Tune Req: Man's life a vapour

Subject: Tune Req: Man's life a vapour
From: Uke
Date: 24 May 12 - 10:03 PM

Text found in an old school song book. Possibly a round to a well-known tune (?). Any help much appreciated:

Man's life a vapour, full of woes,
He cuts a caper, down he goes,
Down he, down he, down he, down he, down he goes.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Man's life a vapour
From: GUEST
Date: 25 May 12 - 03:01 PM

Sorry.
If you understand ABCs, it would look like this:
G2 G>A B2G2|A2 F2 G4|B2 B>c d2 B2|c2 A2 B4|d>c B>A G>F E>D|E2 F2 G4||

Just plug that into an ABC reader.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Man's life a vapour
From: Joe_F
Date: 25 May 12 - 06:16 PM

In case you, like me, don't know ABC, here it is in solfa (scale is TdrmfsltD; dots mean continuation for half a beat):

d.rdT.d.r.T.d...
m.fmr.m.f.r.m...
Dtlsfmrds.s.d...

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Man's life a vapour
From: Artful Codger
Date: 27 May 12 - 01:13 PM

PEDANT ALERT:
In actual tonic sol-fa, periods are part of a punctuation hierarchy that marks measures and time divisions within measures. Note durations are given indirectly, in reference to the measure divisions. When a note crosses an even division (as in the case of dotted or tied notes), the continuation is marked by a hyphen after the division marker. The sol-fa duration notation given by Joe (where periods act as length extenders) is an effective and not uncommon convention, but is non-standard and incapable of handling more complex timings (like the dotted rhythm in GUEST's tune).

With the division hierarchy running "| : . ," the standard sol-fa of GUEST's tune (translating from the ABC) would run something like this:

{|d.d,-r:m.d|r.T:d||
|m.m,-f:s.m|f.r:m||
|s,-f.m,-r:d,-T.L,-S|L.T:d|}

And Joe's tune would be written like this:

{|d.rd:T.d|r.T:d||
|m.fm:r.m|f.r:m||
|Dt.ls:fm.rd|s.s:d||

You can see that these are substantially different variants.


As for the ABC, an ABC reader requires additional header lines (at a minimum, to denote tune number, title, meter and key). So to plug it into a program such as the folkinfo.org online ABC Converter, you'd need something more like this:

GUEST's variant:
X:1
T:Man's life a vapour
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:G
G2 G>A B2G2|A2 F2 G4|B2 B>c d2 B2|c2 A2 B4|d>c B>A G>F E>D|E2 F2 G4||

Joe's variant:
X:2
T:Man's life a vapour
M:4/4
L:1/4
K:G
G A/G/ F G|A F G2|B c/B/ A B|c A B2|g/f/ e/d/ c/B/ A/G/|d d G2||

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Man's life a vapour
From: Joe_F
Date: 27 May 12 - 08:59 PM

I will concede that my notation is nonstandard (I know nothing about the standard one), but not that it is incapable of handling dotted rhythm. To do so, I would merely make the quantum of duration a quarter of a beat:

d...d..rm...d...r...T...d.......
m...m..fs...m...f...r...m.......
etc.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Man's life a vapour
From: Artful Codger
Date: 29 May 12 - 10:07 PM

Perhaps I should have qualified: "incapable without making people go blind counting periods." ;-}   And then there are triplets (quintuplets, etc.). But my aim is not to pick holes in your chosen system--we're happy that you shared, using whatever system you knew of or could devise, and folks like me can translate to more standard formats when needed.

My point really is that "tonic sol-fa" is not a generic family of representational systems (like sol-fa or solfeggio) but a specific system with well-defined conventions. If you use that particular name you should learn and follow its conventions, to avoid confusing others. Otherwise, all's fair.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Man's life a vapour
From: Barbara
Date: 29 May 12 - 10:58 PM

I know it to Guest's tune and it's a round I learned at camp.
Blessings,
Barbara