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Author Topic: Pesky Modes  (Read 23182 times)

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Chris Ryall

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #60 on: July 26, 2013, 09:06:11 AM »

On the PC that has your ABC on it
Open a browser and type in the URL that is displayed on the iPad (in my case http://lester.local;55260 changes each time you use it)
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Robert's your father's brother.

thanks for the detail, Lester, but that's it complicated! I'm here in Brittany, my PC is 400 miles away, the ABC I fancy is on the iPad browser already, and it can copy (bizarrely only if I "quote" it) and paste.

The machinations you describe seem to put US presidential elections (or telling Liz she has a great grandson ;) ) to shame! Same actually applies if the PC is downstairs in my view?

Thought the uncle was called "Harry"?
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Anahata

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #61 on: July 26, 2013, 10:41:23 AM »

It was never intended to be read directly by human musicians, though some do.
I do  ;)

It's folks like you wot gives ABC a bad name  >:E
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Lester

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #62 on: July 26, 2013, 10:59:20 AM »

It was never intended to be read directly by human musicians, though some do.
I do  ;)

It's folks like you wot gives ABC a bad name  >:E

Sorry, I was mistaken, seems I referred to myself as a musician   ;)

Chris Ryall

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #63 on: July 26, 2013, 11:38:18 AM »

Pete, does Craic do simple copy/paste in ABC mode? That's sort of … all I need, and Tunebook bizarrely doesn't provide this "basic" facility. TIA Chris
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pikey

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #64 on: July 26, 2013, 12:45:34 PM »

I use my ear. It works well for tunes and modes.   ;)
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Lester

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #65 on: July 26, 2013, 12:55:06 PM »

Pete, does Craic do simple copy/paste in ABC mode? That's sort of … all I need, and Tunebook bizarrely doesn't provide this "basic" facility. TIA Chris

From the Tunebook website:

Finally, you can create new tunes by choosing "Add New Tune" from the main menu. This allows you to type or paste ABC. If you can get your ABC on the clipboard, say, from an email, you can paste it here, and Tunebook will add all the tunes it finds.

Nick Collis Bird

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #66 on: July 26, 2013, 01:48:46 PM »

I use my ear. It works well for tunes and modes.   ;)

That's actually true. You might not know what " mode"  but with an ear you can feel it and therefore reproduce it.
I'm not sure that pulling things apart just to diagnose them is a particularly good idea.
Maybe I've missed the point.  :-\
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penn

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #67 on: July 26, 2013, 01:59:27 PM »

I agree there are some "round the houses" aspects to Tunebook, but I'm a patient sort of chap.
To copy and paste an ABC I always do..
Copy from where you found it
Select All Tunes press + (or Edit/Add new tune depending on version) which makes a new tune, then press & hold your finger for a bit; ipad offers "Select All", then do "Paste".
But I usually get my tunes from i.e. the ABC Notation site via the "import tunes" thing in Manage.
Steve
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Chris Brimley

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #68 on: July 26, 2013, 06:03:57 PM »

I'd like to discuss the idea of 'pesky modes' a bit.  Although I would not claim to be at all knowledgeable in these matters, I think I basically understand the concept of modes, which I see as a way of classifying the intervals in an octave scale, and I can see practical benefits from understanding where a given piece of traditional music might fit into one (or more?) modes.

However my problem as a musical theory outsider is if people try to move from the descriptive to the prescriptive.  I find it far-fetched to imagine that folk music writers stuck to any rules other than their own ideas, so I feel that any attempt to predict from mode theory what other notes there 'ought' to be in the scale, or what chords a given tune 'should' be accompanied by, is bound to fail, and misses the point that the source is the only reference.

So for a tune like the (quite possibly mistaken, but to my mind very attractive) 'sharp-free' version of 'Nonsuch' that has been discussed here, shouldn't musical theorists acknowledge that they only have information regarding 6 notes, namely in this version C D E F G and A?  We don't have any accompaniment suggestions. This implies a note sequence of TTSTT - no more, and no less.  Well, that pattern appears twice in each of the 7 modern modes, which suggests to me that there are 14 different possible ways of describing that tune modally.  Any further inference as to what the other notes 'ought' to be will depend on which of the various options the listener's ears prefer - and this is a personal judgment, not a prescription.  I happen to like Chris R's ear that a B would fit better than a Bb, implying TTSTTT, and this cuts out 7 of the possible categorisations, but it still leaves seven others.

