Musical questions and answers thread

[Serial_Apologist]

However, (largely) US based jazz musicians seem to have based some of their work on modes since the 1960s.

Jazz musicians everywhere Dave, not just in the US. In many countries outwith "the diaspora" modal jazz meshed with their own modally-based folk traditions, including ours - which is part of an explanation for how come some of our best-known jazz musicians manage to write materials and use improvising "vernaculars" that simultaneously reflect influences from American jazz, flowing from that key Miles Davis recording "A Kind of Blue" of 1959, and from the turn of the 20th century "English pastoral school". This is a bigger question than belongs in this thread, but composers 50 or 60 years apart on two sides of the Atlantic arrived at similar understandings regarding how to harmonise modally. And that went for rock musicians too, one only has to bring The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" to mind to hear those Vaughan Williamsy harmonic progressions replicated - though I doubt whether that would have been its selling point at the time! And later Pink Floyd would be full of those same quasi-parallel harmonic shifts that fall so naturally under guitarists' fingers. The influences of Debussy and Ravel can't be overlooked - the thickening out of mediaeval "organum" or "faux bourdon" strings of parallel fourths and fifths into triads and added-note chords either - whether as regards American jazz post 1955 (both Evanses, Bill and Gil, spoke frequently of being influenced by French Impressionism) or its British cousin. In a way these things helped "legitimize" developments in jazz outside America, as has been pointed out.

[Serial_Apologist]

On the other hand, and this might back-up Dave's point, intervals are more easily visualised on the guitar fretboard than they are, IMO, on the piano. It's for this reason that transposing to what other instrumentalists would consider an obscure key can be easy on the guitar since it might just involve shifting things up a fret.

Also, not every mode avoids the pesky black keys - I thought we'd established that earlier?

That's looking at it from the keyboard perspective, I suppose. As I understand them, all the old church modes can be produced on the white notes of the keyboard; the only way the black keys would be brought in would be by transcribing them up or down a semitone.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Jazz musicians everywhere Dave, not just in the US. In many countries outwith "the diaspora" modal jazz meshed with their own modally-based folk traditions, including ours - which is part of an explanation for how come some of our best-known jazz musicians manage to write materials and use improvising "vernaculars" that simultaneously reflect influences from American jazz, flowing from that key Miles Davis recording "A Kind of Blue" of 1959 and from the turn of the 20th century "English pastoral school". This is a bigger question than belongs in this thread, but composers 50 or 60 years apart on two sides of the Atlantic arrived at similar understandings regarding how to harmonise modally. And that went for rock musicians too, one only has to bring The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" to hear those Vaughan Williamsy harmonic progressions replicated - though I doubt whether that would have been its selling point at the time! And later Pink Floyd would be full of those same quasi-parallel harmonic shifts that fall so naturally under guitarists' fingers. The influences of Debussy and Ravel can't be overlooked, either, whether as regards American jazz post 1955 (both Evanses, Bill and Gil, spoke frequently of being influenced by French Impressionism) or its British cousin. In a way these things helped "legitimize" developments in jazz outside America, as has been pointed out.

All good points - trying to disentangle the complex influences of folk music , adoption of modes by classical composers like RVW from their study of folk and Tudor Church music, how all that fed into rock And jazz in the sixties would be a Herculean task. I think Pete Townsend lists Holst as a big influence - WHO Songs are full of modal chord progressions for example.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Nail, squarely on head, struck.

Is that the Yoda mode?

[jayne lee wilson]

Is that the Yoda mode?

The Mandalorian series 2 ep 1 just released today!

[Pabmusic]

I was thinking over some of the comments about modes when I remembered two things - Thomas Hardy's small collection of the songs he heard around him as a boy – Country Songs of 1820 onward: killed by the Comic Songs of the Music Hall. In later life he remembered a harvest supper he had attended as a 7-year-old :

… among the last at which the old traditional ballads were sung, the railway having been extended to Dorchester just then, and the orally transmitted ditties of centuries being slain at a stroke by the London comic songs that were introduced.

Then there's A. L. Lloyd's comment in the introduction to The Penguin Book of English Folk-Song, in which he recalled:

An old Suffolk labourer with a fine folk-song repertory and a delicate, rather gnat-like, voice, [who] once remarked, “I used to be reckoned a good singer until these-here tunes came in.”

Both seem to consider the folk songs to be "natural" and contrasted with the "music hall" or "these tunes".

[gurnemanz]

I was thinking over some of the comments about modes when I remembered two things - Thomas Hardy's small collection of the songs he heard around him as a boy – Country Songs of 1820 onward: killed by the Comic Songs of the Music Hall. In later life he remembered a harvest supper he had attended as a 7-year-old :

… among the last at which the old traditional ballads were sung, the railway having been extended to Dorchester just then, and the orally transmitted ditties of centuries being slain at a stroke by the London comic songs that were introduced.

Then there's A. L. Lloyd's comment in the introduction to The Penguin Book of English Folk-Song, in which he recalled:

An old Suffolk labourer with a fine folk-song repertory and a delicate, rather gnat-like, voice, [who] once remarked, “I used to be reckoned a good singer until these-here tunes came in.”

