Explanations of the Symbols and of Some of the Technical Terms Used

In ‘The Story of “Greg’s Pipes”’ there are a number of symbols and technical terms that need to be explained.

Notes of the Gammut

The musical notes available to the fiddle player are indicated by the lower case letters, a, b, c, d, e, f and g. Apostrophes are added to indicate the register to which the note belongs. Notes below “middle c’” have no apostrophe. Middle c’ itself has, as you can see, one apostrophe. From that on up the first register, as it is called, is comprised of the notes from middle c’ right up to the b’ just before the c’’ an octave above, and they have one apostrophe. From that on up, in the second register, two apostrophes are awarded. If one wanted to reach up higher in the registers of music, the fiddle player at that stage would need to move his hand further away from the end of the fingerboard nearer the scroll, and slide it up towards the bridge. This is called playing in a higher “position”. Without any move away from the scroll, one is playing in “first position”, one note away from the scroll is “second position”, two “third position”, and so on. We will not concern ourselves with the higher positions, as the reel we are discussing is normally played in “first position”.

“Sharps” (♯) and “flats” (♭) denote semitones above or below respectively the “natural” notes, a, b, c, etc. Keys are designated by the number of sharps or flats they use. “Greg’s Pipes”, and its progeny, are played in A (three sharps), D (two sharps), or G (one sharp). In staff notation sharps and flats are placed before the note, and they are to be used on all notes of that pitch thereafter unless it is countermanded by the use of another symbol, called a “natural” (♮) – rules and conditions apply. In the case of the lower case alphabetical notation, the sharp or the flat are placed after the note, and only apply to that one individual note, and so natural are redundant.

In the key of G, the notes available to the fiddle player, beginning with the lowest string, g, and continuing on up to the highest string, e’’, are as follows:

[gabc’|d’e’f♯’g’|a’b’c’’d’’|e’’f♯’’g’’a’’] in the key of G major (the one sharp is f)

The notes emboldened are played on the open string of the same name, and the notes following on represent notes played with 1, 2, and 3 fingers on the fingerboard respectively. The emboldened notes together represent the particular “tuning” the fiddle player is using. When the fiddle is tuned to <gd’a’e’’>, regarded as the normal, the tuning is properly known as playing alla franca. Actually, having this tuning as the norm is quite recent a recent custom historically. An older tuning received from the viol is <gd’a’d’’>, and this is known properly as playing alla turca. This tuning is used locally for a beautiful reel called “New Nora” or “The Wise Maid”. It is a reel based on a jig, “Nóra Chríonna”, older and wiser.

“Scordatura”, from the Italian for “forget”, nowadays is the term used for any tuning other than alla franca, which, I suppose by comparison should be called “*recordatura”, though no such word exists. Dr. Conor Ward wrote a comprehensive article on “Scordatura in the Irish Traditional Fiddle Music of Longford and South Leitrim” in Issue 8 (2013) of The Musicology Review, a publication of the School of Music of UCD. One of the favourite “scordatura” tunings used in our area, he tells us there, is <ae’a’e’’>. It is most useful for tunes in the key of A, and using it the notes played on the fiddle rearrange themselves as follows:

[abc♯’d’|e’f♯’g♯’a’|a’b’c♯’’d’’|e’’f♯’’g♯’’a’’] in the key of A major (3 sharps)

Another ancient tuning, used for “The Drunken Man’s Freaks” or “Drunken Kelly” is a <gd’g’b’>, on which I myself wrote, if I may say so, a comprehensive article in Teathbha, Vol. III, No. 3 (2008). The tuning used for “Drunken Kelly” is a transposition down one note of the original tuning used for “Greg’s Pipes”, <ae’a’c♯’’>, where the notes on the fiddle rearrange thus:

[abc♯’d’|e’f♯’g♯’a’|a’b’c♯’’d’’|c♯’’d’’e’’f♯’’] in the key of A major (3 sharps)

Dance tunes are usually made up of a number of sections, which are known technically as “strains”, the term I use throughout the footnotes, but which are colloquially called “parts”, the term I use in the body of the article. In this article, strains or parts are designated by the upper case letters, A, B, C, D, E, etc.

So far these explanations concern themselves primarily with the fingering used in our tunes. Bowing is also important, and the principal types of bowing that concern us here are “slur and cut” and “Georgia bow”, the latter of which is a form of “fore-phrasing” applied to “slur and cut” bowing. In “slur and cut” , in each group of four notes, the first two are played by one continuous draw of the bow, known as a “slur”, and the remaining two are get their own individual draw of the bow, known as “cuts”. In “Georgia bow”, the second of the normally “cut” notes is instead bowed on the same “slur” as the following two, introducing a three note “slur”. As the original two note “slur” in these cases are anticipated by the hanger-on from the previous group of four, this is technically known as “fore-phrasing”.