What key am I in, part 2

Subject: What key am I in, part 2
From: Marion
Date: 30 May 02 - 09:30 AM

Continuing from part 1, which I'll link to in the next post.

M.Ted, I was hoping that somebody would say something like this, but with the variables filled in:

"Blues virtually always use the X minor scale. With jazz, the Y minor scale is most common, but there's a significant minority in Z minors. Both Celtic and American fiddle tunes are usually in XX minor, but Celtic tunes are more likely than American to also use YY minor. Gospel and bluegrass are usually in ZZ minor..."

But since nobody has said that, and since Greensleeves and Star of the County Down (two tunes I would have put in the same category) use different kinds of minor scales, I suspect that no such generalizations are possible.

This is why I wanted to know: I figure that if it's possible to make an educated guess about what kind of minor a song is in, just from its genre or national origin, than it would be easier to predict what chords would harmonize it or what scale to base a solo on. Knowing the rules of thumb - if they exist - would be more practical than looking at sheet music or picking out the melody to each individual song, for the purposes of playing along with others.

Thanks for your help,

Marion

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: Marion
Date: 30 May 02 - 09:34 AM

Part 1 of What Key Am I In?

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: greg stephens
Date: 30 May 02 - 10:43 AM

Haven't been able to read last 60 postings, so I'm coming at marion's question fresh. As reagards minor key tunes, some generaliations are possible, for fiddle tunes at least(songs tunes are different). I am referring to the areas where I have done research, English, Scottish and Irish tunes.(I dont use the term Celtic in this context, it contains certain possible historic assumptions which may be misleading or just plain wrong). There are no hard and fast rules, but you won't go far wrong if you say: Bminor tunes are Aeolian. Eminor tunes are mixed, with a preponderance of Dorian tunes, but a fair amount of Dorian/Aeolian(variable 6th) or Aeolian. Tunes in Aminor are nearly all Dorian. The differencesbetween the modes is not huge( the 6th of the scale is only very rarely emphasised on the beat) so different musicians may have the same tune in different modes, and the versions could be played together without too much clash. Tunes with a sharp 7th(eg the song version of Greensleeves) are fairly rare in the fiddle tradition, which interelates with pipes and whistles rather than keyboards and lutes (where those sort of harmonic implications are easier to cope with). So country fiddlers playing Greensleeves would play a minor seventh throughout, with a sharp 6th,( in Aminor). Song tunes are another thing, of course.A singer can sing in Aminor or Bminor with equal ease, depending on voice range.So these sort of differnces cant arise.

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 May 02 - 12:52 PM

Part 1, the last 45 posts, have been re-posted in a separate thread at What Key? The Middle Part.

Consider that one "read only," and post new stuff here, of course.

I also had several timeouts before I was able to load the whole thread for Part 1. I hope I got enough of it to fill in the gaps - without making it hard to load.

John

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 May 02 - 12:55 PM

Clicky failure: try What Key: The Middle Part

John

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: M.Ted
Date: 30 May 02 - 02:58 PM

You aren't going to get the kind of answer you want, Marion, because it isn't that simple--There are many genres of music, and each use a fair number of scales--it is possible to make a list that each of the genres uses, but there would always be exceptions--And, even if you could make the generalizations, they wouldn't do you as much good as you might think, because, depending on the genre, knowing the type of mode or scale that is used won't automatically tell you which chords to use, and where to use them.

Greg makes two very important points, first, that there is not much difference between some of the modes(making it very difficult to determine which is which by ear) and that different musicians may play the same melody in different modes(so chords that would work for one version might not work for another)--and these lead to an important third point, and that many types of traditional music were not traditionally played with a chordal accompaniment--

Chordal accompaniments, at least of the kind that we are used to(with tonic and dominant harmonies, and the circle of fifths/fourths) come from the composed, classical music that was written by Western composers in what is called "The Era of Common Practice" which ran from the fifteen or sixteen hundreds until around nineteen hundred--the composed melodies that we know(including classical melodies, marches, and popular music) were written with the rules for creating chordal accompaniments in mind(and actually were usually written with chordal accompaniments) but traditional melodies were not(often, in traditional/folk/ethnic music traditions, melodies were played by melody instruments in unison, in some cases accompanied by drone instruments), and often have elements that make creation of a chord arrangement difficult, especially by ear and on the spot--

All of this is a round-about way of saying that, while it may be possible to lay out some rules for creating chordal accompaniments, it is a would be a very advanced aural/theoretical skill for an individual to be able to sit in with anyone. playing any sort of music, and just come up with a viable chord arrangement--

Best to pick a genre, and work out and learn the chords to the most common tunes--once you've got a couple of sets worth of tunes down cold, you'll be able to follow tunes in the same genre that are unfamiliar--that's pretty much what most other musicians do--

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 May 02 - 03:06 PM

Hopefully not breaking the thread here - but I was curious about a post in part 1 by 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....

