Help - Atholl Highlanders

[Peter Duggan]

Never mind the grace notes, it's the A chord followed by the D chord that matters.

Not sure that pipers always think/thought in terms of chords, Ben. To which I might add that 1. the Ace Ace|Bdf Bdf version works well (with the added note of tension introduced by the Bs) against the A drones and 2. I'd neither see nor play these bars as Bm, with the slightly dissonant effect of the Bs against straight D chords (some might say D6, but I wouldn't in this context) being somewhat analogous to the drone thing in a fully chorded version. Or, to put all that more simply, I'd chord either version with D there!

Oh, and Peter, you'll notice that I have, throughout, carefully avoided saying that either version was "wrong".

But I never said you did, with my use of 'wrong' (already in inverted commas, which I suspect you're misinterpreting here) merely a cautionary note re. 'Bdf Bdf is probably just a mistake' (which you did say) and not intended to imply that you believe in one official master source for any trad. tune!

Anyway (for the record), I've just been back and tidied up my ABC transcription for both legibility and content (decisions to make with its source just a little sloppily notated in places!), although it's maybe redundant now Hans has turned up those other links to notated pipe settings.

[jemtheflute]

I've just been back and tidied up my ABC transcription for both legibility and content (decisions to make with its source just a little sloppily notated in places!), although it's maybe redundant now Hans has turned up those other links to notated pipe settings.

Nice job, Peter - I can read it now and sorta play it from the ABC (my ABC sight-reading is way behind my quite inadequate dot sight-reading.....) It makes pretty good Scots sense that way.

As for the Adf v Bdf matter, my suspicion would be that the A version is likely to be the older (I have no evidence whatever for this, just an intuitive suspicion) and that the B version is a result of habituated ears expecting the step up progression - it's a much more common musical device than the A way and we kinda want to hear it that way, especially as the D music does use the step up (aCa dBd aCa [doubled] in all versions thus far seen here, at any rate) in its variation figure. However, it (Bdf in the B music) clearly has significant antiquity in the tune's history - a lot of people have felt that way about it for a long time!

The more I've thought about it, the more I've realised that every time someone starts this tune I initially fluff in the B music until I spot which way they're playing it, and then follow. As it's not a tune I ever deliberately learnt nor ever initiate playing, I'd never really thought about it so analytically before - just used my ears.

[hans]

Anyway (for the record), I've just been back and tidied up my ABC transcription for both legibility and content (decisions to make with its source just a little sloppily notated in places!), although it's maybe redundant now Hans has turned up those other links to notated pipe settings.

Looks good! One tip for future abc notations: c/2d could be also written as c/d
i.e. when you use half note length (half of what is set with the L: field) like for example in c/2d/2e/2f/2, you can leave out all the 2's: c/d/e/f/. The division slash without being followed by a number implies it is a division by 2. This is just another shorthand form, similar to c>d for c3/2d/2

[MTGuru]

Sorry Mr Guru, I did the math wrong! I edited the post above to make it clearer. It's more on the line 120-130 bpm, if counting 2 beats per bar!

Whew! I was half expecting your next post would be about your heart attack.

I can actually play it (more or less) at 190. But you end up with the skeleton only, no room for anything but desperately hitting most of the notes. Un-musical hardly begins to describe the result.

I once substituted in a particular local "band" whose basic schtick was playing everything at insane speeds, because they thought it made the tunes seem ... er, exciting. Instead, it made the band seem completely clueless, and their clueless audience loved it. It's the kind of mutual reinforcement that occurs when the music becomes untethered from tradition, and it was an interesting lesson for me.

[Peter Duggan]

Looks good! One tip for future abc notations: c/2d could be also written as c/d

Thanks, Hans... left it with the '2' because I thought I'd already tried it without and got two sixteenth notes on the concertina.net converter, but tried it again just now, got the sixteenth/eighth pair I was looking for and must have imagined the problem before.

whose basic schtick was playing everything at insane speeds, because they thought it made the tunes seem ... er, exciting.