Both seem to consider the folk songs to be "natural" and contrasted with the "music hall" or "these tunes".

As a person not trained in music theory (or practice to any great extent), modes were shrouded in mystery to me until I read A. L. Lloyd's marvellous book in the 70s. I gained such a lot of insights from it.

(I assume it's the same book. Mine is from Paladin and title is Folk Song in England,)

[Ein Heldenleben]

I was thinking over some of the comments about modes when I remembered two things - Thomas Hardy's small collection of the songs he heard around him as a boy – Country Songs of 1820 onward: killed by the Comic Songs of the Music Hall. In later life he remembered a harvest supper he had attended as a 7-year-old :

… among the last at which the old traditional ballads were sung, the railway having been extended to Dorchester just then, and the orally transmitted ditties of centuries being slain at a stroke by the London comic songs that were introduced.

Then there's A. L. Lloyd's comment in the introduction to The Penguin Book of English Folk-Song, in which he recalled:

An old Suffolk labourer with a fine folk-song repertory and a delicate, rather gnat-like, voice, [who] once remarked, “I used to be reckoned a good singer until these-here tunes came in.”

Both seem to consider the folk songs to be "natural" and contrasted with the "music hall" or "these tunes".

Hardy was very good on how the “modern” music had supplanted the traditional wasn’t he ? - In Under The Greenwood Tree how the folk band of musicians playing and singing traditional carols - no doubt many of them modal - are replaced by the modern organ on the orders of the Vicar . It shows that choir/ vicar musical disputes are nothing new ..

[Pabmusic]

... (I assume it's the same book. Mine is from Paladin and title is Folk Song in England,)

Actually, no. I was quoting from the intro to the Penguin Book of English Folk-Song, from 1959, by RVW & Lloyd. But you are right about Lloyd's magnum opus - which sits on a shelf behind me even now (the Paladin book that I bought in about 1972).

[gurnemanz]

Actually, no. I was quoting from the intro to the Penguin Book of English Folk-Song, from 1959, by RVW & Lloyd. But you are right about Lloyd's magnum opus - which sits on a shelf behind me even now (the Paladin book that I bought in about 1972).

Thanks for info.

[Joseph K]

Bumped for Pulcinella.

[Pulcinella]

Bumped for Pulcinella.

A notation question that I hope has a simple solution.

I've been sent a draft of part of a commission, and one bar struck me as rather oddly notated.
We're in 4/4, but there are 6 crotchets, divided into two sets of triplets (correctly configured with the appropriate 3s in the square braces, if that's the right word, over each set).
The problem is the underlay of the words, which in this case are 'live in one another'.
The triplet layout suggests a stress (even if slight) so that it becomes live in one a-no-ther, whereas it should surely be live in one a-no-ther.
So ideally should there be three sets of duplets (marked how, just slurred?) and an overall 6 in a square brace?
The composer has suggested using tenuto markings on the stressed syllables.

Thanks in advance.
(I hope that our commissioned composer is not on the forum, or if he is that he doesn't take this query as a criticism!)

[ahinton]

A notation question that I hope has a simple solution.

I've been sent a draft of part of a commission, and one bar struck me as rather oddly notated.
We're in 4/4, but there are 6 crotchets, divided into two sets of triplets (correctly configured with the appropriate 3s in the square braces, if that's the right word, over each set).
The problem is the underlay of the words, which in this case are 'live in one another'.
The triplet layout suggests a stress (even if slight) so that it becomes live in one a-no-ther, whereas it should surely be live in one a-no-ther.
So ideally should there be three sets of duplets (marked how, just slurred?) and an overall 6 in a square brace?
The composer has suggested used tenuto markings on the stressed syllables.

Thanks in advance.
(I hope that our commissioned composer is not on the forum, or if he is that he doesn't take this query as a criticism!)

I'd be wary of concluding that the triplet format necessarily implies the stresses that you mention but the addition of tenuto marks as you suggest does seem to me to be a good idea to try to avoid the risk of any possible misunderstanding...

[RichardB]

So ideally should there be three sets of duplets (marked how, just slurred?) and an overall 6 in a square brace?

That was what I immediately thought, BUT on the other hand it might give people the impression that the rhythm is more complicated and harder to get right than it actually is, especially with non-professional performers, assuming that's the case. So my second thought was: either (a) leave it as it is - English speakers will in any case "correct" the stress without even thinking about it - or (b) change it to one big triplet (3 minims in the time of two rather than twice 3 crotchets in the time of two) which captures what presumably is the intended rhythm without the addition of tenuto marks (which can also be interpreted in different ways).

In other words there might not be a simple solution! - but the problem isn't so difficult that it can't be quickly solved in rehearsal.

[ahinton]

leave it as it is - English speakers will in any case "correct" the stress without even thinking about it

That makes sense and my endorsement of the addition of tenuto marks suggestion is merely a "belt and braces" solution in cases where the singers might not be English speakers.