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[Phil Howard]

I'm thinking of having a crack at a tune from Playford ("Drive the Cold Winter Away" - https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XgxegWQB6_c/hqdefault.jpg) that upon inspection turns out to be in 6/4 of all things.

The obvious option for bass/chords seem to me to be every second beat i.e. a similar approach to 6/8: oom--blank--pah--oom--blank--pah. This would go with modern versions giving it as 6/8, though a look online also finds it down as 3/4 suggesting a waltz rhythm (which I don't think'd work well). Any thoughts/guidance/confirmation/denial/other options would be very welcome :-)

Thanks

[Steve_freereeder]

I think you are exactly correct in this instance. Treat the 6/4 time as you would a 6/8 time: basically two beats in a bar, just as you describe. A waltz rhythm is not appropriate here.

[Jack Campin]

6/4 in the 17th century sometimes meant what we'd now write as 3/2 (triple hornpipe), but this one is the same as modern 6/8.

[Phil Howard]

Thanks for the guidance, nice to know I was on the right track.

Waiting for the computer to start up just now I had a look on YouTube on my 'phone and found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffCxLuI-exY- mixture of drones and waltz basses sounds good to my ear, but a ways ahead of my playing ability just now... I'll stick to 6/8 bass pattern for the moment.

[Chris Ryall]

It is a nice "line" on that video, and with practice I'm sure you'd get there. But I do find it a bit heavy, whereas the tune has a very light step to it?

Seek to decorate the tune with the bass line, rther than vice versa, that is to say to be right hand led. I think that may also take care of its rhythm. But the base ought to be about 50% gaps/ silence to my ear. Yes, [sillence] is a valid note too. 

[playandteach]

I think it might be off putting to call it a waltz rhythm - even though the result is the same. The beat in 6 (doesn't matter what the bottom number is) is two per bar, but each one divides into 3. So the use of an oom pah pah accompaniment is perfectly sound. The dotted rhythm does help define it as compound duple time (just a posh way of saying that it is in 2, with beats dividing into 3). As does the rate of harmonic change.
Whether the oom pah pah choice is too heavy for this particular tune depends on several things, including tempo and taste.
For me looking at the tune it would seem to work to have inversions in the bass notes (for example an A minor chord could be A chord chord, C chord chord (root position - then first inversion). Then you could have a bass line that either follows the shape of the tune, or mirrors it.
Missing out the weak 2nd and 4th crotchet could also work (Oom, blank, pah, Oom, blank, pah).
Sorry if this is either stating the obvious, or misinterpreting your question (which seems to have been answered well already).

[Phil Howard]

I always thought of it as quite a mournful sounding tune, rather than "light"! Maybe it's the renditions I've heard.

Listening to that recording, and playing around, the opening phrase does seem to work better (to me) all on the pull and using the D minor (i.e. E minor on D/G) bass/chords, and I was wondering if it's actually in the minor key? Some versions seem to resolve to F at the end, others to D, so I guess it's a "take your pick depending on what you want to do"?

I'm certainly still learning to balance the two hands, and indeed just to keep the left one going in the time it should in an unfamiliar tune so not thinking too decoratively yet - but it'll come :-)

I think it might be off putting to call it a waltz rhythm - even though the result is the same.

The way that language is used certainly shapes perception, and a tendency to equate 3/4 with waltzes alone probably is unhelpful, as it would be to think of 4/4 as only ever being a reel, or a polka, or a march, rather than being able to be any of them - but it's a more or less automatic short-hand for 3/4. Trying it as oom-pah-pah the timing seems harder to manage, and I think direction changes mean there'll be more of a need to move around the basses to get them sounding right - so probably a useful learning exercise...

I'll keep on with the "O-pO-p" approach, but as it comes together swallow yesterday's cowardice and experiment with "OppOpp" too, and see how I get on: I'm sure it'll be good for the soul.

[James Fitton]

Another pattern I like to use with this sort of tune (not for every bar, but mixing it in) is FC, 0, C, FC, 0, F (where FC is fundamental and chord together, 0 is a rest, F is just the fundamental, and C is just the chord). In particular the extra bass on the last beat can lift the tune nicely from one bar to the next, I think.

[Chris Brimley]

Coincidence - I've also been trying to play this tune for a dance our caller thinks will work - we haven't tried it out yet with dancers, but here goes:

https://soundcloud.com/user9632366/drive-the-cold-winter-away

Regarding the key, I hear it as mainly a minor key, changing temporarily, and rather strangely, to major for the last bar, but that maybe just the version I was listening to when I learned it.  I chose to play it in Em.

[Jack Campin]

I just looked this up in the Playford Omnibus PDF file, which I think Pete Dunk assembled from ABC transcriptions by various hands and linked to here.  It puts this tune into 3/4.  I can't imagine why.  (I can't find the original ABC so I don't know who did this one).

It seems odd that Playford's dance instructions say nothing at all about footwork.  How were you supposed to work that out?  Or didn't it matter?

[Chris Brimley]

Although I played this (and heard it originally) as a sort of slow 6/8, I can see that playing it and dancing it in 3/4 could be quite interesting - it would have to be played more slowly, I think.  I'm going to discuss this with our caller, I think - I'll come back to you!

