[Dixielandjazz] Lots of Flats and Sharps

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi All,

Interesting observations from the brass-playing fraternity. At least somebody had the good sense to invent an A-clarinet to make life easier for clarinettists in the sharp keys. I had a good pal (sadly long gone now) who was a fine clarinettist playing on the Glasgow jazz scene. At one stage he played in a trad band whose leader was renowned as a champion gig-hustler, but was a bit challenged in the musical department. If a particular tune went well, he'd call something similar, often with the same sequence or in the same key (or both), so my pal used to take his A-clarinet to gigs and use it to stave of boredom (and retain his sanity). As a result he became a dab hand in sharp keys. However he took his hat off to a trumpet player who played in Bobby Crowe's Olympians Scottish Country Damce Band.

For those of you unfamiliar with Scottish Country Dance Bands, the usual instrumentation is fiddle, 2 accordeons, piano, bass and drums, with the lead shared by fiddle and accordeon. The repertoire is jigs, reels, marches, strathspeys etc and predominantly derived from traditional fiddle tunes. As a result, pretty well everything is pitched in sharp keys and, being fiddle tunes, there's no need for breathing spaces. This trumpeter used to play the lead part lead chorus about with the fiddle/accordeon, which meant he'd play 16 bars without a breath at fast tempos in keys like D, E and A, with amost everything written in eighth-notes. It just shows what a bit of practice can do!

Cheers,

Ken Mathieson
www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk