Major Scale with Flat Seven?

[Brent Hutto]

This is all a very timely discussion. I've just started mandolin lessons and last night we were working on Congress Reel which is written with one sharp and the root note is A. That makes it "A Dorian" and I asked about the harmony to be used with that melody.

The answer was to do A+E chords for the same reason Randy describes. The tune itself is neither major or minor (though if I had to pick one it would be A-minor before A-major, certainly) so don't put the 3rd degree in the accompanyment at all. I learned a neat rhythm pattern alteranting between A+E and G+D notes on the wound strings along with open A and E strings. It's pretty cool stuff, for a beginner it's sort of a brain-full!

[Coffeecup]

The tune itself is neither major or minor

At a workshop that I attended recently the presenter suggested that, based on the third note of the scale, the various modes can be considered to be major or minor, or at least they sound that way to our ears.
For example, Mixolydian having a natural third and a flat 7th can be considered a major scale, while Dorian having a flat third and flat 7th can be considered to be a minor scale.

[Jim Broyles]

I would say that there are definitely major and minor modes, based on exactly what Coffeecup said. I would also say that "Congress Reel" is minor.

[Jon Hall]

This subject came up in a lesson I was teaching yesterday.We explored playing Red Haired Boy with the chords of A mixylodian and it sounded right to substitute G maj for E maj. The G - B - D are notes of this mode. We tried Em in place of the Emaj but it didn't work for us.

[Jim Broyles]

This subject came up in a lesson I was teaching yesterday.We explored playing Red Haired Boy with the chords of A mixylodian and it sounded right to substitute G maj for E maj. The G - B - D are notes of this mode. We tried Em in place of the Emaj but it didn't work for us.

Well, if you check the sheet music for that tune, the next to last note, while the accompaniment calls for an E chord, is a G natural. Thus a G chord or more likely, if it supposed to be E something, an E minor would be very appropriate.

[Mike Bunting]

Well, if you check the sheet music for that tune, the next to last note, while the accompaniment calls for an E chord, is a G natural. Thus a G chord or more likely, if it supposed to be E something, an E minor would be very appropriate.

I checked the sheet music out and found that it is set in A with a normal G# included. What they don't do is indicate that the G# is flattened as an accidental over the the G chord as would be usual. Anyhow, that second last note is indeed a G# so the E or E7 would be the correct chord. That's how I read it anyhow.
Red face, I just went to verify and of course, realized that I misread the time signature! It does call for a G natural. Do think that it might have been better to put it in A and then use accidentals to change the G#'s as required?

[SincereCorgi]

All these fiddle tunes are subject to a great deal of variation, and a tune can be made more or less 'modal' according to individual (or regional) taste. The old time/bluegrass groups around here use the E major in Red-haired Boy and Kitchen Girl, for example, but I wouldn't be surprised if the more Irish-sounding ones favor the G major.

[Jim Broyles]

I checked the sheet music out and found that it is set in A with a normal G# included. What they don't do is indicate that the G# is flattened as an accidental over the the G chord as would be usual. Anyhow, that second last note is indeed a G# so the E or E7 would be the correct chord. That's how I read it anyhow.
Red face, I just went to verify and of course, realized that I misread the time signature! It does call for a G natural. Do think that it might have been better to put it in A and then use accidentals to change the G#'s as required?

No, because I played along with a bunch of versions, and I strongly prefer the Em to the E there. The melody note is very definitely a G, not a G#. A mixolydian (2 sharps) it is, and I believe that it should be played with either a G or an Em for that particular chord.

[Brent Hutto]

If we want things to get really tricky someone could always bring up Greensleeves...

[mandocrucian]

There seems to be misconceptions that a "modal tune" must be exclusively modal throughout.

As far as 'The Session' version of "Red Haired Boy", it is apparent (to me) that the G#'s in bars 8 and 16 were accidentally omitted (pun intended, nyuk nyuk nyuk) notationally, because the ABC notater went to the effort to include the chord changes, and those measures were E7>A. It's a lot easier to inadvertently leave out the accidental typing ABC than to put in the wrong chord (speaking from experience as I've done my share of typing tunes directly into ABC code). Besides, the momentary shift back to the A major scale and the G#s notes are to strengthen the end resolution back to A. E > A (V-I) is a lot more "resolved" than using the subtonic (bVIII), G > A, or the Vm (Em > A), and is the most common and "standard" way of playing this tune (but I have heard strict minor, and exclusively modal renditions as well). One can play/adapt the tune to any "pitch sets" and still have something that is still recognizable as that tune; for example, on Jerry Rockwell's The Blackbird & The Beggarman CD, I incorporated into the whole arrangement an Okinawan/Shoukichi Kina-style version (using the "Oki-pentatonic scale": 1 3 4 5 7), which followed Jerry's Celtic opening and before it all drifted into acoustic SF pyschedelia (ala It's a Beautiful Day/Dead).

