Half-holing for a novice

[whistlecollector]

Not specific to AF per se, but another perspective on half (and other partial) holing in general:

For anyone who wants to explore old flute music on or translate certain vocal styles to their whistles, these techniques of varying how much of the tone hole gets covered, slightly modified, come in very handy for playing the 'sensitive notes', those "not quite dead-on in-tune" notes that impart some tension or heightened emotion to an ornament or scale or modulation between two notes. If you're on a scale or run up to g, rather than just run through e-f#-g, vent the f# a wee bit to g-half-or-third-flat or so, let it rest there then float up to the g. It's kind of like breathing in suddenly, holding for a second, then gently exhaling.

Nice for airs and lyrical/singing music. Perhaps not so much for dance music!

See for example: http://www.oldflutes.com/charts/simple/fingrem.htm

[pancelticpiper]

you can't describe a triple-time tune as being in Slow Strathspey style

I thought that somebody would bring that up. Yes it's in triple time but, at least the way it's performed on the Civil War soundtrack, it has all the stylistic elements of the Slow Strathspey.

A bit of genre-mixing by an American... wouldn't be the first time that's happened!

On the 3/4 time 4/4 time thing, I will say that in Scottish music many tunes are commonly played both ways, to the point where one couldn't say which is more 'correct' for a particular tune. Many of these same tunes are notated in 6/8 in Highland pipe collections.

I did Scottish dancing for many years and you would hear the same tune played in 4/4 for Strathspey time and in 3/4 and for the waltz quite commonly.

So, the fact that Ashokan Farewell happened to be played in 3/4 time on the Civil War soundtrack didn't, to my mind, have anything to do one way or the other with the styling of it. Actually since I'd never heard the tune before I assumed that it was a traditional Scottish Slow Strathspey, played in 3/4 time, and only later learned it was a newly composed piece.