Spalding's Jigs (No. 5)

Comment by Rob MacKillop on August 4, 2010 at 1:38am

Well done, Tim. It's interesting playing our videos back to back - really very different in places, similar elsewhere. I was wondering what you were going to do with the lower mordant signs in the last and third-last bar. I, with my classical head on, tried to play them, which made those bars very tricky, but you seem to interpret the sign as a push through with the index from third to first strings. Now that is a heck of a lot easier, but how does it differ from the last bar of the previous line?

All in all, these 'jigs' by Spalding are very interesting. Anyone have info on Spalding?

Comment by Tim Twiss on August 4, 2010 at 5:55am

I think that symbol is a nail glide. ( see Briggs'-Circus Jig) Anything else doesn't make sense.

Comment by Rob MacKillop on August 4, 2010 at 6:18am

So why isn't it shown in the last bar of the first line? Skimming through the rest of the edition, there are many places where a nail glide would be used, yet nowhere else does it have the mordent sign (unless I have missed something). Is this another case of a lack of editorial policy in banjo editions? Probably. It might be an arrangement from a fiddle piece which might have had a mordent . Oh, we'll never know. Good piece, though.

Comment by Tim Twiss on August 4, 2010 at 6:56am

Good topic and discussion...lots to be said about this material. Want to keep it alive here, talk offline, or drop it?

Comment by Tim Twiss on August 4, 2010 at 6:57am

PS...I like the way you played it Rob...except for losing the groove on the last part of the C section.

Comment by Rob MacKillop on August 4, 2010 at 8:08am

Yeah, got tripped up...

Hard to pinpoint things when we are dealing with a semi-folk, semi-classical tradition, with no overall editorial policy, and an audience/readership who liked to do their own thing anyway!

Comment by Tim Twiss on August 4, 2010 at 8:29am

I agree...you have to look at this stuff up close, and then back way off to really see it and get the best out of it...keeping it in perspective with common practice.

Comment by Trapdoor2 on August 4, 2010 at 9:10am

Maybe that was "Capt. Spaulding", the African explorer? ;-)

Comment