Month: May 2022

Remaica

Here are the videos and dots from Monday’s class – a remake/recycling of a Playford tune called Jamaica, that has been christened Remaica (thanks to Bob for that little bit of punning gold!). The idea of re-imagining a tune is something we’re going to look into over the next few weeks. This version is in D Dorian mode – the original can be found at the bottom of the post for comparison!

Here are the dots:

Here is a PDF of Remaica, and another of the original tune Jamaica:

remaicaDownload
jamaicaDownload

And finally, a video of the original tune, Jamaica, in its original tuning of F major.

Hymn for St Magnus

Something a little different this week – an extremely old hymn from Orkney in the Lydian mode. This mode is similar to a major scale but has a raised 4th, it’s quite an unusual mode but very beautiful! We tried harmonising with minim F-G patterns in the first half and minim C-D in the second half, as demonstrated in the second video (you could actually play C-D all the way through). We added single cuts in between repeated notes and turns in places where the melody descended by one or two steps.

Here are the dots, with a PDF beneath:

hymn-st-magnusDownload

Here is a video for a plain version and one with ornamentation, and a video of the tune and harmony together: