I learned violin by myself and naturally sharpened the leading tones and adjusted the thirds to have the major or minor-ness the music required. And when I first played with piano accompaniment I was astounded how "out of tune" I was playing. That's when I first discovered the compromise that equal temperament really is. It really sucks the soul out of a melody. There are more notes that 12.
I'm delighted by the large response to this video! Who'd have thought intonation could be so interesting! I've learned that in Ireland these are sometimes called "false" notes, and in the US they can be "wild notes". Anyone know what they are in Scandinavia?
Don't know about the US, but in Cape Breton, the term "wild note" is applied to a note which, in a seemingly "wild" fashion, is thrown in to replace the usual melody note; e.g., in an A mode, a B on the E string might surprisingly replace an expected A. Of course, this is done deliberately.
In sweden they are mostly refered to as "kvartstoner" (quartertones, this is refering to all inbetween notes and not just pure quartertones) or "blå toner" (blue notes). The temperament of a scale as a whole i have heard "svävande" (floating) and "sur" (sour)
My whole life I played guitar and never had to worry about intonation. I just tuned the guitar with a tuner and played -- the frets did all the "work". A few years ago I started learning a traditional flute (the quena) and suddenly I was responsible for intonation. It blew my mind and so I started learning about and understanding the subject a lot better. It really opened up my musical world. One of the things I love about playing Celtic, Andean melodies or other "traditional" melodies is that I can explore the intonation and that gives the music a certain "wildness", especially with ornaments. For me this freedom is one of the most wonderful things about these instruments. At the end, what I practice most is having a good ear, so I can adapt to different situations and play both equal temperament and be flexible at the same time. It truly is a fascinating subject and I feel like we'll spend our whole lives exploring it!
I have listened to this three times during my bike ride. I am now listening to it a 4th time on my way home. This is very well done, and quite amazing, sir. Bravo.
Thank you Chris, this video has been an absolute gift. The way you encapsulated the information is just brilliant. I feel I have been set free from the straight jacket.
This is such a wonderfully detailed and clearly presented and researched piece Thank you for this Remembering when we used to play together all those years ago ago
Very interesting! So one could say our creativity is held back by standard tuning. Very informative on the historical aspects of this instrument we love so dearly
Not really held back, more like channeled in different directions. Equal temperament became popular for reasons, playing with others, different instruments, or harmonic/chordal accompaniment. A lot of modern creative trad music has very clever accompaniment that would not necessarily have the same effect with a traditional tuning.
Thank you for such a clear and well laid out discussion about "just" intonation vs. tempered scales. I first became interested in this after being introduced to Norwegian fiddle music and it's very haunting and entrancing sounds! I appreciate Classical music very much but there has been too much snobbery from that establishment toward folk and ethnic musics without giving them their due understanding and levels of difficulty. I enjoy your channel immensley (having just today found it) and thank you for sharing both your knowledge and passion for the fiddle.
Hi Carl. Glad you enjoyed this piece. Like you, it was hearing the Norwegian "blue" notes that turned me on to this topic. I hope you'll spend more time on my channel!
This breakdown is soooooo excellent. I have been saying for years that traditional bluegrass uses occasional microtonicity, the more so the farther back you go.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Really informative . My Brother and I played twin fiddle together for years, we played quite a bit of Swedish stuff which we loved...but try playing it in a session and you can feel the other musicians trying to drag the tune up to pitch lol!
Thanks so much for this Chris! I initiated a recent discussion on The Session on this subject, initiated by a question about Bobby Casey’s ‘sound’. That discussion ultimately led to someone posting a link to this video. Wonderful!
Amazing! I have nowhere near mastered the instrument yet & now I find that there is a whole new level of complexity. Perhaps I'll get the hang of it one day, who knows?
Don't let it stress you out. Rather think of it as an excuse when people say you're out of tune. Tell them "It's traditional intonation. Chris Haigh said it was ok!"
Fascinating video. I've been trying to get into blues violin and by listening to some of the blues greats on othe instruments. I've been surprised by how fluid it seems to be in regards to intonation, switching between minor and major, etc. So this was very helpful in understanding what's going on.
