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boxbow - Posted - 02/06/2014: 09:14:15
In Playing Advice the subject of quarter tones came up. What makes them sound right? Is their appeal that they sound wrong? Maybe this is part of a much larger topic, but I don't really know how thin to slice it. I'm wondering if that's why some slides seem so obvious to insert into a musical phrase. They will contain the blue note, but within the context of a slide, which provides both tension and release, and not just tension.
Is it Nature or Nurture?
If we all play one at the same time, will migrating birds fly North in the Fall?
Will it help me interpret the messages space aliens are sending me through my fillings?
To say it sounds "right" implies both right and wrong, which muddles the context of this issue. Is there an objective description of what's going on? In the other thread, fiddlepogo posted an impressive list of notes between G and G#. I fear that there is no tidy answer, just going by syllable count, alone.
ChickenMan - Posted - 02/06/2014: 09:49:41
Quarter tones rarely come up in Western music. Listen to some Middle Eastern music or Asian music. Those tones are 'foreign' to us because we are raised on fretted instruments and piano style temperament.
hummyfan - Posted - 02/06/2014: 15:52:26
During the September 2011 J. P. Fraley Festival in Kentucky, fiddler Nikos Pappos played "HELL AND SCISSORS." Then, at the urging of another great Kentucky fiddler John Harrod, Nikos describes what a quarter tone is and why the old time fiddler's put such wild notes in their music. I've barely scraped off the masking tape markers on the fingerboard of my fiddle---so I'm not ready to tackle tunes with quarter notes. However, I will say, a correct quarter tone is one the fiddler can hit again and again as her or she plays through the tune. Listen to the attached audio clip of Nikos playing that tune.
Sue B. - Posted - 02/06/2014: 17:52:28
Well, ChickenMan, not exactly. Blues notes,slides that stop a little north or south, Cajun as played by the famous Balfas, and likely other examples, use sounds that are in between the notes of the tempered scale. We won't even go into that topic, it's been done here before. Jay Ungar told us in a class at Eastman that if you listen to very early recordings, you will hear that lots of scale-variants were being used by fiddle players, but that one unintended consequence of different regional and pocket musics being spread around was a homogenizing of "correct" intonation.
boxbow - Posted - 02/07/2014: 07:36:39
That's consistent with what I thought, but it adds some context. Thanks.
groundhogpeggy - Posted - 02/07/2014: 07:55:14
Here's how I see it, for whatever it's worth. To me, at least on the fiddle the amateur novice way I play, dividing tunes into notes ain't what gets me going. Further subdividing into quarter tones is even worse...the concepts don't really work with me and the fiddle. Why I picked the thing up when I did, was really due mire to the human voice, rather than noting instruments. In probably most of KY when I was growing up in the early 50s, ballad singing was still heard a lot, by old timers long since gone. When I heard ballads, they were sung loosely, I mean, not note-for-note, but more like a dog howls ( lol...I meant that in a good way!)... A running, dripping bunch of slipping around notes, between notes, inflections, etc. ballads and hymns could be sung very dramatically by good singers who were in there 90s when I was a small child. Now, when I heard fiddling by this same generation...basically my great great grandparents generation, I didn't hear much difference in my parts of ky from the ballad or hymn singing. Now, when these old timers spoke, again...they had the same melodically, inflection-filled, dramatic and musical talking style as their singing and fiddling, and it grew up thinking it was all about the same...for that generation. In my parts of ky, or maybe just in my life...the great great grandparents died off, and the great grandparents generation were more watered down, affected by the early encroachings of media, self-awareness, etc. this increased with each generation and a lot of us baby boomers got away from all the old fashioned stuff line that because we were the aware, with it, educated jet set. At some point, though, the richness of these generations unaffected by media, music industry, consumerism, self-awareness, etc., became apparent to me, and of course I felt sorry for all I had let slip by unnoticed, unlearned from the richness of their existence, their ways with living in and with nature, their acceptance of raw life their musical expression, etc. in other words, I'd say, if you wanna find what notes are hiding there on that fiddle fingerboard, don't listen to Tommy Jarrels fiddling that much...listen to his talking. Try to fiddle like you hear him talk. Or any other old timer mountaineers you can hear tell a story...their speech sums up old time fiddling, in my mind. Of course, I could be wrong. I certainly ain't no expert fiddler, can't sing a ballad without sounding educated, and probably ll never get that good, but it is the feeling that drives my attempt at fiddling.
Lee Mysliwiec - Posted - 02/07/2014: 10:11:22
When I play the tune, "Hawk Got The Chicken" I try to make a 'squawk' sound in the first part and a scratchy "pleading' sound in the third part.. It takes something near to a quarter note to make the sound but I don't think of them so much as notes but rather a means to an end..It is the sound I am listening for so the actual effect may be even more or less than a quarter note... that is, just a little 'off' note .. Understand?
groundhogpeggy - Posted - 02/07/2014: 13:03:33
I understand the squawking part...lol. No, really, it does make sense...don't know the tune though.
