Cane Brake Jig, transposed for Briggs tuning

[Andy Chase]

Since AEBG V, I've been trying to force myself to learn tunes from standard notation rather than being lazy and tabbing them out... tab is easy to read, but it would be much nicer to be able to just work right out of the old tutors, or poke through other sources like Ryan's mammoth collection, etc.

So far, so good; I guess I've been playing this early material long enough that the common patterns and licks have become second nature and start to become recognizable on the staff.

However, I'm not going to try to map later tunes arranged for A and E (mostly) down to Briggs tuning on the fly until I'm a little better at reading the G and D tunes first.  So,  time for some transposition!  I've started tinkering with the free/open source composition software MuseScore, and it looks more than adequate for my meager purposes.  Here's G. Swaine Buckley's Cane Brake Jig (From the 1860 Buckley tutor) transposed down a whole step for Briggs tuning.

CaneBrakeJig_G.pdf

[Tim Twiss]

QUIZ: A fellow gets a Minstrel banjo. He tunes the strings to dGDF#A. Then he gets ahold of Phil Rice's Book and plays "Grape Vine Twist" as written.

What tuning is he in?

[Carl Anderton]

dGDF#A.

Tim Twiss said:

QUIZ: A fellow gets a Minstrel banjo. He tunes the strings to dGDF#A. Then he gets ahold of Phil Rice's Book and plays "Grape Vine Twist" as written.

What tuning is he in?

[Tim Twiss]

MORE QUIZ: Did he transpose the tune?

[Matthew Mickletz]

I'm guessing, no.

On a similar "note" (ha! get it?!), I don't go to Wiki often but this was interesting:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposition_(music)

[Tim Twiss]

I would say no also, but in this case, he is actually using a Transposing Instrument.

The piece has been transposed, as would be percieved by the listener in relationship to the notation. In the mind of the player, he has done nothing different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposing_instrument

 

[Andy Chase]

Hmm, I was also going to say no, but I took "plays it as written" to mean that he took the notation written in the key of E and mapped the notes onto the fingerboard of the banjo tuned to dGDF#A, which would look like this in tab:

Which reminds me of the crappy Led Zeppelin song book I had when I was a teenager.  It had guitar chord diagrams for a bunch of songs, but every single one was for EADGBE tuning, even the songs that Jimmy Page played in alternate tunings.  Those ones were just about impossible to play as diagrammed in that book.

[Tim Twiss]

You have to reference the thumb string....the upward stem.

That tells you how to play it.

This applies only to banjo arrangements.

[Tim Twiss]

Bottom line is, you have to read in 2 ways to cover the early banjo repertoire. Briggs' and Rice to simplify the language.

[Tim Twiss]

MORE QUIZ!!:

A guy walks into a bar with his banjo tuned dGDF#A. By request, somebody hands him the Buckley 1868 and asks for Pearl Waltz, which has 3 sharps.

What key is he in?_________________________

[Strumelia]

G ?   (....unless he retunes to eAEG#B, in which case he'd be playing it in A.)

[Tim Twiss]

Yes, so perhaps we should say "Concert G" as they might in a wind ensemble.

That makes sense to me.