I had thought Quick Basic (and probably VBasic) was readily portable to Mac. Since at least QBASIC was, or could be, output as an interpreted language, a Mac version of VBRun should be all that's required.

After a quick look at Mickey$oft websites, I was probably wrong, athough I found:

"REALbasic integration REALbasic is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for creating your own applications. It has a fully integrated visual development and debugging environment. To help you migrate from Visual Basic to REALbasic, you can copy and paste BASIC code from the Visual Basic editor to the REALbasic editor. A trial version of REALbasic is located in the Value Pack."

VB, QB, and even "REALbasic," do not appear to be available as separate packages for Mac, but how do you copy and paste "from the VB editor" if it's not on the (Mac) machine? Is there a low-watt VB editor in Mac Office like the one in Windows Office?

In other words, Mickey won't give you any straight answers, but the possibility exists that the conversion might not be a "major task" if you can find someone who is running a Mac (the above is from OfficeX - for Mac SysX machines) - who can be trusted to screw with your code or to help you through doing it.

I know that in the days of "plain vanilla" DOS BASIC, there were lots of "breakages" when you tried to run IBM's BASIC in Mickey's GW-BASIC, so it was a matter of "luck" whether things went well or turned to crap when you ported something - but it might be worth holding a little hope in hand...???

John

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 May 02 - 03:22 PM

Sorcha made a stab at a link to MODES FOR MUDCATTERS: A SYNTHESIS PRIMER (From: Sorcha Date: 19-May-02 - 09:49 AM) but got her priorities all disarrayed

In the words my stupid ancestor heard so very often that they were passed down in family tradition - "Its Rape and Plunder BEFORE kill and burn."

I believe the person being referred has found the thread, but the discussion has moved to modes, and - while I'm still mystified - I found this explanation helpful. Others may wish to take a look

John

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: M.Ted
Date: 30 May 02 - 04:21 PM

What mystifies you John?

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 May 02 - 04:29 PM

M.Ted -

No problem, really - except that being paper trained at an early age a key signature and melody seem enough for what I my purposes.

If I were to try to study older forms of music, I'd probably make the effort, but the "technical" distinctions of modality are not, in my experience, of great importance in the kinds of music I usually play.

And - I seemed to have reached the CRS age where I have to concentrate on what I really need.

John

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: M.Ted
Date: 30 May 02 - 05:55 PM

Excellent point--not really a lot of point in learning about the old church modes--

As for jazz, they use the word "mode" simply to describe a scale that starts on a different step of a given key than the fundamental--they usually bang away on one chord (say a C9, in the key of G) and you play your "Dorian" scale by bouncing around phrenetically between the A and the D, filling in the rest of scale notes according to your whim, to break up the monotony--you may also pepper the music with any sort of random noises that you can squeeze out of you instrument without actually damaging it(if you damage the instrument, it becomes punk rock)--

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 May 02 - 01:33 AM

I'm afraid I'm probably something of a misfit in almost any session I might sit in with. Spoilt by m' early trainin'.

There is a lot of jazz that I enjoy listening to, but it's not something I care to play much. Somewhere in the early sixties I encountered something of a "sequence" of several well known performers, in live performances, who all seemed to subscribe to the "ifIplayawholelotofnotesreallyfastandruneverythingtogetherandignoretherestofthebandeverybodywillknowI'mthestar" theory. People who had no idea what they were hearing would applaud vigorously, because they had heard that some d...d fool had concocted an esoteric "explanation" that this guy "had a new theory" and was doing something noone else had ever done - (sort of like a psychologist's after-the-fact essay on the "motivations" of a serial killer?). 'Way to intellectual for me.

I played quite a bit of "swing" and "big band" era stuff in a small dance combo for a few years, and it probably "stuck" my musical development to some extent. I like a good melody - which of course puts a lot of the more recent "pop" stuff out of bounds. There is some good stuff with complex (chord?) structure but virtually no melody - and it can be fun to get into; but there's a whole lot of stuff that's just "one-note-loud" and a heavy-handed rhythm.

There's a surprising amount of old "country" - '30s & on stuff we used to call "hillbilly," that's really good for melodic/harmony play. By any rational definition, this is probably the "folk" music some of us should be collecting today. It's (sometimes) good music. It represents what a lot of people liked about a generation ago, and to a degree reflects the culture then. It's not being played much anymore. And some of it, at least, is worth remembering.
I think it's been noted that "old-time" traditional sessions (barn dance style?), like the swing bands, played "harmony," and played together. When someone takes a lead, the rest of the group "plays around" their lead. If someone picks up the melody, I'd maybe play a mando "alto" harmony line on one pass and a "high tenor" above it for the next. Nobody plays "chunk-chunk" chords, except maybe as a rhythm fill.

In this style of playing, knowing what the chord is just tells you "which sandbox you're playing in." You make up the game - and while it's considered good form to "lead" to the next chord - or else be "in the chord" at the change, it can be a lot of fun occasionally to "lead" the group off track (gently, of course) just to see if they'll follow you, and if they can get back. (Sometimes you have to lead them back too, sometimes you have to figure out what kind of hole they're leading you into - and how to back up the "come-out;" and of course if the rest of the group doesn't follow you, you've got to come back without making an issue of it.)

A distinctly different style seems to me to be disgustingly popular. The whole group plays the same song all together. Then everybody goes "chunk -chunk" while the banjo player gets to be the star - all by him/herself. Then everybody goes "chunk-chunk" while the mando player gets to be the star - all by him/herself. Then everybody goes "chunk-chunk" while the fiddle gets to be the star - all alone. Then everybody goes "chunk-chunk" while the guitar gets to be the star - all alone.

If you're gonna "chunk-chunk" you've gotta be "in" the chord, and not movin' around it.

Done by professionals with well rehearsed routines, this can be good music. Done in a session of amateurs, it's just B.-.O.-.R.-.I.-.N.-.G. (to me) - especially since most of the players will know only one or two tunes well enough to take their "flash" lead, and will insist on playing them at every session - exactly the same way, at the same speed, no variations.

Additonally, the guitar player will want to play his/her version that "leaves out" the notes that are hard to play on the guitar. The fiddler will want the version that includes his/her "double-stop-fancy" thing. & … &.… on it goes.

Even Bill Monroe said "everybody tries to play it too fast." And, especially if you listen closely to his later recordings, even Bill left out a few notes (changed the tunes) to keep "the drive" in.

I enjoy listening to a number of the "professional" Bluegrass performers and groups. I enjoy playing quite a few of the common tunes - but they're too pretty in trad style to be ruined by my attempts to "Bluegrass" them. (A few of the Bluegrass versions are quite nice, played at a speed appropriate to the group instead of "as fast as the guy who knows it best can.") I don't care much for sitting in with the majority of amateur Blue(gr)ass sessions in my area, and frequently find "drop-ins" at sessions who want to change them into BG fests more than a little annoying - because it happens a lot around here. I do know a couple of groups I'd gladly sit with, and do the "chunk-chunk," just because they play well and are good listenin' - but it's not my favorite style.

As to theory, my current need is better understanding of lead/transition chord variants. I have all the theory I need for this at hand - I just need (want) to sit down and "practice it into" my playing a little better.

All of this is a little off the (current) point, but maybe it will suggest a new angle - or some new points.

John

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: Marion
Date: 31 May 02 - 04:47 PM

Thanks M.Ted. That does answer my question.

As for "best to pick a genre", I've tried, but I can't.

Marion

PS I've tried to pick an instrument too, but I can't do that either.

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: M.Ted
Date: 31 May 02 - 05:13 PM

Well, you've got to start somewhere, at least if you're going to get anywhere--I hope you get to it, otherwise all these answers will have gone to waste;-)

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: GUEST,Marion
Date: 31 May 02 - 05:35 PM

No no, Ted, I've already started, but what I'm doing is working with several genres and three instruments at once. I know you'll say that I'd do better with some specialization, and I totally believe you. Sometimes I wish I did have only one instrument and a clearer idea of what I want to play with it. But I'm not willing or able to choose between them... and hey, versatility's a good thing, right?

Marion

Subject: RE: What key am I in, part 2
From: M.Ted
Date: 31 May 02 - 07:19 PM

As you like it, Marion--there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so--