What, like just anti-musical lunacy (as in don't do it because it's not even 'exciting')!?

[Peter Duggan]

Or, of course, you could just develop the world's loveliest marchy bouncy version of it and see if you can cure your session-mates.

Something like this, Cathy?

Can't swear it's the 'world's loveliest' (and sorry for recording on whistle when I've also been trying it on flute!), but it's definitely a march version and I do swear it's far from a 'rotten flute tune' when treated this way.

Also, @andref, the tempo you're now claiming for your jig (120–130 bpm) is near as damn it the same as the video (c.124 bpm) you said you could already keep up with?

[Tjones]

Something like this, Cathy?

But where is your G#?

Tjones

[andref]

Hi Peter,

Or, of course, you could just develop the world's loveliest marchy bouncy version of it and see if you can cure your session-mates.

Something like this, Cathy?

Can't swear it's the 'world's loveliest' (and sorry for recording on whistle when I've also been trying it on flute!), but it's definitely a march version and I do swear it's far from a 'rotten flute tune' when treated this way.

Also, @andref, the tempo you're now claiming for your jig (120–130 bpm) is near as damn it the same as the video (c.124 bpm) you said you could already keep up with?

Thanks for the recording!! Nice ornamentation. You play it really as a march. I think that one day I'll try to start this tune like you play it in my session. I really like the pounding march rhythm that you put into it.

And as for the tempo. Well, I'm getting better! but this weekend I tried to find a version of this tune I have made in one of the sessions with my faithful Zoom H2. I finally found it and I tried to measure the tempo. And yes, it is faster than I said it was. They are playing it at about 144-152 on my metronome. This is a really nice find for if I can actually keep it up legato on 120 bpm, I'm in the ball park of what others have said it's "normal session speed". And my session mates on steroids must really cool down a bit!

[Jäger]

(maybe an E flute, which means you play A tunes in G, which means life would be beautiful)?

I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing here, but if you play a tune in A with the same fingerings on an E-flute as you would on a D-flute the tune would be in B, not G.

So we play it (not me though!) at "blazing speed"! Using your way of measuring a jig's tempo (which makes sense) we are playing it around 180-190 bpm. That's why it's so hard!

If that tempo is accurate, then it's also crazy, except as a bad joke.

Could it possibly be a matter of metronome confusion (not to be confused with the new, experimental jazz music called "metrofusion"), as playing a jig to a metronome with two notes to the click (the metronome essentially playing quarter note triplets, in this case three clicks per 6/8 bar) at 180 bpm, would be the exact same pacing of the notes as playing to a metronome at 120 bpm with three notes to the beat would be. I've come across some of the simpler midi playback programs that does this, insisting that the tempo be set at two 8th notes per beat, regardless of time signature, where one would have to set the tempo to about 180 or 190 to get it to play back at the correct tempo.

[cboody]

I wonder if it's because of something other than what instrument it's played on. All the pipers I've heard play it 'my' way. But then, other than those sort of clips, all the ones I've heard and played with have been uilleann pipers and have been Irish. So, is it just a difference between the way, Scottish, GHB players play it and the way Irish players (on any instrument) play it? (Plus, maybe Scottish fiddlers.) Or maybe even just between GHB players and everybody else? Which would bring us back to the instrument ...

My head hurts.

Likewise. A few thoughts:

1 ) Ace Ace| Bdf Bdf

is standard everywhere I've played the tune in Midwest US. Never played it with a piper, but have heard it that way on GHB. Lots of fiddle players though and others. Always that way. So, clearly the two versions exist and we can all prepare for the crunch when folks differ. It won't be the only crunch.

2) Using Jacks transcriptions in G with an E whistle would get you the tune in A with G fingering. I think that was what was meant in that part of the thread.

3) While I've played the tune a breakneck speed (on several different instruments with differing success), because that is the way a group wanted to play it, I really prefer it as a good solid march. "hundred Pipers" works that way too. You can see the sporrans swinging!

4) That is indeed a nice whistle version and great cuts!