Part 1: WHAT KEY AM I IN
Part 2: What key am I in, part 2

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Subject: RE: WHAT KEY AM I IN?
From: GUEST Date: 22-May-02 - 05:19 PM
Well said Don!

From: GUEST,Pavane Date: 23-May-02 - 02:24 AM
M Ted I am sorry that for historical reasons, my programs are written in a language (originally in QuickBasic for DOS, now Visual Basic) which is not supported on the MAC.
To port them would require a massive rewriting effort, as well as learning a new language and operating system. In view of the HUGE number of registrations received on Windows systems (2, at the last count, for the latest version of HARMONY, after at least 800 downloads), it doesn't appear that there is much point.

From: GUEST,Marion Date: 23-May-02 - 12:58 PM
Hi M.Ted. I found your last two posts very interesting because they discussed the different kinds of minor scales; I've been trying to sort this out. Every reference I seek out describes the intervals found in natural, melodic, and harmonic minors, but I haven't been able to find anything (by reading, or by asking people) about how they are used.
Are there general rules as to who uses which kind of minor scale and when? You say that classical composers typically use melodic minors. What about natural and harmonic? Do the names melodic and harmonic have any significance, i.e., you would use one to play melodies and the other to play harmonies?
Another thing I wonder about melodic minor is how you know if you'd use the ascending or descending forms, assuming you're playing the melody that's going up and down all the time rather than a long scale-like run.
Let me rephrase the question: if you had your guitar and I asked you to play me an Am scale, what exactly would you play? Or would you say that the request was meaningless and that you needed to know which Am scale I meant?
I did ask this same question on Mudcat a year ago, but the resulting discussion was about modes. I'm not talking about modes, or pentatonic or other gapped scales, but the 7 tone minor scales described in classical textbooks.
Thanks, Marion

From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 23-May-02 - 01:22 PM
Well, you may not use the natural minor scale more than the others, M Ted, but I think you'll find that in a lot of folk music circles it's probably the more commonly used minor scale.
The value of theory is that it can help people make sense of what they do, and fit things together, and so make better music. But it should never ever limit what we do - and it is treated like that sometimes, so that certain ways of harmonising, for example, are ruled out as improper.
The people who wrote West Gallery music for example, were always getting sneered at on those kinds of grounds. I think the only things that matters ever are, first, does the way it sounds fit with what the music is trying to do, and second, is what it's trying to do worth doing.

From: GUEST,Bent Whistler Date: 23-May-02 - 02:51 PM
Wow.
I'm an over-40 very new musician (in fact, 2 months ago I wouldn't have used that term) who started by picking up a bodhran and a year later stepped on my wife's penny whistle, thereby inheriting it (hence the pen name). Went from no keys to fixed key. Ignored sharps and flats on sheet music and never played along with anyone to be in or out of key with. (Hell, I didn't know what a key was - the whistle just came that way.)
Well, a year ago my family got me a small hammered dulcimer (12/11). This is such a perfect instrument to learn basic chord structure due to the string layout making it all visual.
Now I've been torturing my guitar/mandolin/bass playing brothers turning family get togethers into sessions where I try to get them to figure out what the chord progression is so I can attempt to play along (they usually haven't thought about what the chords are for years on most songs).
I came to this thread because just this week the concept of 'key' finally clicked. My brothers would tell me what key they were in (and I'd just quietly drone on that major chord). New after spending half an hour with a music dictionary (and pestering my multi-instrumentalist daughter into reading key signatures for me!) I think I've got the concept down - the key is the set of notes (specifically sharps and flats) that sound good together.
Last weekend I bought a small notebook and copied out the basic keys and their corresponding scale. Next time my brother tell me the key, I at least know the right sharps and flats while I try to figure out the chords. Meanwhile I keep on droning along...
Bent

