Tam Lin

[nancylebov]

There's a completely spectacular site about Tam Lin. It's got links to versions of the ballad, text about and related to Tam Lin (including scholarly work, fiction, related web sites, and fan fiction>, sheet music and discography....and on and on. Check out if you like Tam Lin or just want to see how extensive an interest in one cool thing can make a site.

One side effect of poking around the site is that I think I'll be getting back to playing the recorder. The net and the internet had supplanted recorder playing in my life. Little did I realize that the net is full of sheet music!

In particular, there's a jig called Tam Lin--nothing to do with the ballad, apparently, but the Tam Lin site has a link to it anyway. A small mystery--the comments describe the jig as going from D minor to A minor, but it sounds to me as though it goes to C major. (It's the same notes either way, afaik it's a question of whether you think it sounds cheerful or not. That's a big afaik, and I bet music theorists think about it some other way.)

Comments

[cellio]

That's a big afaik, and I bet music theorists think about it some other way.

Music theorists think of it in terms of what note is the tonic. I didn't see sheet music on that page, so I'll have to use my imagination. If phrases tend to start and end on A (or on E, the fifth) and sound consonant, then it's probably Am. If they tend to start and end on C (or G), it's probably C. If you were setting chords to it, would you tend to be in the Am Em D space, or in the C G F space?

dglenn can probably explain this better than I can.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

You need to hit the "sheet music" tab at the top of the page to get the sheet music. It's got the same url as the link I gave, so I can't do a direct link.

The third measure starts on C. It sounds consonant, I guess. I realise that major isn't identically equal to cheerful. Someplace, I've got some Irish dirges that seem to be solidly major, and they'd break your heart.

As for setting it, I don't know that much about music theory, and I'd start with the most obvious thing in terms of the melody which is very appegioish--D minor, B flat major, C major

Unfortunately, I don't have a keyboard for trying out chords, and ghu knows how my choices would sound.

I also reread the beginning of the comments, and I misread them. The suggestion was to play the *whole tune* in D minor a few times, then switch to A minor. This is described both as a cheap trick and something which tends to produce shouts and whooping from the audience. A cheap but good trick, I suppose.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

The simple music-theory approach is "what note does it resolve to?" I'm not going to go poke at the page right now, but if the final resolution is to A, then it's (almost certainly) Am; if to C, then CM.

The "definitive" version of the ballad, for me, is always going to be the live version Steeleye Span did in the '80s, which is far and away the finest vocal Maddy Prior ever did.