If ABC requires a definition of the mode, it may be requiring more information than the student has available, reflecting Theo's comment.

I remember particularly well my old university Sociology tutor's comment about the 'structuralist' approach then fashionable amongst many academics - "You can pigeon-hole human behaviour as much as you like into a complete set of categories, but you still won't have actually explained anything at all."

Maybe the ears still have it?
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Theo

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #69 on: July 26, 2013, 06:12:24 PM »

I completely disagree with you Chris.  :o  But only with the word "maybe" on the last line. ;)
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Pete Dunk

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #70 on: July 26, 2013, 06:14:50 PM »

Pete, does Craic do simple copy/paste in ABC mode? That's sort of … all I need, and Tunebook bizarrely doesn't provide this "basic" facility. TIA Chris

It does but it's no easier to use that the same facility in Tunebook explained above by Lester. I don't use the bizarre one shot internet link business to get abc files into Tunebook, I do it via iTunes. One the iPad has finished synching click on iPad at the top right of the screen then click Apps to look at which apps you have installed, beneath that list is second list showing apps that use documents. Select Tunebook then click ADD. Browse your documents and add abc files to the list, when you've finished click Synch at the bottom left. It's just the same for The Craic.

My problem with Tunebook is that I can't add any more new abc files after the first batch because when you look at it again all of the .abc files have disappeared to be replaced by a single file called tunedb.sql which of course is a database containing all of the abc info. I can add new abc files to the list but they don't get added to the database and the only way I've found to add something is to delete the App from the iPad, reinstall the App add all of the original abc files to the list plus any more I want to add and then synch it. What a PITA that is!

Tunebook keeps all of the abc files separate and you can choose to look at a single tunebook like Paul Hardy's Session Tune Book from the list of books. The Craic will tell you which book a particular tune comes from but it lumps them all together in one big list for you to search through.

Screenshots are from the iPad showing the contents of both The Craic and Tunebook.




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Pete Dunk

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #71 on: July 26, 2013, 06:52:38 PM »

If ABC requires a definition of the mode, it may be requiring more information than the student has available, reflecting Theo's comment.

ABC doesn't need information about modes, they can be written in or not and if you intend to turn all of the music into PDFs before giving it away it doesn't matter a jot! All I see is a scan of an old book that has a tune with two sharps, if I reproduce that as staff notation with two sharps and the right note pitches and lengths it doesn't really matter whether I class it as D, Bm, E dor or anything else.

When you give the source code away and everyone can see that K:C# locrian was used, that's when it hits the fan!  :o  >:E  :|glug
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Chris Ryall

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #72 on: July 26, 2013, 07:32:27 PM »

Agree, the Kevinoid method of "just play the F-in notes" is totally valid, treating ABC as a stream of note/music tokens

… except it isn't. each note is in the context of prior notes, there is cadence going on towards the following notes. The mode concept in music is essentially "about" this,  as anyone who has experimented with "different chords" on our instrument quickly found out  ;)
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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #73 on: July 26, 2013, 08:03:56 PM »

If ABC requires a definition of the mode, it may be requiring more information than the student has available, reflecting Theo's comment.

As Peter says, ABC doesn't require it.
As you have observed, one can get bogged down in prescriptiveness.

To satisfy ABC's requirement to reproduce the information content of stave notation, you have to specify a key signature. You could do it by listing exactly which sharps and flats are used, but it's much more notationally convenient to use a well-understood shorthand like K:A or K:Dmin. (with the classical "relative minor" convention a.k.a. Aeolian mode).

At exactly this point the rot starts setting in, and we are arguing about the details of something which is only a convenience to save typing. I think it's reasonable to extend that shorthand to nominating a mode if it's a better fit (sometimes a very subjective judgement) than classical major and minor, and to revert to explicit sharps and/or flats for anything that doesn't fit that into that mould either.

I expect a middle eastern scale that has a B and E flat and C and F sharp in it also has a name in countries where it's used a lot, and one could argue that ABC should allow that too... but you have to stop somewhere, and that's getting into the region where the twelve semitones of the western octave cease to be a good model for how music is made, and ABC (and staff notation) simply don't work any more.