From: M.Ted Date: 23-May-02 - 03:32 PM
Read my post carefully, Kevin--I was speaking of "classical" composers---given that however, you must understand that many folk melodies(particularly of the British Isles sort) are modal, and so, at least for musicological purposes, that would be considered an Aeolian mode, rather than a natural minor scale--
Beyond that, though, if your chordal acompaniment goes from Am to E7, you are using a melodic minor--
Marion, the answer to the question that you asked only makes sense when you are asking it about a particular piece or type of music--pick out the melody to Greensleeves, and you will see that in one motion, it uses the flatted seventh, in another, it uses the natural seventh(melodic minor). Do the same with "The Star of the County Down", and you will see that the natural seventh is not used at all(like a natural minor, Aeolian mode, but probably an even earlier "gapped" scale)--
The composers of each melody chose their scales to create a particular melodic quality partly based on his or her taste, but also because, in the time and place that they were writing, that was how you did it--
As to what Am scale I would play, I would explain the differences, and play you each--my personal favorite is the harmonic minor, because it has that big jump from the flatted sixth to the natural seventh--

From: Don Firth Date: 23-May-02 - 03:48 PM
Shop: SONGS AND BALLADS , Busted , Riley
The reason that modes come into any discussion of the differences between the various minor scales is that the two most commonly used scales, major and minor, are modes—Ionian and Aeolian respectively. The reason that they are the most common is that composers within recent centuries have found them to be the most versatile.
The problem that composers found with the Aeolian mode (natural minor) that led to invent the melodic and harmonic minor scales centers around the fact that the Aeolian mode lacks a leading tone.
A leading tone is a note a half-step below the key note. After playing around in a particular scale for a moment or two, the tonality of that scale gets established in your ear. Then, if you stop playing on the leading tone, it creates a "drop the other shoe" effect. Your ear wants to hear that key note. That's called resolution. This happens automatically in the Ionian mode (major scale) because the seventh degree of the scale is a half-step below the key note (for example, B in the key of C). But not in the Aeolian or most of the other modes.
Where composers especially wanted a strong resolution was at the very end of a piece of music (or at the end of a verse). You will note that almost all songs end with a dominant chord (often a dominant seventh chord) moving to the tonic chord (e.g., G7 to C). The B in the G7 chord moves to the C in the C chord (on guitar, 2nd string open to 2nd string 1st fret), thus producing the desire resolution. The ear is satisfied. That's called an "authentic cadence."
But if you are playing a song that's in Am (natural), the chords available to you are Am, Dm, and Em, with C, F, and G usable. The dominant chord is Em (alternately, G). The note below the key note (A) is G, a whole step down. There is some pull for resolution, but it's nowhere near as strong as it would be if the note were G#. So to create that pull, composers went out of the scale so they could use an E or E7, both of which contain a G#. In most instances it worked very nicely. Then, to sort of make it official, they invented the "harmonic minor scale" (a chord is a function of harmony rather than melody), which, based on A as the key note, is A B C D E F G# A.
But that put an interval of a step and a half between F and G# — an augmented second, the same sound as a minor third — which gives the scale a characteristic Middle Eastern sound. To alleviate that, they raised the F to an F# to smooth out the gap. But as it happens when you start tinkering with something that ain't really busted, they had to keep tinkering. When they descended the scale, the first five notes you hear are the same as the A major scale, and it establishes a major tonality in the ear. So to alleviate that, they decided that the "melodic minor" scale would go up with the raised notes (A B C D E F# G# A) and come down with the same notes as the natural minor (A G F E D C B A). Got it?
Contrasted to the natural minor which has been hanging around for many centuries, perhaps millenia, the harmonic and melodic minor scales are sort of ad hoc inventions, and relatively recent at that.
So what's the practical application of all this? If you are singing a song in Am, check the song to see if it has any G#s or F#s in it. If it doesn't, you're in natural minor. You would probably use Em as your dominant, but substituting G often produces more desirable results. Sounds modal, which is appropriate for many folk songs and ballads. Is modal, as a matter of fact. Don't worry about the lack of a leading tone. People managed to live without it until a few centuries ago. Try an E or E7 just for kicks. It may clank really badly, but if it sounds good, you might want to use it. I sing a couple of songs where I use Em at one point in the verse, G at another, and E7 at the end. No rule other than "which sounds best?"
Incidentally, if your song in Am has an F# in it, but the G is natural, you're in Dorian mode. The available chords there are Am, D (not Dm), and E, with C, G, and Bm usable. Example:— Joan Baez's version of John Riley. If it looks like a major scale except the seventh note (what would be the leading tone) is flatted (e.g., it looks like the key of C, but it has a Bb instead of B), then you're in Mixolydian mode. Use C, F, and G, with Am, Dm, and Em available, but start it and end it on a G chord. Example:— Joan Baez's version of The Great Selchie.
Music theory gives you a good idea of what's possible. The ultimate test is how does it sound?
Now that I've totally bewildered the hell out of everybody, including myself, I'm gonna go fix myself some lunch.
Don Firth

