at the time I though ‘HMMM, not the way I play it’. Yet again Ennis uses a variety of different Cs in the tune, Leo Rowsome opens on C natural and slips in a few sharps later on. I haven’t a clue if that’s modal or what else but if you hear the tune and you have a bit of experience I think you’ll know where to go.
For a brief moment, after reading Martin’s first post, I thought that I might at last be on the verge of making sense of all this stuff, but by the time I’d read the rest of the thread I was back to wondering if I should even bother to try. As long as the guitar strummers can figure out what to do without my help, why should I care, unless maybe the knowledge might help me to unlock the regulator black box?
The whole business seems to be a bit of an artificial imposition on ITM. Most people whom I know mix their cnats and their csharps with gay abandon, and saying that one or other is “wrong” just sounds, well… wrong to me.
Ennis liked to parade his bit of classical knowledge (most appallingly in sleeve notes for recordings), but as Peter points out, when he was playig he just did what came naturally. Anyway, what mode could a Clancy strangled csharp or fnat-fsharp slur, or an Ennis ghost e (as in Jenny’s Welcome to Charlie) possibly belong to?
BTW 1: I seem to remember reading in one of the previous threads on this subject either here or on Mudcat that the Greek names for the modes weren’t invented by the ancient Greeks at all , but were a medieval Western European retrofit.
BTW 2: Love your new postmodern appearance, Martin. Is that what a week in Miltown does to you?
There is no one “standard mode for classical music,” any more than there is a standard instrument for classical music or a standard composer for classical music.
It has happened in more recent centuries that classical music has simplified its nomenclature, so that “major” refers to Ionian and “minor” to aolian, or a couple variants thereof. Even then there is no one standard mode. And of course, much early classical music is strictly modal.
So…as Michael said, many Irish tunes are not in standard Ionian mode.
I did an analysis of an ABC tunebook once, and found it was about 60% ionian, 20% dorian, 12% mixolydian, and 8% aolian.
I think you can’t trust the abc transcriptions on this particular point. I’ve seen many mixolydian tunes reported as ionian. And anyway, there are several tunes I couldn’t tell you what mode/key they are in, if I tried. Or they change half-way through, like the Hag with the Money (or they can be played that way by some).
I think that the particular phenomenon that Bloomfield and Peter are talking about here—a sort of variability within a tune as to how precisely to intone the 3rd and 7th degrees of the scale—is better illuminated by comparing ITM to blues than by talking about modes.
Listening recently to pipers like Paddy Keenan and Johnny Doran (although all good pipers use this device), I was struck by the fact that there is often a sort of instability of intonation used for effect. This corresponds to the way a blues musician ‘worries’ a note. What I mean is this. A piper ostensibly playing in D mixolydian might hit C natural (more or less) and then slur up to C# or just a note somewhere in between. This sort of thing can be varied in all sorts of extremely subtle ways and simply talking of the tune being in the mixolydian mode scarcely begins to explain what is really going on.
If I am right about this, we unfortunately don’t get a deep theoretical explanation of this aspect of ITM by exploiting this similarity. Scholars of the blues do not agree as to how this sort of indeterminate tonality entered the music and there is no formula for describing how to utilise it other than: listen hard and copy what you hear. But once you are told what to listen for and how to get that effect on your instrument you are well on the way.
OK, will someone please explain to me how to slur notes on my anglo concertina?
Some of you know I play a lot of the time with Kitty Hayes. Kitty learned to play on the two row German concertina and has transferred her techinique to the anglo. She doesn’t use a C natural [and I use that as if playing in D, we effectively play a tone lower but I’ll ignore that for clarity’s sake], ‘I have no button for that’ she says. She gets away with it, playing little triplets on the note but I can tell you it is sometimes a bit daunting for this piper to slur around those notes.
As to a floating intonation, it is often very deliberate, fiddler like Martin Rochford, Paddy Canny and Bobby Casey are touchstones for my music making and they all made [make, in Canny’s case]a very distinctive and deliberate use of their intonation, creating great inimitable music along the way.
I agree that modes and intonation are two differnt things but they get connect a lot: You’ll hear people arguing whether a f# or f-natural is “right” in the Flogging reel as if it were a matter of key/modes. (And when you tell them to split the difference, they just blink at you. Not that I can play it at all.)
Yeah Peter, Paddy Canny is a wonderful example of someone who used floating intonation very deliberately and to great effect. Listening to Johnny Doran, I love the way he plays now hauntingly with floating intonation, almost challenging the listener to accuse him of playing out of tune, only to follow up with a lightning fast cascade of triplets perfectly in tune. I’m currently working on transfering his techniques to whistle and low whistle.
On concertina, even though I play a 3 row, 32 button, C/G, I still use triplets for decoration more than anything else—that and subtle bellows effects that are hard to describe.
I honestly think that these people are making the mistake of ‘thinking modes’ when they should be ‘thinking blues’. Since almost all the written teaching materials encourage the mistake, this is hardly surprising. Richard Thompson’s guitar tutor and CD, whilst not getting the explanation exactly right, comes very close to capturing the idea adequately. His playing of C natural in ‘Banish Misfortune’ certainly helped me a lot when I was first trying to get a feel for Irish intonation.
Maybe it should be called the ‘F#logging reel’?
A fellow by the name of Richard Henebry wrote a treatise in 1903,entitles ‘Irish music-Examination of the matter of scales…’
He reckoned that the F# demanded to be played a quarter tone flat,as did the C# .He revised the basic Dmajor scale of Irish music,using Gaelic letters ‘F’ and ‘C’ to indicate these flattened notes.
I know that Michael Cronnolly tunes his flutes to reflect this ‘Irish modality’,though it can be achieved by half holing,for example.
I suppose the Hard part is when to utilise these notes.I’m no theoretician-is there a ‘formulae’ or is it like the ‘Blue notes’ that Wombat has spoken of?-UPDATE, I just read the previous three postings (I really shouldn’t try to post and cook at the same time! )
Tuning flutes this way might be helpful but wouldn’t give floating intonation, Kevin. The problem with the theory you mention is that a quarter tone is too exact—floating intonation allows for different approximations and for slurrring shifts on a single note. The tiniest of changes can mean so much. To me, much of the beauty in the music lies in this subtlety.
Well, this was Henrik Norbeck’s archive, and you may know that Mr. Norbeck is very careful about labeling tunes by mode, and doing so correctly. Of course, there are modal tunes, and pentatonic tunes, etc, but I don’t think those really hurt the rough numbers.
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