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Chris Brimley

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #74 on: July 26, 2013, 09:13:04 PM »

Chris, you're somewhat misrepresenting my point, I think - I'm not suggesting at all that one should ignore previous notes in deciding what should be played next (although I see no cast-iron reason why a writer shouldn't decide to change mode in the middle of a tune if he or she so wishes).  My point was that in the absence of sufficient information about all the notes in the scale, there's no particular reason for the transcriber to select one of several available choices of mode specification, and if as everyone is saying, ABC doesn't require that, then it's probably right not to do it, regarding a folk tune written by someone else, unless you're absolutely sure it's the only possible option.

One practical implication of this would seem to be that if you take a simple tune like 'No-sharp Nonsuch', the accompanying chords could be very different depending on which mode assumption you make.  That could be quite an interesting exercise. 
« Last Edit: July 26, 2013, 09:23:42 PM by Chris Brimley »
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Chris Ryall

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #75 on: July 26, 2013, 10:48:45 PM »

i actually believe we are at one in this, Chris. the very same ABC token stream can be played over 7 possible tone centres, but some sound as music, others torture the ear somewhat. There are another 5 should you want to really play "out", indeed a jazzer might happily play eg D mixo over an Ab bass, but this is folk music  ::)

Given all the possible choices I find it amazing that transcribers can confidently assign a tone centre (implying mode) to these old tunes, but there is of course further structure, notably the "end on tonic" convention and background of the tunes.

We may have overcooked this topic already? The geeky are invited to experiment either on their own box (best) or at http://chrisryall.net/chords, where C major, D dorian F lydian, G mixo etc all highlight the same set of notes, though with different numeric mouseovers. The hooks are in there for to generate the chords associated with each mode including the tonal minors, and I hope to extend this soon. Been a tough year, but the end is now in sight. 
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Jack Campin

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #76 on: July 27, 2013, 12:56:55 AM »

Quote
I expect a middle eastern scale that has a B and E flat and C and F sharp in it also has a name in countries where it's used a lot,

In Turkish music, there are quite a few different modes using those pitches, since mode isn't just about scales, it's about cadences and melodic shapes.  That also applies to Western music, and it's one of the directions I'd like to extend my modes tutorial, but it's difficult to describe, even when you use it intuitively every day.

Quote
and one could argue that ABC should allow that too... but you have to stop somewhere, and that's getting into the region where the twelve semitones of the western octave cease to be a good model for how music is made, and ABC (and staff notation) simply don't work any more.

Microtonal modal music has been written using Western-style staff notation for 400 years.  It isn't very difficult to make it fit.  A long time ago I suggested a model for doing the same in ABC.  It didn't involve much additional complexity, didn't complicate any existing notation and could have dealt with all the well-worked-out microtonal systems from Greece to South India.
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Chris Brimley

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #77 on: July 27, 2013, 09:23:02 AM »

Quote
i actually believe we are at one in this, Chris.

Great! - that was my hunch too!

So as I understand it, we agree that modal theory is descriptive rather than prescriptive, and your website work allows it also to be 'suggestive' of possible harmonies.  So, in my 'No-sharp Nonsuch' recording, I was trying to play this accompaniment (written assuming 2 beats per bar):

Dm / | Dm / | Dm / | Dm / |
Dm / | Dm / | Dm / | Dm / |
C / | Dm / | C / | Dm / |
C / | Dm / | Am / | Dm / |

I'd be very interested to see an example, Chris, of your system, suggesting alternative accompaniments for the tune.  I think I'm at the stage where I get the principle, but don't quite see how to apply it day-to-day.

(Jack, I see what you mean about other modes than the often-quoted 7: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_scales_and_modes shows about 60, I think, but with still only a very few of those involving microtone scales, as far as I could see.  This must be a life's work in itself!)



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Jack Campin

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #78 on: July 27, 2013, 11:59:56 PM »

That Wikipedia article is worthless bedroom-guitarist crap.  A list of scales presented with no meaningful relationships and no musicological background.  Look at the link for "Persian scale" for an example - then go look on the web for a discussion of the Persian radif to find the real thing.
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Chris Brimley

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Re: Pesky Modes
« Reply #79 on: July 28, 2013, 09:42:40 AM »

Whoa!  I believe you, Jack!
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