From: Dave4Guild Date: 23-May-02 - 03:52 PM
Am I wrong in thinking that we're getting a bit "swamped" (am I allowed to use that phrase, now?) with all this discussion about modes and scales, and ascending and descending melodic/harmonic minors, etc.? If this thread is for the assistance of jeepman, it seems to have taken on a life of its own! Folk Music, it seems to me, whatever the technicalities of the more pedantic definitions, is about the learning of songs and music by ear ( an Aural tradition ). Therefore an understanding of musical theory is totally unnecessary for the enjoyment of and performance of, Folk Music. That is not to say that the theory of harmony isn't interesting, or that understanding it may not improve one's ability to shall we say, arrange songs or tunes. To get to the heart of the matter shall we say that most tunes with which we are familiar are sung(played) on a series of notes which are called a scale, and probably the commonest one is a major scale which most people will be familiar with as doh ray me etc.. Whichever note this particular tune takes as its "tonic" is said to be "the key" it's in; its tonic note being the starting note for the series of notes for this scale. The 3 chord trick refers to the fact that this run of notes can be harmonised (Accompanied by) three chords based in turn on the note doh, the note fa, and the note soh, of the scale we were first thinking about! For convenience(and to help us do facile things such as playing in tune together!), each note is given a name and this name refers to a specific pitch determined by the frequency of vibration necessary to produce that note, eg "A" is 444 Hz (cycles per second) I don't suppose this garbled nonsense makes much sense, but here's a tip. If you're playing along with someone in say the key of C, and you're playing C, and the chord changes,(not the key) change to G, while keeping strict time. If this is the wrong chord, keep playing IN TIME for a regular number of beats, and change to F. This often works and makes it sound as if you are putting in a passing chord, and that you have a superior knowledge of Harmony to the main player! If it doesn't work, Shut Up!

From: Dave4Guild Date: 23-May-02 - 03:57 PM
Am I wrong in thinking that we're getting a bit "swamped" (am I allowed to use that phrase, now?) with all this discussion about modes and scales, and ascending and descending melodic/harmonic minors, etc.? If this thread is for the assistance of jeepman, it seems to have taken on a life of its own! Folk Music, it seems to me, whatever the technicalities of the more pedantic definitions, is about the learning of songs and music by ear ( an Aural tradition ). Therefore an understanding of musical theory is totally unnecessary for the enjoyment of and performance of, Folk Music. That is not to say that the theory of harmony isn't interesting, or that understanding it may not improve one's ability to shall we say, arrange songs or tunes. To get to the heart of the matter shall we say that most tunes with which we are familiar are sung(played) on a series of notes which are called a scale, and probably the commonest one is a major scale which most people will be familiar with as doh ray me etc.. Whichever note this particular tune takes as its "tonic" is said to be "the key" it's in; its tonic note being the starting note for the series of notes for this scale. The 3 chord trick refers to the fact that this run of notes can be harmonised (Accompanied by) three chords based in turn on the note doh, the note fa, and the note soh, of the scale we were first thinking about! For convenience(and to help us do facile things such as playing in tune together!), each note is given a name and this name refers to a specific pitch determined by the frequency of vibration necessary to produce that note, eg "A" is 444 Hz (cycles per second) I don't suppose this garbled nonsense makes much sense, but here's a tip. If you're playing along with someone in say the key of C, and you're playing C, and the chord changes,(not the key) change to G, while keeping strict time. If this is the wrong chord, keep playing IN TIME for a regular number of beats, and change to F. This often works and makes it sound as if you are putting in a passing chord, and that you have a superior knowledge of Harmony to the main player! If that doesn't work, Shut Up!

