Strathspey Ornamentation and Variation
I’ve been digging into strathspeys a bit more recently, and I have been wondering how fixed the placement of the scotch snaps should be within a tune. From what I’ve heard, most players seem to stay fairly consistent with where they place the snaps as they repeat each part of a tune, but different players may place the snaps in different spots such that two recordings are unlikely to line up exactly. To make things even more confusing, often when I see strathspeys written out, the placement of the snaps is inconsistent between transcriptions and some don’t notate them at all. This had me wondering whether you might vary where the snaps are placed between repetitions as you might with more your ornamentation.
Does anyone with more experience on playing strathspeys have any insights into the traditional way of approaching this? I imagine having any number of players snapping differently in a session could quickly send things spiraling into chaos, not that I hear strathspeys too often at sessions to begin with. However, if you only had one person playing the melody, lining things up might be less of a hassle.