Terms such as "modal", "mixolydian", "dorian", "pentatonic" etc., as applied to the context of tunes, are after-the fact descriptives, rather than the generative "law" producing said tune(s). A lot of time, when you hear an exclusively modal tune, it is probably been the result of having been played (or being played on the recording) by a strictly diatonic instrument where there is no option to use a major 7th or the flat 7. (Or other potentially variable pitches). You'll hear this on Highland pipe versions, or on Cjaun accordion etc. Sometimes these versions (or those instruments) become so dominant, that the other instruments play to the scalar limitations of those instruments to avoid pitch clashing.

Tunes just "are what the are" and shouldn't be forced into some preconceived theoretical expectation (trying to hammer the round peg into a square hole), and this applies not only to scalar pitch choice(s), wobbling tonality, extra or missing beats in a measure or a non-standard form structure (one part is 7 bars long, or is 9-1/2 bars) ("crooked tunes"). Nordic music has all that - the tune may oddly wobble between minor and parallel major, have extra beats now and then, or use an assymetrical structure (A part is 6 bars in length, B bar is 8), different meters (polska 3/4, 5/4 etc.) have short transitory phrases between sections, extra parts..... As long as your mind expects/insists on trying to hear things in the context of 8 measure sections in 2/4 (which most folks have unkowingly been programmed to do), the stuff will remain confusing. The tune is what it is and you should listen to on those terms and let it go wherever it wants to without fighting it with preconceptions.

Niles Hokkanen

[Coffeecup]

Great post Niles. Along that same line of thinking, it's my understanding that the key signature of the staff that a tune is written on is purely a matter of convenience or choice. For example if a tune based around A, as we've been discussing, contains both C and C# notes it could just as easily be written on a staff with key signature A with some notes having the natural sign, or written on staff with key signature D and some notes written with the # sign. It may be that one method requires less accidentals to be written, or the other way may emphasise the variations.

[Jim Nollman]

This discussion makes me wonder about a tune like Kitchen Girl. The A part is clearly mixolydian. But the B part is clearly minor. So is there a single musical word or phrase to describe such a tune?

Also, there's an entire genre of southern Appalachian breakdowns in A, which the members in my own band always refer to as modal. As the mandolin player, when something gets called a "modal tune", it suggests to me a specific way of playing it within an ensemble. I will often play either the A part or the B part (but not usually both) as a partial drone. By that, I mean that I get a crosspick going, playing the melody in parallel with the fiddle on the D and G strings, while alternately striking the open A, as every other note.

Musically, can someone tell me what is it about these breakdowns that makes them get referred to as "modal", and likewise makes them sound so compelling when the A is constantly droned?

[Coffeecup]

I'm not familiar with Kitchen Girl but the notation on thesession.org doesn't show anything to make me think that it changes to a minor key in the B part. C# is used throughout the tune but that would drop to C natural in a minor key wouldn't it?
Irish tunes have so many variations though that maybe you have something different. But addressing your question; I've never heard of a single term to cover the situation, only heard it spelt out e.g. A major changing to A dorian.

My feeling is that when somebody refers to a tune as "modal" it's because they recognise that it isn't major (no degrees are flattened or sharpened) or our familiar natural minor (flattened third) but haven't looked further to find just what the scale is. To a melody player it seems that the definition isn't overly important, just follow the tune. It's only once chord or harmony playing is introduced that a definition is more valuable because "normal" chord progressions don't work.

[Pete Martin]

A mixolydian to A dorian is how I would describe it.

[Brent Hutto]

FWIW, I love Kitchen Girl it's one of my favorite old-time tunes. I find it hard to play on mandolin, though. It's one of those that loses something in the translation away from the fiddle although I've heard at least one killer flatpicked guitar version.