From: Don Firth Date: 23-May-02 - 04:03 PM
Incidentally, all of this tinkering and inventing of scales didn't happen at some official "composer's conference" held in Vienna in 1658 or anything like that. All this stuff evolved over many decades, perhaps a couple of centuries. Classical composers have their own version of "the folk process."
Don Firth

From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 23-May-02 - 04:07 PM
A minor to E7? Very unlikely. Unless it was a tune I was faking to sound East European - which can be quite fun.

From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 23-May-02 - 04:15 PM
But, since we're talking about chords and that, here's a question, and it's not technical.
When I'm writing the chords for a song, I've got the habit of using upper case letters (A,B,C) for the major chords, and lower case (a,b.c) for the minor chords. It seems obvious, and has the advantage of making it a bit easier to fit in a succession of changing chords against the words of a song, if need be, than it would be if I had to put Am etc. Anyway, I'm lazy.
So the question is, does anyone else do it that way? I'm sure I must have come across it somewhere before I started doing it.

From: Don Firth Date: 23-May-02 - 04:18 PM
All very good, Dave, but the same kind of questions keep coming up in thread after thread. All of this (in this particular thread) is in aid of answering the question "What key am I in?" If the answer is too simple, it merely raises more questions. A good, complete answer is liable to get a bit techical. To some this is fascinating and enlightening. To others, it's highly tedious. Nevertheless, one does try to answer the questions as they come up.
Don Firth

From: Don Firth Date: 23-May-02 - 04:37 PM
Shop: Henry Martin
Actually< Kevin, I could probably come up with a pretty long list of songs that use Am and E7. A very common chord combination, and it doesn't necessarily sound East European or Middle Eastern. Henry Martin for openers.
Yeah, I've seen upper case letters for major chords and lower case for minors quite a bit. The only possible glitch I can think of is if someone's eyesight is fuzzy enough that they can't tell the difference. Another similar system that's used in classical music analysis is upper and lower case Roman numerals (I, IV, V for major, i, iv, v for minor). The idea of this is to show the relationship of the chords within the key, but without pinning it down to a specific key. Works for any key you want to play something in.
Don Firth

From: M.Ted Date: 23-May-02 - 05:05 PM
Shop: The Ship
Or if you were playing the aforementioned Greensleeves--Kevin--Songs that start on an Am and move to an E7 are not that uncommon--Johnny I Hardly Knew You come to mind immediately--or are you such a purist that you forsake diatonic melodies?
Damn you Don!;-) You owe everyone an apology for posting all that!! You have hijacked the ship and taken it irretrevably into the nether realms--And I am only kind of kidding--I understood what you were saying, but those that don't know what you are talking about already will choke on it all(as Dave4Guild has pointed out)--Even still, I am biting my tongue, knowing that my nitpicky additions will make an even worse muck of this than it is, and, sadly, always seems doomed to be--
The only conclusion I can come to is that it isn't possible to provide good answers to music theory questions informally--in order to come to a real understanding you have to do a detailed analysis of specific pieces of music, and you can't gloss over things. because the gaps always get thrown back at you--
Still, all we can do is try--
And, to that goal, my little contribution is that the shift that Don is talking about, which becomes possible with the addition of the leading tone, is the shift from tonic harmony to dominant harmony, and it is the use of this shift that makes a melody diatonic instead of modal--

From: GUEST,Jim Date: 23-May-02 - 05:26 PM
McGrath,
I've seen the upper case/major, lower case/minor used quite a lot too.
All I would say is to make it clear what you're doing at the top of the piece (assuming you want others to play it)
There are loads of naming conventions, most of which make sense by themselves. The difficulty is knowing which one the author is using!
Jim

From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 23-May-02 - 06:04 PM
I wasn't saying the melodic minor scale is never used, just that the natural minor is probably more common in the kind of music played in sessions. (After all, why would it be called the natural minor scale if it was the odd one to use?)

