In my private lessons, I’ve been talking a lot about spotting chords in the tunes my students are learning. I’ve written in previous blogs about how I believe that knowing the shapes of the chords in tunes can help your ear training. Tunes are full of arpeggiated chords and chords form shapes on the fingerboard. Being able to recognize a chord-type melodic fragment and associating it with a finger pattern can help you nail down tunes quicker. You will know what type of frame the melody produces on the finger board. We inherently learn a lot of these shapes just by learning many tunes over time. However, practicing arpeggios is a good suppliment to nailing down these shapes.
This reel, Spey is Spate by the great Scottish composer James Scott Skinner, is a great example of tune containing arpreggios. Not all tunes contain as many blatent arpeggios as this, but most contain a significant amount of chord shapes whether as a direct arpeggio or hidden with some passing tones. It’s in the key of D major. The main chord shapes a tune in this key will spell out are
D major: D F# A
E minor: E G B
G major: G B D
A or A7: A C# E (G)
Before looking at the tune for chords, acquaint yourself in the key of D major by playing through the arpeggios I outlined above. Listen to the mp3 of the tune. Do you hear these chords in the tune?
Let’s work through the first four bars of the tune:
In the first bar we have a straight ahead D major arpeggio. In the third bar, we find the notes of the Em arpeggio. And in the fourth bar, the notes of the A7 arpeggio. After practicing these arpeggios and getting used to the sounds and shapes of them, see if you can find them in the rest of the tune.
You can easily spend hours on youtube watching clips of great Cape Breton music. While there are many current videos, what I think is great is that there are so many old clips- clips of performances from various concerts that I attended as a child, and also from television shows from an era when Atlantic Canadian music was on television every week. Here are some of my favorite clips of mostly older performances that I watch over and over again. Some of them I remember watching on television. And-if anyone has any clips of the show, Up Home Tonight, please get in touch!!
Hope you enjoy! What are your favorite traditional music clips on youtube?
A clip of the Rankin Family playing on the Ann Murray Special in the early 90s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnc29VMiynE
A clip of Natalie MacMaster with Tracey Dares on piano also filmed for a television show in Scotland
Buddy MacMaster with Maybelle Chisholm on the piano at the Broad Cove concert 1984
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIHd5bURdk0
Harvey Beaton dancing at the Broad Cove Concert 1985
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J5P3sL_W_A
Featuring John Morris Rankin and Howie MacDonald from the 1986 Mabou Ceilidh
An old clip from the Glendale concert featuring a dance called the Scotch Four. The dancers are Kelly (Warner) MacLennan, Rodney MacDonald, Ashley MacIsaac and Melody (Warner) Cameron. Wendy MacIsaac is on fiddle and Stephanie Wills on piano.
Kyle MacNeil of the Barra MacNeils. This is one of the few videos on youtube of just Kyle playing with his brother Shemas on piano. Kyle was my first fiddle teacher and still remains very much an idol.
Ashley MacIsaac playing on the Rita MacNeil show in the mid 90s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhS6OsdBxLI
A great clip of Jerry Holland, Carl MacKenzie, Dave MacIsaac, Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIssac from a concert at the Rebecca Cohn in Halifax, Nova Scotia
