Thoughts on the ‘Up-Driven’ Bow in Cape Breton Fiddling

by adminKFS on November 2, 2011 · 3 comments

The up-driven bow is a term that is thrown around quite a bit in Scottish and Cape Breton fiddling. If you have read anything about Scottish fiddling, you’ll most certainly come across references to the powerful up-bow of Neil Gow. According to James Hunter (The Fiddle Music of Scotland), it was his favorite bow stroke.

The up-driven bow as described in older Scottish collections is a type of bowing mostly found in strathspeys that looks like this:

Excerpt from ‘The Braes of Mar’

The first note is on a down stroke and the last three are on an up stroke. Of the three notes that are in the up bow, the second is pulsed, meaning that extra pressure is applied and it is accented. The third note is detatched. In Cape Breton, this bowing is used most commonly in melodic phrases where the first two notes of the up stroke are the same note.

Even though the up-driven is a commonly talked about feature of the Cape Breton style, I don’t hear it much in this form. I do remember Sandy MacIntyre teaching this as an ‘old style bowing’ when I was student at the Gaelic College. However, there are common bowing patterns in the style that use strong up bows. One of the more common of these bowings is one that I refer to as a ‘shuffle bow’ like pattern that is very common in reels:

Excerpt from ‘Hamish the Carpenter’

or:

Excerpt from ‘West Mabou’

In these examples, the upstroke occurs on either beat 1 or beat 3 which is are the strong beats in the measure, or the pulse. The up-bowed slur in the first example and the up-bowed quarter notes and slur in the second example are very emphazied by using a lot of bow and some extra pressure. The upstroke is especially powerful and makes the melody sound very lifted and lively. A lot of the time, Cape Breton fiddlers are on a down stroke for a pulse. Having the pulse on this upstroke creates a varied and very powerful phrasing.

Even though it seems that technically the term up-drivin bow refers to the strathspey bowing in the first example, this latter bowing and others that have a strong up bow on a pulse is what I like to think of as an up-drivin bow in the Cape Breton style.

More about chords

by adminKFS on October 4, 2011 · Leave a comment

My last post about using the melodies of tunes as guides to finding chords generated a lot of feedback. The questions I heard most were ‘How do I learn what notes are in the chords?’ and ‘How do I know what chords are in what key?’

A good place to start learning chords is to work within a particular key – maybe a key that you know a lot of tunes in or are learning tunes in. If you are not sure how to find the chords within a key, I’ll give you a start here with how to find the chords in a major key.

For the chords we are concerned with here, they all come from the notes in the scale. Let’s use A major as an example:

If we stack the notes vertically in thirds, we get our triads in the key. You’ll notice that I assigned each note in the scale a roman numeral. This is why you hear musicians talk about the ‘one chord’ or ‘five chord’, etc. They are referring to it’s place within a key. In A major, the one chord is A major. It’s the chord built from the first note in the scale. The five chord is E major. It’s the chord built from the fifth note in the scale. Thinking of chords in this way allows you to easily transpose.

The pattern of the quality of the chords is always the same for major keys.

I is major
ii is minor
iii is minor
etc…

For tunes in a major key, the chords we are most concerned with are the I, the IV, the V and the ii. So in A major, this is A, D, E and B minor. No matter what instrument you play, a good place to start learning these chords is to play the arpeggios. That way, you really begin to understand what the chord tones are for each chord. Once you begin to get those under your fingers, you will soon see these arpeggios in the tunes. Some tunes are more arpeggiated then others but they all contain them in some form.

You can do this for any major key:

Write out the scale
Stack the notes vertically in thirds (make sure you include all sharps and flats)
Play the arpeggios of the I, IV, V and ii chords.

Hope this post gives you a start in learning chords!