From: GUEST Date: 23-May-02 - 06:08 PM
McGrath, it's called the 'natural' minor because of the way it relates to the modes. 'Natural' has nothing to do with the amount it's used

From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 23-May-02 - 07:11 PM
Sounds natural enough to me. Any time I play a minor scale, that's the scale I'll play, unless I'm making a point of playing some other kind of scale.

From: GUEST Date: 23-May-02 - 07:20 PM
McGrath,
The way you use 'literal' meanings when they suit your arguement, and semantic excuses when they don't is becoming a little tiresome.

From: Pied Piper Date: 24-May-02 - 07:59 AM
To broaden out this thread even more, Dave4Guild said "A= 444 Hz". In Europe "A" used to be 440 Hz, and I thought US "A" was 445 Hz, and that a compromise figure of 442.5 Hz had been decieded upon by instrument manufactures. Can any one clarify the situation? It might seem like nit picking but for fixed pitched instruments a gap of 5 Hz at "A" could be a problem.All the best PP.

From: GUEST Date: 24-May-02 - 08:10 AM
The concert A that most countries refer to has been set at 440Hz.
However, in many countries such as Japan and Germany, the concert A is now 442Hz-445Hz.
This is to raise the intensity and excite the emotions.
These days the A is so sharp that on recordings it is sometimes difficult to tell whether it is tuned to A or Bb.
In my opinion this is commercial method rather than anything else and in the long run does not make a big difference to the music itself. I personally tune my violin to 440Hz.

From: Don Firth Date: 24-May-02 - 12:16 PM
Shop: Leave It There
440 is what I go with. Many owners of fine old instruments such as million dollar violins are not real happy with this kind of escalation. These instruments were made for tensions somewhat under modern pitch standards. Sure, cranking the strings up often makes the instrument sound brighter, but how much can you do this before the instrument turns into a pretzel? And then, of course, there are the fixed-pitch instruments such as woodwinds and brasses. What does one do? Just toss an expensive clarinet and buy a new one?
Constantly raising the standard is a bad idea. Fix it and leave it there! 440=A is good.
Don Firth

From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 24-May-02 - 12:38 PM
Electronic tuners always seem to have 440Hz as default, wity the option of adjusting it, which would be handy if you were playing with a fixed pitch instrument set to something slightly different and you knew what it was.
The other reason some session players tune higher may be it's a way of keeping out musical gatecrashers. But only if they have ears that can tell the difference; and it doesn't work for bodhrans.

From: Dave4Guild Date: 24-May-02 - 06:36 PM
Sorry, every-one, I meant to type 440Hz, but my typing is terrible. I keep playing chords! If I'm ever going to be dominant on this keyboard I'm going to have to have a tonic, so I'll have my (major) seventh cup of coffee before I'll resolve myself into the plagal cadence of slumbertime. Goodnight and may your god bless you.

From: Burke Date: 24-May-02 - 07:21 PM
Shop: Amazing Grace
Interesting the way the term modal is tossed around like it means something.
More correctly a lot of folk tunes do not use the 7 traditional diatonic pitches. Many use only 5 or 6 pitches. Tunes using 5 are called pentatonic (Amazing Grace) & this is very common. These tunes have a sound not quite major, not quite minor, so modal is what they end up being called.

From: M.Ted Date: 24-May-02 - 11:58 PM
Modal does mean something, Burke--and the use of the seven scale pitches can be either modal or diatonic--depending--

From: GUEST,Al Date: 25-May-02 - 01:11 AM
Ask the banjo player what tuning he or she is in. That will tell you the key. Al

From: DMcG Date: 25-May-02 - 11:37 AM
Oh blimey, I thought I'd just about got a handle on this when M.Ted throws in the use of the seven scale pitches can be either modal or diatonic--depending-- . Can I go into a nice, quiet padded room somewhere?

