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Author Topic: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?  (Read 5416 times)

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Pete Dunk

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #20 on: June 05, 2016, 10:56:59 PM »

Your link doesn't work Chris. The link I put up isn't to my 'version', it's to the actual scan used by Chris Partington when transcribing the volume 1 abc file which explains why Chris set it in 3/4 to begin with. It's all getting a bit messy isn't it? ;)
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squeezy

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #21 on: June 05, 2016, 11:02:19 PM »

It seems that dance music was beautifully ambiguous between the mid 1600s and late 1700s.  We're very much stuck in to the mindset that differentiates between jig, reel/polka and waltz in the 21st century with slip jigs and 3/2 hornpipes as an exotic add-on to the dance structure of the British Isles.

Having played about with lots of these tunes scored out in 12/4, 9/4, 6/4 and 3/2 it can sometimes be hard to work out what is going on exactly.  But in some cases (not all but in many) you find that there is an intrinsic rhythmic trickery within those time signatures which plays about with where the beat is.  You have to play the tunes in earnest to find that out.  John Kirkpatrick's genius way of playing the 3/2 The Old Lancashire Hornpipe is a classic case in point where there is an implied 3/ 4 section in the  A part dictated by the way the melody is structured but it's almost impossible to imagine the B part being played like that.  The resulting acceleration of playing the B part in a standard 3/2 after the waltz like A part is exhilarating and I can't imagine that this isn't intentional.

The same thing applies to 9/4 tunes and 6/4 tunes.  Some are straight 9/8 or 6/8 but doubled up in time ... you can tell, but others imply a 3/2 time and some rare gems seem to float between one and another.

The conclusion? It's a mistake to say that you should never play a waltz like bass with a 6/4 or a 3/2 ... It's a mistake to think that you know exactly the nuances and steps with which these tunes were danced 300+ years ago given that only figures are given.  And it's a mistake to think that you need a hard and fast bass rhythm to play these tunes as they were probably only played as a melody line for the dances, leaving the dancer to infer the musical jokes and rhythmic shifts implied by the tunes.
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Chris Brimley

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #22 on: June 06, 2016, 03:13:45 AM »

Pete, That's funny, it worked earlier, perhaps they have a restricted free access policy.  I'll try to find it somewhere else, but it's basically a scan of the first edition of Playford's 1651 document, and the reason I used the word 'version' was that not only is it a clearer copy than Keller's, but also the original differs, and has no bar lines, mostly.

Thanks for a very interesting discussion, Squeezy - I'll seek out JK's tune.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2016, 11:03:29 AM by Chris Brimley »
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Chris Brimley

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #23 on: June 06, 2016, 11:01:51 AM »

Here's another copy I found - at 300dpi still not quite as clear as the one I found earlier:  http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/playford_1651/046small.html

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Chris Brimley

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #24 on: June 06, 2016, 12:08:11 PM »

Squeezy, having checked out the JK clip I see what you mean, it's great! 

It's a really nice idea to think of those Puritan musicians having a bit of fun with time signatures (maybe the use of two different Playford versions is all about this discussion, backdated a few centuries?)

Just a thought about time signatures - we're used to them having two dimensions, the length of the main beat, and the number of beats in a bar - and there seem also to be conventions that say for example that the use of 6/8 implies emphasis on beats 1 and 4 of the 8, whereas if you divide it by two to reach 3/4, the middle beat would be an off-beat.  And for 9/8, you divide them into threes, although emphasising beats 7 and 1 is a well-used convention.  But following your discussion, what does 'main beat' actually mean?  Do you think it's true to say that the number of beats a tune is written in does not necessarily reflect the number of beats dancers can use?  (For example, it seems to me that tunes written in 2/2 can often be doubled up, to make them more interesting for dancers than a plodding march.)
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Jack Campin

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #25 on: June 06, 2016, 12:31:00 PM »

One thing we can be certain about is that there were no waltzes in 1651.

I think the dance instructions for the 1651 and 1701 printings were the same - maybe there were some differences in the way they were done over that period, but surely no drastic change.
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Chris Brimley

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #26 on: June 06, 2016, 07:19:32 PM »

Quote
One thing we can be certain about is that there were no waltzes in 1651.

You sure about that?
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squeezy

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #27 on: June 09, 2016, 05:33:19 PM »

Well there were documented central European waltzes (the dance) in 1580 and probably the dance goes back much earlier, so to assume there weren't in 1651 is a bit odd.  It only became fashionable amongst the upper classes in the 1700s though which is when the waltz dance craze came over to the UK via the courts.

I know what Jack is getting at regarding the dance, but there is no real way we can know if there was an implied 3 / 4 time in the way any early tunes were played except to look at the structures of the tunes themselves and guess. 
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Chris Brimley

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #28 on: June 09, 2016, 11:00:29 PM »

Yes, I suppose what I was trying to say was that we often assume that the only history that happened is what was recorded in some way.  But of course it is surely quite likely that there were lots of previous skills and traditions that became forgotten - maybe dancing waltz-like steps may have been quite common, for all we know.  It is remarkable that there were so many dances for Playford to record, for example - there must therefore have been a thriving dance culture long-predating his volumes.
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Rob Lands

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #29 on: June 13, 2016, 09:30:31 AM »

I recommend "How Music Works" by John Powell for an introduction on rythmn etc.
To quote - 4 is by far the most common lower number of a time signature.  Whether something is written in quavers or crotchets matters little as musical interpretation allows a very large range of time intervals for both.  It is how you want to play it that counts. The time signature just gives an illustration of where the composer/transcriber put emphasis on the beats of the bar.  Here 1 and 4, possibly 1,3,4,6 but probably not 1,3,5.  Your choice/interpretation is as valid as anyone elses if it sounds good and that would lead what to do on the LHS.
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Chris Brimley

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #30 on: June 13, 2016, 10:14:16 AM »

Rob, the waltz rhythm I was thinking about wouldn't have been as per your 1,3 & 5 beats, it would have involved splitting each 6/4 bar into two lots of 3/4, and playing the tune more slowly, with the dancers doing waltz steps.  However, we tried the 6/4 version out at a gig on Saturday night, and it seemed to go down well, with the dancers settling automatically into a sedate 'mediaeval' sort of rhythm, so we're going to stick with 6/4 I think.
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Chris Ryall

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Re: 6/4 time - what to do with the left hand?
« Reply #31 on: June 13, 2016, 02:04:43 PM »

.
   Well done those dancers!  ::)
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