Hi Dag Glad you found it interesting. However I think I may have misled you! I believe that the bending notes of blues are quite a different thing to what I've been talking about here. Though I still don't understand it very much, I think blues is all about the clash between major and minor, whereas the traditional intonation I've described here is not really about harmony at all,
Well done and thanks for this video. I've talked about this with other fiddlers for years and now we'll have a few good terms to use. Always talking about Julia Clifford's C note and how beautiful it is.
When I started violin and learned scales, this aspect was totally mind bending. I had piano notes in my head, and my teacher told me violin notes don’t match piano notes. I was completely disoriented for a few months. And until this video, I never fully understood his point that some of the notes are different depending on whether you’re going up or down the scale.
@@TheFiddleChannel The issue was the notes didn’t resonate within the violin the way they should. I had to learn to play notes above A sharper and below A flatter (my interpretation of the adjustment) to get it to resonate. Your video explained it much better than my weak understanding.
@@hrobert745 That is how a piano is typically tuned, possibly to make the melody notes in the upper register stand out more - it is not exactly equal temperament either!
On Cajun squeezeboxes the 3rd and 7th are flattened 15 cents and the 4th sharpened 15 cents. This is because the boxes are played in crossed keys (a box tunes in C Major will be played in G Major) and it makes the doubled notes sound "right". It's much nearer just temperament than equal temperament.
@@TheFiddleChannel I think if you play in that tradition it becomes second nature as does the fact that the fiddle players will often drop tune their fiddles to make some of the keys and double stops more natural. When I've played upright bass for cajun then my tuning varies to match, used to give my bass tutor fits :)
This is brilliant. I've found from my own experience playing fiddle in a bluegrass band (against tempered-scale fretted instruments) that, as soon as you start playing un-tempered 3rds and 7ths on the fiddle the music immediately sounds more old/traditional/real - whatever. I know very little about Turkish music, but I gather that Oud (lute) players have moveable frets (or sometimes no frets) to 'untemper' their playing, and that Turkish classical music has a formal scale with many more than 12 notes.
@@TheFiddleChannel Hi Chris, I think it depends what kind of bluegrass - certainly not modern 'super-clean' bluegrass, but fiddlers who bridge the gap - Art Stamper for instance, and more recently Michael Cleveland - give me the strong impression that their internal 'vision' of the music goes back to something a bit more ancient/basic than the tempered scale. Most bluegrass players like to pay some sort of 'homage' to the soul of old-time - as jazz people go back to the blues; and all bluegrass banjo players use the minor 3rd as a matter of course against a major chord on the guitar. Somehow the clash with the tempered backing seems to add a bit of spice - maybe the same way as an accordion 'wet' tuning. Or maybe it's all part of the 'see how far you can bend it without breaking it' game that musicians sometimes play. For me, it gives a flavour of the independent spirit of the Appalachian people who came up with this musical form. Anyway, very many thanks for your great exposé of this subject...
Interesting video! I do find it a bit unlucky that you only use Norwegian music and Scandinavian music interchangeably in the video. This could give the impression that they are both the same thing. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden have extremely diverse folk music traditions, even within the countries, and from my experience we all flatten and heighten the notes differently. And on another note (pun intended), even though the translation of the organ name is technically correct it should most probably be translated to "purely tuned organ" 😉
Hi. I admit my knowledge of Scandinavian music in general is pretty thin! Is it possible to say which country or region best represents in a pure form the use of non tempered playing?
@@TheFiddleChannel To answer your question, I honestly don't know. I think the examples you picked for the video are superbly showing that type of playing. I couldn't suggest any better recordings. And no worries 🙂 the only thing I wanted to point out is that not all Scandinavian music sounds like that and is played with open tunings or on hardanger fiddles. I didn't want to complain on the content of the video, which I think is great.
Thought I post this before I watch. I tune my fiddle with a tuner. Then depending on the key I'll flatten the fifth of the key. It sounds sweeter. On guitar when going from A and G, the B string needs to be flattened.
You’ve intuited how bowed stringed instruments are tuned with beatless 5ths. Nice! If you play with ET instruments like piano and guitar, you’ll sound dreadfully flat on the g string.
Hi Luka. Glad you enjoyed it! I know there's a lot more to the story than just the European/American traditions I mentioned, but that's beyond my expertise!
@@TheFiddleChannel Eastern European / Klezmer traditions? I wonder how less tempered fiddling (based on vocal singing) would interact with hammered dulcimer-like instruments of the region?