From: Don Firth Date: 25-May-02 - 02:19 PM
No sweat, DMcG. Modes are diatonic. Diatonic means using only the seven notes of the scale, as contrasted with chromatic. Chromatic scales contain all twelve notes within the octave (all the piano keys, black and white — or all the frets as opposed to certain selected ones). Chromatic scales are used some in modern music, but never, or almost never, in folk music.
If a piece of music uses the notes A, B, C, E, F, and G, for example, then it's both natural minor and Aeolian mode. Same scale, different labels. Whichever you chose to call it, it's diatonic. Also—there's no law that says a given piece of music has to use all the notes available within a particular scale. If a piece of music uses only five notes, is it pentatonic (any of several possible five note scales), or is it (insert name of any mode or diatonic scale here) with two of the available notes left out? It can be either, depending on how you look at it. Same scale, different labels.
By the way, minor tonic and the related dominant seventh chords may not occur all that often in certain types of music, but in music in general (pop, rock, classical, and lots and lots of folk songs and tunes), it's one of the most common chord combinations, i.e., Am & E7, Em & B7, Dm & A7, etc., etc.
Don Firth

From: GUEST,Bullfrog Jones (on the road) Date: 26-May-02 - 03:34 PM
Hope you're taking this all in, Jeep Man -- there's gonna be a test at the end!
BJ

From: pavane Date: 26-May-02 - 05:46 PM
I'm sorry I mentioned modes in the first place! And I THINK my concertina has been retuned to modern pitch, but you never know..

From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 26-May-02 - 06:00 PM
Of course this business of 12 tones in an octave isn't the only way of doing it. In other traditions, such as Arabic, the octave is divided into 24 quartertones.

From: GUEST,E-NUF Date: 26-May-02 - 07:15 PM
and dont forget about the 100 or so other countries and various planets throughout the solar system and myriads of galaxies...

From: Marion Date: 27-May-02 - 03:46 PM
Don Firth, I loved your post. Very interesting and clear - no descent into the nether realms at this time. You should be out there writing theory textbooks. Do you mind if I ask, how do you know this stuff? I've asked the same question of a few people who have degrees in classical music performance, and they had no idea.
M.Ted, thanks a lot for your answer as well. I wonder if you can expand on this at all: "The composers of each melody chose their scales to create a particular melodic quality partly based on his or her taste, but also because, in the time and place that they were writing, that was how you did it-- "
I would have thought that your two examples, Greensleeves and Star of the County Down, are the same kind of tune (i.e, Anglo-Celtic folk) - so since they use different minor scales, maybe it isn't possible to generalize what kind of tune uses what kind of minor. But you say, that time and place are a factor as well as creative decisions; are there any general rules that can be stated as to what minors are associated with what times and places? Your dialogue with McGrath seems to be suggesting that folk is usually natural minor and classical melodic minor, but that seems too simplistic to be true. Maybe because of the evolution that Don described, older tunes tend to be natural minor and newer tunes melodic minor?
Do you have any commonly known examples of songs in harmonic minor?
Thanks a lot gentlemen,
Marion

From: Marion Date: 27-May-02 - 03:54 PM
Jeepman, are you still reading this thread? Jon answered your specific question (what is an Em capoed up 4 frets); would you be interested in an explanation of how to figure out what chords are when capoed up, so you can figure it out yourself next time?
Marion

From: Don Firth Date: 27-May-02 - 05:00 PM
Marion, to answer your question (thanks for the nice words, by the way), and so folks know where I'm coming From:—
When I first started singing folk songs and playing the guitar at age 22, my musical knowledge was absolutely zilch! I had taken about six months' voice lessons a year or so before, but I couldn't read music and I didn't know one chord from another. I had to learn songs from other people or from records, and I had to have other people show me what chords to play. When I was 24, I started taking classic guitar lessons. That's when I started to learn to read music (I'm still a lousy sight-reader). This allowed me to pick out the tunes in song books. But I still had to have people show me what chords to play, unless the song book had the chords in it or the song was really simple.
I wanted to make a career for myself singing folk songs, like Burl Ives or Richard Dyer-Bennet, so bad I could taste it. this was in the early Fifties, actually before the Kingston Trio and the sudden proliferation of folk singers, so at the time it was not too dumb and idea. But how could I do this when I was musically illiterate and blundering around in the darkness of my own ignorance? I hurled myself into the deep end and enrolled in the University of Washington School of Music. There, along with freshman theory and the many other courses, I had to take "remedial sight-reading." Everybody knew more than I did, so I had to really hump just to keep up. But gradually I got it. I think a lot of it really stuck because I had to work so hard for it. From there, I went on to the Cornish school of the Arts, and later studied music theory and composition with a private teacher.
But it was more than worth it. What I learned was not a bunch of rules and restrictions. What I learned was a wide range of possibilities that I never knew existed. And although I never became one of the "biggies," I did manage to make a halfway decent and thoroughly enjoyable living singing in coffeehouses, concerts, festivals, and a bit of television—and teaching. Knowledge is freedom!
This is one of the reasons I tend to jump in when people ask questions like the ones I used to ask.
Don Firth

From: Pied Piper Date: 28-May-02 - 11:14 AM
Shop: Just a Little
Don just a little correction "Diatonic" actualy refers to the fact that the scale is made up of 2 types of interval; the Tone and the Semi-tone. All the best PP.

From: Don Firth Date: 28-May-02 - 01:17 PM
Right, Pied Piper. That's an important distinction and I should have made that clear.
Don Firth

From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 28-May-02 - 03:22 PM
Now I'd never realised thta. So would a scale which includes a jump of three semi-tones as well be called "triatonic"?

From: M.Ted Date: 28-May-02 - 05:00 PM
Marion,
I am having trouble figuring out what you are looking for--
Particularly, I am stuck on this comment-- "so since they use different minor scales, maybe it isn't possible to generalize what kind of tune uses what kind of minor"--I am a bit lost as to what you are looking for--what are the different kinds of tunes you are talking about? And what kind of a generalization are you trying to make?
Generally, a melody uses whatever scale or combination of scales it's composer decides to use(remembering that "anonymous" and "The Folk Process" and "Traditional" are all composers, too)---all you need to do is either look at the music or pick it out on an instrument(piano is best) to figure what it is--
People who play folk music work with a very mixed bag of melodies, and it is hard to make any generalizations at all--as you noted, it would be easy to think that the two examples I gave are a lot a like, but one is a classical minor melody(moving from tonic to dominant then resolving to tonic), and the other is a modal melody, (which does not modulate to dominant harmony at all)---
It is also helpful to remember that the composer can change the scale that a melody uses, as well--

From: Pied Piper Date: 29-May-02 - 09:41 AM
Shop: Over the Hills
Many tunes from the Northhumbrian and border tradition positively enjoy not finishing on the tonic note; this gives an exciting and sometimes poignant tension to the tune. A good example is "over the hills and far away" which if played in the key of D finishes on E. All the best PP.

From: M.Ted Date: 29-May-02 - 04:40 PM
I've played a lot of Balkan stuff--and they, too, are fond of melodies that end, unresolved--in the dominant harmony--sometimes even on the leading tone(on melody I've just been fooling with ends on b in a c minor scale)--Singers and melody instrumentalists can work out their parts reasonably well, but those of us stuck with finding chordal accompaniments are often a bit challenged--

From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 29-May-02 - 06:11 PM
True enough, there are times when the last note won't give you the key, and you just have to hurriedly chase around the frets. If there's a fiddler playing the chances are it's going to turn out to be an open string key (GDAE or gdae).
Asking doesn't always help - some of the best fiddle players never seem to be able to say what key they are playing in; it just isn't the way they think about tunes.
The other thing is, even in tunes where the last note doesn't give you the key, as often as not the last time the tune gets payed it will end on the key note. A bit late to find out maybe, but you can try and remember for the next time; so you make a point of asking what the name of that tune was.

From: GUEST Date: 30-May-02 - 07:12 AM
M Ted That is the essence of the problem. It doesn't matter if a MELODY finishes on any note. It is only when you want to add harmony that you don't get the final cadence to complete the accomaniment, and it sounds unfinished.

From: Marion Date: 30-May-02 - 09:32 AM
Here's Part 2; I've written more to you there M.Ted.
Who'd have thought from the initial question that this would turn into more than 100 posts of musical discussion?
Marion

Part 1: WHAT KEY AM I IN
Part 2: What key am I in, part 2

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(Joe Clone may delete this thread, if it's just excess.)

John