[Chris Ryall]

I'd comment that the music should inform the dance, rather than the other way round? You shift the rhythm at your own risk, and to do such is certainly to leave its tradition.

[Chris Brimley]

Well, I just spoke to our caller, who was unaware of the original dance but liked the song, and he has written his own dance for that anyway - his is definitely a 6/4 rhythm rather than 3/4, for what it's worth.

I must say I wouldn't agree with your word 'should', Chris - IMO to 'leave a tradition' (which implies that we know that it actually existed in the first place) is by no means wrong, it's simply the process of development in action.  I agree that it's a good thing to understand what the original tradition meant, because you might otherwise be missing something.  However, in this case, I'm inclined to trust our caller, who felt that dancing this tune to a 3/4 rhythm is unlikely to be successful for today's audiences, so I think I'm with Jack on this one, the fast 3/4 footwork may be possible, but it's going to be tricky. I've come across one or two cases where a tune is written in a certain time signature for convenience in notation, when dancers are actually using a different idea. 

[Chris Ryall]

'Should' was in the music informing the (steps of the) dance part.
Not sure I'd support another way (I tend to fall over)

One can always leave a tradition, though at one's own risk. 
That's one way in which traditions,  styles (and new dances ) evolve.

[Jack Campin]

I found the original ABC, and it seems Chris Partington did it.  Maybe he can explain what he had in mind.

The other transcription I've seen of this one was by Bruce Olson, who used 6/8 (in his case, probably because his software was too crap to handle 6/4).

[Phil Howard]

Plenty of food for thought, thanks :-)

I've had another look  at my hard-copy of "The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master (1651-ca.1728)" Ed. Jeremy Barlow (Faber Music, London, 1985). If I understand correctly it's time signature in the first edition would have been "3" or "3i" i.e. 3/4 but it was barred in 6/4, and this persisted until the 12th edition i 1703, when the time signature was updated to match the barring.

What that means for how to play it is open to interpretation I guess...

[Steve_freereeder]

Plenty of food for thought, thanks :-)

I've had another look  at my hard-copy of "The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master (1651-ca.1728)" Ed. Jeremy Barlow (Faber Music, London, 1985). If I understand correctly it's time signature in the first edition would have been "3" or "3i" i.e. 3/4 but it was barred in 6/4, and this persisted until the 12th edition i 1703, when the time signature was updated to match the barring.

What that means for how to play it is open to interpretation I guess...

I agree with your assessment: what appears to have happened is that the original tune with a mixture of 6/4 and 3/4 bars has been regularised by re-barring in the later editions, by splitting the 6/4 bars in half and replacing the time signature with 3/4. The dashed bar lines in your attachment show where they have been subsequently added.

I would still caution against playing it anything like a waltz, with an 'oom-pah-pah' rhythmic feel; I think that would kill the tune stone dead. You could try a long 'ooom' on beats 1 & 2 and a (rather weak) 'pah' on beat 3. Or just play the 'ooom' with no 'pah' at all. Mix it up, experiment. 

[Jack Campin]

The link to a facsimile given above clearly shows 6/4 as the signature.  I don't know which edition it comes from.

This is the 1651 version:

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/playford_1651/046.pdf

It's not a very good scan, but there are definitely no barlines at all and the time signature is a blurry splodge.

[Pete Dunk]

Very odd, I looked this up in Robert M Keller's "The Dancing Master, 1651-1728: An Illustrated Compendium" clicked on 'Browse Title Index' and went to the page for titles beginning with D. Scrolled down the page to find 'Drive the Cold Winter Away' and the first item is a scan from the 1651 first edition which took me here. This is clearly in 3/4 and according to Jeremy Barlow's book "The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master (1651-ca.1728)" (as I understand it) the 6/4 time signature didn't appear until the 12th edition of volume 1 was printed in 1703.

[Chris Brimley]

'Should' was in the music informing the (steps of the) dance part.
Not sure I'd support another way (I tend to fall over)

Chris R, I'm confused - I thought you were originally supporting keeping to the 3/4 time signature, instead of changing to 6/4?  But now you seem to be arguing in support of the opposite, since falling over seems much more likely in 3/4 on this one!

What I was trying to say was that I don't think it's 'wrong' to develop a tradition by trying improvements, nor to recreate something else if you want to.  But the interesting thing here is that the original 3/4 time signature may imply that the 17th C. dancers actually used different steps that have been forgotten. Or it may mean that the original notation wasn't right.  Or that nobody at the time was all that bothered about accuracy in timing emphasis.  Or that vagueness was part of the fun.  I'm intrigued. 

One comment I would make is I once noticed that the original scanned copies in the reference libraries are sometimes not all that good, and that the originals may be easier to interpret.  See this for example:  http://imslp.org/wiki/The_dancing_master_(Playford,_John)  (P46 of 111).  In this, there don't seem to be any bar lines to speak of, and it immediately seems straightforward to understand.  I don't know which version precedes which.  I don't know how we should reconcile this with your version, Pete.