@@joereichlin258 I've not heard anyone refer to non tempered scales in this context. Although come to think of it, Bartok did specifically refer to altered intonation in some of the folk tunes that he collected. I would have thought that in Klezmer, which is a well organized and studied style, someone would have drawn attention to it if it was an important feature of the music. Do you know much about hammered dulcimers? Do they have a distinctive tuning?
On my nightstand is a remarkable book by Dr Wm Sethares that you might find interesting, "Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale." sethares.engr.wisc.edu/ttss.html gives a summary. Your video supplements it by linking to traditional W European styles that I know (rather than gamelan and synthesizers).
Just check the Arabian microtonal oud playing. Fretless instruments give an infinite advantage of varying intonation and thus feeling of the music. Classical music has destroyed our perception of the whole variety of emotions that the folk intonation can transmit. And nowadays pop music with auto-tune unfortunately continue this devil's work
Great video,I am sick of people saying that the old players were out of tune
Glad you appreciated this. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean that some old players weren't actually out of tune!
I learned violin by myself and naturally sharpened the leading tones and adjusted the thirds to have the major or minor-ness the music required. And when I first played with piano accompaniment I was astounded how "out of tune" I was playing. That's when I first discovered the compromise that equal temperament really is. It really sucks the soul out of a melody. There are more notes that 12.
I'm delighted by the large response to this video! Who'd have thought intonation could be so interesting! I've learned that in Ireland these are sometimes called "false" notes, and in the US they can be "wild notes". Anyone know what they are in Scandinavia?
Don't know about the US, but in Cape Breton, the term "wild note" is applied to a note which, in a seemingly "wild" fashion, is thrown in to replace the usual melody note; e.g., in an A mode, a B on the E string might surprisingly replace an expected A. Of course, this is done deliberately.
In sweden they are mostly refered to as "kvartstoner" (quartertones, this is refering to all inbetween notes and not just pure quartertones) or "blå toner" (blue notes). The temperament of a scale as a whole i have heard "svävande" (floating) and "sur" (sour)
Thanks Kirstie. Great names! @@QerstyBass
My whole life I played guitar and never had to worry about intonation. I just tuned the guitar with a tuner and played -- the frets did all the "work". A few years ago I started learning a traditional flute (the quena) and suddenly I was responsible for intonation. It blew my mind and so I started learning about and understanding the subject a lot better. It really opened up my musical world.
One of the things I love about playing Celtic, Andean melodies or other "traditional" melodies is that I can explore the intonation and that gives the music a certain "wildness", especially with ornaments. For me this freedom is one of the most wonderful things about these instruments.
At the end, what I practice most is having a good ear, so I can adapt to different situations and play both equal temperament and be flexible at the same time. It truly is a fascinating subject and I feel like we'll spend our whole lives exploring it!
Good to hear from someone else who finds this subject so fascinating!
I have listened to this three times during my bike ride. I am now listening to it a 4th time on my way home.
This is very well done, and quite amazing, sir.
Bravo.
Hi Jim, thank you so much!
Found ya!
Thank you; very interesting. Minor quibble: Darley did not 'debunk' the idea of traditional intonation; he merely attacked it.
Thank you Chris, this video has been an absolute gift. The way you encapsulated the information is just brilliant. I feel I have been set free from the straight jacket.
Many thanks, glad you found it useful!
This is such a wonderfully detailed and clearly presented and researched piece
Thank you for this
Remembering when we used to play together all those years ago ago
This is the best discussion of this subject that I have ever heard!
Thanks Richard!
Very interesting! So one could say our creativity is held back by standard tuning. Very informative on the historical aspects of this instrument we love so dearly
Not really held back, more like channeled in different directions. Equal temperament became popular for reasons, playing with others, different instruments, or harmonic/chordal accompaniment. A lot of modern creative trad music has very clever accompaniment that would not necessarily have the same effect with a traditional tuning.
Thank you Chris, a terrific description. I’d love to learn the first tune. Could you tell me what the name of it is, and are you playing it?
Thank you for such a clear and well laid out discussion about "just" intonation vs. tempered scales. I first became interested in this after being
introduced to Norwegian fiddle music and it's very haunting and entrancing sounds! I appreciate Classical music very much but there has been too
much snobbery from that establishment toward folk and ethnic musics without giving them their due understanding and levels of difficulty.
