This started off as a attempt at writing something that was ‘trad’ in a North European Atlantic Archipelago style. https://soundcloud.com/yhaal-house/feeling-better-the-two-bob-bits-yhaal-house-feb-2022
You can hear what happened!
Sounds quite daggy (I think the term is). It might go down well as a drinking song with steins clacking together on the long F# note at the end of the line. A catchy wee number.
It sounds somehow a bit more continental European than North Atlantic Archipelagic (I’m thinking Bavarian accordion) – but not quite like anything I’ve heard. Some of the harmony would not be out of place in one of Brian Wilson’s more ambitious endeavours – so I suppose that makes it a bit Pacific.
The main peril of writing tunes, and I have done this a number of times, is that sometimes your mind barfs back tunes you heard long ago and have forgotten in whole or in part.
I don’t think TunePal works anymore, but it would be worth testing your newly imagined tune first. A local musician, the late Jimmy Borsdorf, used to joke "Here’s a Bill Monroe tune that I wrote…"
North European Atlantic Archipelago: would that be the Faeroes, Iceland and Spitzbergen?
@Borderer – They hardly consitute an archipelago, being closer, repectively, to Scotland, Greenland and Norway than to one another. Might as well call The Blaskets, Madeira and Cape Verde an archipelago.
Sorry, I wasn’t being entirely serious. I was just a wee bit put out by the odd description that was evidently supposed to mean Britain, Ireland, etc 🙂
Why would anyone attempt to write a traditional tune? You can only compose what you’re ready to express. Leave it to the players to run it through the mangle; to decompose it and play ‘with’ it. I’m thrilled to see you’re using SoundCloud, YhaalHouse. YouTube posts (not just yours, it’s most all of it to me) aren’t about the audio. The ‘tube’ just distracts me.
But now you’re on SoundCloud I can admit this ~ https://soundcloud.com/yhaal-house/fora-that-remix-1 is brilliant! More of this. Sure it’s an arrangement & not a ‘new’ tune. But that’s what composition is in traditional tune music. A bit (lots) of the old, some bits of yourself, a willingness to give a tune over to whoever is playing it.
Again, why would anyone attempt to ‘compose a traditional tune?’
AB, someone might attempt to compose a traditional tune for the same reason as they might attempt to compose a baroque minuet or an Elizabethan sonnet - to gain a greater understanding of the form and style and possibly for pure enjoyment.
I think what is meant is "compose a tune in a traditional style", which then leads on to the question, "whose tradition ?".
Repeating here what’s been said many times before: if no one ever composed tunes in the traditional style there would be no traditional tunes at all. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of newly composed traditional-style tunes because there are so many great ones already and so little time to learn them. But that’s on me, the way I prioritize the hours I have in a day. We should recognize that new tunes are one of the things that keeps the tradition alive. True, 99.9% of new tunes will be forgotten. But oh that .01%.
Well that was a bit of fun, YH! Enjoyed it, though I can’t say that it reminds me of any particular tradition! Slightly reminiscent of Russ Conway’s “Side Saddle”…..
Russ Conway! That’s the best reference for my work I’ve heard! Blessèd be!
I’m not making a habit of this but late last nite I attempted a jig by way as another example of above: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/AgKe56noy7Eb93zw5
Sounds a bit Scottish perhaps at first until it goes a bit Trout Mask Replica and whole tone and orchestral but traditionalist in form (sort of)! And an English ceilidh ending. Sadly no direct or conscious Russ Conway influence.
"I think what is meant is "compose a tune in a traditional style", which then leads on to the question, "whose tradition ?"."
Cheers, Kenny! Which is exactly why I keep coming back to the Mustard Discussions after all these years.
;)
Just as well I didn’t say Mrs Mills then, Yhaal House! I was once compared to her when I turned up in a glittery sequinned dress to play piano for one of our folk concerts: not a flattering comparison!
Russ Conway, Mrs Mills, Winifred Atwell, Liberace: piano stars of the fifties were a mixed bunch!
Even more mixed in the seventies. And what about the whistle player? 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTVuBcrD8ic
Lt Pigeon! Pre TwoTone Coventry pop! What is the name of that tune he’s quoting on the whistle?
Nice one Yhaal. Very catchy. I like the tubular bells. Very Oldfield. Not sure if it is within the traditional style of the indigenous populations of these North-West European Celto-Romano-Germanic-Norse-Norman Isles, but an outing at a session is the only way to tell for sure. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Or, as Marjorie Taylor Greene might say, The proof of the Gazpacho police is in the eating…or beating….
That’s a grand jig, Yaal; particularly the B part - a true jig macabre. I love how the B dominates and eventually pushes out the A part when it tries to make a comeback.