[Bob DeVellis]

Seems that some Irish tunes are hard to classify with respect to key/mode. Some, I've noticed (can't think of an example offhand) play the differently when ascending then when descending the scale. One will be a half-step below the octave while the other is a full step. So, a tune more or less in D will use both the C and C#, depending on whether the phrase is traveling up or down the scale. This isn't a key change, just a different note when ascending vs descending. I can't be certain that this is an orthodox pattern as opposed to some sort of local variant but it sure sounds right when it happens.

[Jim Broyles]

Maybe they use the melodic minor scale.

[Coffeecup]

A mixolydian to A dorian is how I would describe it.

Wouldn't A dorian have C natural not C#? This makes me think again that you guys have a version different to the one I'm looking at.

[Coffeecup]

Seems that some Irish tunes are hard to classify with respect to key/mode. Some, I've noticed (can't think of an example offhand) play the differently when ascending then when descending the scale.

Lanigan's Ball is one that comes to mind. The 6th can change from sharp ascending to natural descending, in the manner of the melodic minor but it retains a flat 7th like the natural minor/Aeolian. so yes, hard to classify I think.

[Rob Gerety]

So I take it that "modal" in Celtic speak means that all or part of the tune has a tonal center other than the root of the major scale? I'm familiar with modes but I've never heard that particular term in other settings and it always throws me. I don't want to sound dumb by asking - Which mode? I guess I am just supposed to hear the tonal center change - and sometimes I do. But I must say deep down I suspect that part of this might be rooted (no pun intended) in the fact that some of the folks using the terminology don't have a clue what they mean precisely either - all they know is that the tune is unusual in some respect so the call it "modal". To my way of thinking all music is "modal" and the term is pretty much meaningless.

So, I guess I'm still unclear about what they all mean when they call out to me - "Its modal".

Signed "Confused in Vermont".

[Brent Hutto]

Rob,

It is often a very loosely used term. Not uncommonly it means simply "Doesn't sound major or minor to me" with no specific mode implied. That said, there are a couple of very common modes that show up in numerous Celtic/Irish/Old-Time/Fiddle tunes and they all share a distinctive sort of tonality. But most people are using the term generally even if it's one of those specific tonalities they have in mind.

[Jim Nollman]

Amazing how many variants exists for so many old tunes. Until I took a look at that chart, I had never heard any version of Kitchen girl with the major third in the B part.

Heres' something to prod more discussion. I'm a music producer of sorts, and I am currently recording a CD of jazz-inflected fiddle tunes, done with piano, mandolin, drums and bass. But with no fiddles. Last week I laid down a mandolin track to Kitchen Girl. I have access to a lot of digital effects, including software called Melodyne that automatically corrects pitch. The software lets the user choose just about any scale from a list of 30 or 40 different modes. Because my version has two parts, one with a major 3 and and another with a minor third, I simply left it as a 12 note scale.

Although the mandolin had sounded accurately intonated to my ear, I fed the track into the software, where it displays notes as blobs on a staff. I could see right away that one of the passing notes was in the middle between two "correct" pitches. So I corrected it, moving it down on the staff a quarter tone. Yet when I played it back, it sounded horribly flat. I thought i must have made a mistake so I tried it both up and down on the staff several times. The fact is, there are a few notes in this tune that only sound correct as quarter tones.

The real surprise is that I was not aware of it while playing the tune, (which I learn by ear) although now I notice that I do bend the notes in question while sliding my finger halfway over one fret. I am well aware that Indian ragas play havoc with western scales, but I had never realized that an Appalachian fiddle breakdown, for instance this the half-mixolydian Kitchen Girl, might do the same thing. I feel kind of naive, since, after all, fiddles don't have frets. The result is that fiddle tunes possess melodic subtleties that demand extra technique to play correctly on mandolin.

[Brent Hutto]

Jim,

I wonder if that's why Kitchen Girl sounds so dead and uninteresting when I try to mandolin it. Lots of fiddle tunes, including some "modal" ones sound perfectly cromulent on the mandolin but to my ears not that one.

[Jim Nollman]

May be. It's always been one of my favorites. That change from major to minor is quite powerful. When I get my own version of the tune better complete, I'll post it here as part of my signature.

[Pete Martin]

Wouldn't A dorian have C natural not C#? This makes me think again that you guys have a version different to the one I'm looking at.

Oh yes, fiddle tunes can be extremely different player to player and region to region. The same tune name can be a either a distant relative or even a different tune entirely.