I enjoy your channel immensley (having just today found it) and thank you for sharing both your knowledge and passion for the fiddle.
Hi Carl. Glad you enjoyed this piece. Like you, it was hearing the Norwegian "blue" notes that turned me on to this topic. I hope you'll spend more time on my channel!
I’ve been quasi-paying attention to music theory in my quest to play Irish Traditional Music on my fiddle and this was super helpful.
Thanks John. Sometimes theory really is helpful, even in a folk context!
This breakdown is soooooo excellent. I have been saying for years that traditional bluegrass uses occasional microtonicity, the more so the farther back you go.
Thanks Bailey, glad you appreciated it!
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Really informative . My Brother and I played twin fiddle together for years, we played quite a bit of Swedish stuff which we loved...but try playing it in a session and you can feel the other musicians trying to drag the tune up to pitch lol!
Thanks so much for this Chris! I initiated a recent discussion on The Session on this subject, initiated by a question about Bobby Casey’s ‘sound’. That discussion ultimately led to someone posting a link to this video. Wonderful!
HI Ashley. Glad you enjoyed this. I always refer to The Session when researching a video!
Brilliantly explained. Thank you!
Thanks!
Amazing! I have nowhere near mastered the instrument yet & now I find that there is a whole new level of complexity. Perhaps I'll get the hang of it one day, who knows?
Don't let it stress you out. Rather think of it as an excuse when people say you're out of tune. Tell them "It's traditional intonation. Chris Haigh said it was ok!"
Excellent explanation. Has got me more interested in old time and Scandinavian traditional music due to the beautiful recorded examples.
Thanks Pibroch!
Interesting and informative. Thank you Chris.
Absolutely excellent explanation! Thank you! 👍😃
Thanks for this amazing video. A whole new purer world has been revealed to me.
Glad you found this interesting. I've just been spending some time with Swedish musicians who show the true value and beauty of untempered notes!
Fascinating video. I've been trying to get into blues violin and by listening to some of the blues greats on othe instruments. I've been surprised by how fluid it seems to be in regards to intonation, switching between minor and major, etc. So this was very helpful in understanding what's going on.
Hi Dag
Glad you found it interesting. However I think I may have misled you! I believe that the bending notes of blues are quite a different thing to what I've been talking about here. Though I still don't understand it very much, I think blues is all about the clash between major and minor, whereas the traditional intonation I've described here is not really about harmony at all,
Well done and thanks for this video. I've talked about this with other fiddlers for years and now we'll have a few good terms to use. Always talking about Julia Clifford's C note and how beautiful it is.
Thanks Eoin!
When I started violin and learned scales, this aspect was totally mind bending. I had piano notes in my head, and my teacher told me violin notes don’t match piano notes. I was completely disoriented for a few months. And until this video, I never fully understood his point that some of the notes are different depending on whether you’re going up or down the scale.
You must have more sensitive ears than mine! I'm never aware of a problem when I play with piano.
@@TheFiddleChannel The issue was the notes didn’t resonate within the violin the way they should. I had to learn to play notes above A sharper and below A flatter (my interpretation of the adjustment) to get it to resonate. Your video explained it much better than my weak understanding.
@@hrobert745 That is how a piano is typically tuned, possibly to make the melody notes in the upper register stand out more - it is not exactly equal temperament either!
Really great video, well done and thanks!
Thanks!
On Cajun squeezeboxes the 3rd and 7th are flattened 15 cents and the 4th sharpened 15 cents. This is because the boxes are played in crossed keys (a box tunes in C Major will be played in G Major) and it makes the doubled notes sound "right". It's much nearer just temperament than equal temperament.
Do you think fiddle players consciously modify their playing to match, or is it purely instinctive?
@@TheFiddleChannel I think if you play in that tradition it becomes second nature as does the fact that the fiddle players will often drop tune their fiddles to make some of the keys and double stops more natural. When I've played upright bass for cajun then my tuning varies to match, used to give my bass tutor fits :)
This is brilliant. I've found from my own experience playing fiddle in a bluegrass band (against tempered-scale fretted instruments) that, as soon as you start playing un-tempered 3rds and 7ths on the fiddle the music immediately sounds more old/traditional/real - whatever. I know very little about Turkish music, but I gather that Oud (lute) players have moveable frets (or sometimes no frets) to 'untemper' their playing, and that Turkish classical music has a formal scale with many more than 12 notes.
