I was playing this tune, and I thought the 3rd part had an usual pattern. I was wondering if there was any “popular” way of playing it? I’ve tried a variety of bowings, and even though the rhythm is fine, it still seems as though something’s not quite right.
Does anyone have any particular way of bowing this part?
Thank you.
This was discussed just few weeks ago - https://thesession.org/discussions/40561#comment816445
Jim may have a solution if you send him a message.
Hi Anne,
I bow it as marked here, with the accents on the ascending notes.
You probably also figured out that you need to have your 3rd finger double-stopping the A and the D, right at the start of bar #2.
So it’s basically [DUD] [UDU] for the 1st 5 groups of notes, then smoothed out on groups 6 + 7 to give it a good flow.
http://worldfiddlemusic.com/guest/troys-wedding-3.JPG
If I’m honest, I’ve always bottled out and switched to mandolin for this tune. But I’ve just been playing around with that 3rd part (the first two bars of it - the rest is nothing out of the ordinary). I have found the most effective way to bring out the offbeat accents to be to slur into the accented notes.
Having just learned here http://www.lesession.co.uk/abc/abc_notation_part2.htm#fiddle how to notate bow marks in abc*, this is what I have come up with:
vAua(va B)(uac) | va(uad) (vae)a |
I must emphasise, however, that this comes from the perspective of someone that principally plays Irish music (and someone untutored in any form of fiddle/violin playing). A fiddler with a Scottish music background might approach it very differently.
*N.B. In the tutorial linked to above, the up- and downbow symbols are the wrong way round. So, ‘u’ preceding the note represents a *down*bow whilst ‘v’ represents an *up*bow. In case you don’t know, bracketed notes represent a slurred passage.
Ha! We Cross posted, Jim. Q.E.D.
Here’s the classic Ossian version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUr4nVUSP1E
I first heard it/them live in 1985. Blew me away. Within a year, I had started to learn the pipes. The third part in particular is magical under the fingers.
Ossian were a great band. It’s hard to hear what the fiddle is doing there, though.
“The third part in particular is magical under the fingers.”
Yes - it’s a (Highland) piper’s tune if ever there was one. That contrast between the offbeat accents on the ascending notes and the high A pedal note is what I hope to capture with the bow.
I’ve managed to get my version of the 3rd part, with bow markings, into online image form, which should be a bit easier to decipher than the abc: https://s15.postimg.org/4irffqahn/Troy_s_Wedding_pt3.png
It could be way off the mark in the view of most fiddlers and I am very much open to criticism. But it is very interesting for me to analyse my own bowing - I am only just beginning to be able to do so after 12 years of playing the fiddle.
Hi CMO - [vAua(va B)(uac) | va(uad) (vae)a |]
I thought it was someone trying to type out a quadratic equation after 9 Glenmorangies, when they couldn’t find the ‘+’ signs 🙂
The real notation is better! I tried your bowing, and it works OK. The only thing I’d say is that when I hear it on pipes, the accented notes come out very well, and I hear that linear scale A-B-C#-D-E-F-G quite clearly. That’s why I play it the way I do, as it reflects the accents, whereas yours doesn’t do that so much (because of the slurring). Just my view, though.
I have an alternative way of playing it too - I just play the ascending notes along with a droned open E - and that gives you the freedom of accenting those notes cleanly by means of syncopated bowing.
I know you’ve been around here for a while - were you ever in piper Erik Faithfull’s ‘circle’? I played with him in a band in the mid-90s. (Irish pipes, I meant to say). He’s in Hampshire.
Different strokes for different folks, I suppose 😉 . I actually find that slurring into the note, then immediately following it with a bow change, gives it a very strong accent - rather like tonguing to accent the preceding note on the whistle (I note here that I played the whistle before the fiddle). Perhaps it works for me by virtue of the fact that my bow changes are not very smooth, so they cut the preceding note short.
Admittedly, I have a lazy approach to bowing - I don’t like too many bow changes, so I slur wherever I can.
I realise also that my fingering comes into play in accenting those notes - I release each finger from the string very quickly after playing the note (like playing a staccato note on the piano - the first instrument I played).
[* I actually find that slurring into the note, then immediately following it with a bow change, gives it a very strong accent*]
I totally get that. I read your notation literally, but yes, if there was an accent mark on the note, then it would be quite clear. Very interesting stuff !
FWIW, having played the standard pipe setting(s) for this tune for 30 years, I find the version on the Session to have a few errors/odd passages. I’d advise any fiddler not to take the Session version as definitive.
I remember in 1985, and again in 1987, enjoying watching John Martin’s (fiddler for Ossian) forearm and elbow make the quick swings necessary to cross strings on the third part. He and Iain MacDonald were amazingly tight.
Highland pipers vary in how they play that 3rd part. I can’t recall seeing the original music, so I don’t know what the original is.
It sometimes happens that the actual composer of a Highland pipe tune doesn’t notate his composition accurately, so two versions are heard 1) from people who learned it by ear from the composer and 2) from people who learned it from the sheet music. This especially happens with tunes that have syncopation.
From what I recall at the time, the “Battlefield Band” were playing this before “Ossian” - the version in the video below was the original “setting” - starts at 2.18. I also know this because we had a piper from Canada studying in Aberdeen who was the first person I heard playing it, I would think in the late 1970s. He had learned it when it was a very new tune, and this would have been several years before it became more widely known, and recorded by Scottish folk bands.
https://youtu.be/2fb18jpvfv0
I hadn’t heard the “updated” third part at all until I met Peter Phelan at the Willie Clancy Week maybe around 20 years after the “Battlefield Band” and “Ossian” recordings, and have no idea as to its’ origins.
And here’s Capercaille in 1984:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBhFHPRb_p0
Seems like it was all the rage in the mid-80s among the Scottish folks bands.
To Jim Dorans, Thanks so much - your advice is so helpful!
Happy to help!
Here’s a pretty good rendition on fiddle, although I find the setting a little off in places:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcb7rKeWnQc
That pesky variation in the 3rd part is called a ‘hemiola’ and is playing one tempo against another. It’s found is some other jigs. Great fun after you get the hang of it. Take a deep breath and go for it.
Sylvia Miskoe, Concord NH USA
"That pesky variation in the 3rd part is called a ‘hemiola’ and is playing one tempo against another. It’s found is some other jigs. Great fun after you get the hang of it. Take a deep breath and go for it.
Sylvia Miskoe, Concord NH USA’
Sylvia - I wouldn’t expect you to remember, but I’m pretty sure you and I met at Loon Mtn. way back in the early 90s. I hung out with Viveka, Susie Petrov and others. That was in my pre-fiddle bellows piping days.
It’s a hemiola but the tempo remains the same, what happens is it slips into a different meter and rhythm , the 6 x1/8 notes of a 6/8 jig (compound 2/4 )become the 6 x1/8 th notes of a 3/4 meter
So : 1+a 2+a | 1+a 2+a | 1+2+3+ |
Cracking tune anyhow as is gaelforce wind the other tune often played with troys wedding.
Cheers