Thanks Rick. Do you not feel that the untempered 3rds and 7ths are more appropriate in old time rather than bluegrass?
@@TheFiddleChannel Hi Chris, I think it depends what kind of bluegrass - certainly not modern 'super-clean' bluegrass, but fiddlers who bridge the gap - Art Stamper for instance, and more recently Michael Cleveland - give me the strong impression that their internal 'vision' of the music goes back to something a bit more ancient/basic than the tempered scale. Most bluegrass players like to pay some sort of 'homage' to the soul of old-time - as jazz people go back to the blues; and all bluegrass banjo players use the minor 3rd as a matter of course against a major chord on the guitar. Somehow the clash with the tempered backing seems to add a bit of spice - maybe the same way as an accordion 'wet' tuning. Or maybe it's all part of the 'see how far you can bend it without breaking it' game that musicians sometimes play. For me, it gives a flavour of the independent spirit of the Appalachian people who came up with this musical form.
Anyway, very many thanks for your great exposé of this subject...
Super cool. Thanks.
Thanks Mike!
Interesting video! I do find it a bit unlucky that you only use Norwegian music and Scandinavian music interchangeably in the video. This could give the impression that they are both the same thing.
Norway, Denmark, and Sweden have extremely diverse folk music traditions, even within the countries, and from my experience we all flatten and heighten the notes differently.
And on another note (pun intended), even though the translation of the organ name is technically correct it should most probably be translated to "purely tuned organ" 😉
Hi. I admit my knowledge of Scandinavian music in general is pretty thin! Is it possible to say which country or region best represents in a pure form the use of non tempered playing?
@@TheFiddleChannel To answer your question, I honestly don't know. I think the examples you picked for the video are superbly showing that type of playing. I couldn't suggest any better recordings.
And no worries 🙂 the only thing I wanted to point out is that not all Scandinavian music sounds like that and is played with open tunings or on hardanger fiddles. I didn't want to complain on the content of the video, which I think is great.
Very informative Chris. There's a lot in that 14 minutes! That was was some lovely Hardanger music at the beginning. Who was the fiddler?
Hi John. That was John Dipper; actually I think it was a viola d'amore rather than a hardanger.
Thought I post this before I watch. I tune my fiddle with a tuner. Then depending on the key I'll flatten the fifth of the key. It sounds sweeter. On guitar when going from A and G, the B string needs to be flattened.
Button pushing..........lol
Hi John. Personally, I use a tuner, then tune my E up a little.
You’ve intuited how bowed stringed instruments are tuned with beatless 5ths. Nice!
If you play with ET instruments like piano and guitar, you’ll sound dreadfully flat on the g string.
Can I ask where you got the picture of the travelling fiddler,sitting in the kitchen,surrounded by a large family??
And have you seen it in sepia??
Hi Lucy. I found it in Google images. I'm afraid I don't know anything about it!
amazing content... if you ever make a video of other tunings around the world i hope i catch it ;)
Hi Luka. Glad you enjoyed it! I know there's a lot more to the story than just the European/American traditions I mentioned, but that's beyond my expertise!
@@TheFiddleChannel Eastern European / Klezmer traditions? I wonder how less tempered fiddling (based on vocal singing) would interact with hammered dulcimer-like instruments of the region?
@@joereichlin258 I've not heard anyone refer to non tempered scales in this context. Although come to think of it, Bartok did specifically refer to altered intonation in some of the folk tunes that he collected. I would have thought that in Klezmer, which is a well organized and studied style, someone would have drawn attention to it if it was an important feature of the music. Do you know much about hammered dulcimers? Do they have a distinctive tuning?
On my nightstand is a remarkable book by Dr Wm Sethares that you might find interesting, "Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale." sethares.engr.wisc.edu/ttss.html gives a summary. Your video supplements it by linking to traditional W European styles that I know (rather than gamelan and synthesizers).
Thanks Michael, sounds fascinating!
Just check the Arabian microtonal oud playing. Fretless instruments give an infinite advantage of varying intonation and thus feeling of the music. Classical music has destroyed our perception of the whole variety of emotions that the folk intonation can transmit. And nowadays pop music with auto-tune unfortunately continue this devil's work
On the 8th day when God created music....... :)
....He was badly advised!