The Session: Tunes - Knot Colouring (barndance)

Knot Colouring

I wrote this tune during a geometric topology tutorial when I was supposed to be drawing pictures of knots to see whether they were 3-colourable. I had a 7/8 rhythm stuck in my head all day and I guess it had to come out in some way. Anyway, this tune has the rhythm of a Balkan horo dance; it has three beats to a bar, one long followed by two short.

# Posted on January 25th 2008 by martin clarke

Sorry about the 'Barn Dance' category by the way- I decided it was the most general one there was.

# Posted on January 25th 2008 by martin clarke

I see you're fond of your own genius. Is this now more than 5 of your own compositions in a row? Do you actually play anything else? :-/

I'm not knocking the tune, but I can hear a scurrying in the background, so get behind something quick...

# Posted on January 25th 2008 by ceolachan

Most of the tunes I know and love are already posted!

It is the fourth one in a row* but it is a while since I've posted anything at all. If anyone objects to me posting something that I've written I'll happily not do it! Lily the Pict was the last tune I posted that's not my own- I learnt it from Wolfstone's album "Unleashed" and 'tis a great tune in my opinion, but hard!

# Posted on January 25th 2008 by martin clarke

It's just a matter of striking a balance, and reading the FAQs and having enough respect to honour our webmaster's more than reasonable requests... In this case you will have irritated people on two counts, one you might get away with ~

1.) successive submissions of your own 'genius' (not my judgement, said tongue-in-cheek, but I enjoyed playing the tune)

2.) the percieved threat by some of the Balkanization of this site

# Posted on January 25th 2008 by ceolachan

OK well thanks for the advice! I'll make sure I post some 'real' tunes. Whilst this site may gradually become Britain&Ireland-ised I very much doubt it'll stray far from that. This said, undoubtedly folk music from all over the place has plenty of influence, and I think this is a good thing for keeping the tradition of musical innovation in the folk world alive.

Did you ever have a look for any of those mathsy books I mentioned?

# Posted on January 25th 2008 by martin clarke

Yes ~ I've been trawling the waves for them and reading up on them too... It was appreciated, and as I said, I actually enjoyed playing your tune... It's not me doing the 'scurrying'...

"~ may gradually become Britain & Ireland-ised"

~ change that to just 'Ireland' and I think you will have made a clearer statement as to the main focus of the website, with neighbours having a claim of varying degrees, starting with Scotland first and then south to Breizh in ever reducing percentages, and then if you head East, well, the Balkans are at best a pinch of salt, or a splash of Shlivovitz... You know, I could really use a nice Slivovic right now... ;-)

# Posted on January 25th 2008 by ceolachan

"~ may gradually become Britain & Ireland-ised"

~ change that to just 'Ireland'...

I meant "BritainandIreland" as an identity rather than the site's original purely Irish aim. The real question is, can you read The Infinite Book in a finite time period?

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by martin clarke

In truth, if we are open to the full identity of either nation, Ireland and Britain, it surprises me that we don't have more and more Eastern European music coming on board, in particular Polish... They've been with us, along with the Italians and a slew of other multi-nationals, since the World War II... Ragas would be too much. Can you imagine ABC-ing a Raga. My head hurts just contemplating it...

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by ceolachan

The du Sautoy book intrigued me until I read in the Amazon review ~ "Most of the results are handed to us without any proof " ~ Let's not forget what used to get me into trouble. Whether I can or can't fully understand a thing, I want reasons, I need those proofs, or at least to be presented with the possibility of gaining a deeper understanding. I hate being told "it's just so!" I want to know why and how... ;-) The Barrow book will likely be the first purchase... The Stewart book also sounds like fun... ;-)

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by ceolachan

But none of them are going to give you lots of in depth proof because they are, to all intents and purposes, popular science books- they are designed to pose questions and get you interested and thinking for yourself rather than put forward rigourous and technical mathematics. Certainly, the du Sautoy book falls into this category purely because of the ('scuse the pun here) complex nature of the theory involved. Indeed, some of the most fundamental ideas of prime numbers remain to this day unproven, and the book covers the search for answers to these problems carefully and well in my opinion. The Barrow book will make you think lots, and I almost guarantee that if you read Mr. Stewart's book that you will end up trying to strike up maths related conversations with your friends!

Anyway, if I'm getting told off for posting the wrong type of tune people will almost certainly not like me writing about maths on the comments wall! I apologise to anyone who's reading this!

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by martin clarke

7/8s - Not (so far) traditional Irish or UK, but they're great!

Yes, sitting in a Greek restaurant or somewhere, smelling the meat charring on a spit, motor oil frying in the sun, the fragrance of pine and herbs (maybe being set alight somewhere by naughty property speculators) - and someone turns on a radio or disk or even better a band sets up in the square as part of a one-off celebration - perhaps it's Easter; and the clarinet throbs and skirls out over the guitar and accordion and the singer starts up, and it's 7/8 time indeed...

DUM | DUM ti DUM DUM, | DUM ti DUM DUM, | dum-dum ti

dum-dum ti-ti | DUM ti DUM ... |

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by nicholas

I unintentionally posted the above before remarking that in the above rendering of the 7/8 rhythm, words in capitals stand for crotchets, words in lower case for quavers. In the second full bar, and in various other circumstances, the paired crotchets might be joined to make a minim.

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by nicholas

"books- they are designed to pose questions and get you interested and thinking for yourself" ~ mc

~ Yes! ~ and that is something I regularly do to myself, so having someone else make it worse, that's O.K. ~ my favourite books do that to me, besides, I have grown up feeling perplexed and full of unanswered questions.

nicholas, nicholas, the problem is that people will 'say' your "DUM-ti DUM DUM" as 3/4, it's just in their nature, and the language... Worse, your comment about upper and lower cases is going to confuse the hell out of ABC novitiates... ;-)

mc did a good job on this transcription as it is, something others have missed by just lumping all the letters together, for example, mc's transcription ~

~ | GFE DE DC | ~ | 123 12 12 | ~ | long - short - short | ~ | slow - quick - quick | ~

& a slight variation on nicholas's DUMs ~

~ | DUM-ti-duh Dum-ti Dum-ti | ~ but where you went with bars 3 & 4 & ~ :-/ ~

~ | dum-dum ti dum-dum ti-ti | ~

Now, you said your lower (small) case letters were for quavers (= 1/8 / upper case-CAPS = crotchets = 1/4)? So, this bar/measure is what, 18/8? ~ or, using your "DUM-ti" ~ dum = crotchet (1/4) & ti = quaver (1/8), so, 11/8? :-/ Too much retsina of the cheap variety I fear. You know there's lead in the cheap stuff, and sometimes antifreeze...

No, please don't strike me off your party list, it's the back pain making me do this... ;-)

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by ceolachan

I could have sworn I heard scurrying in the background. Where's slainte and Kenny and all the rest? :-/

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by ceolachan

~ | dum-dum ti dum-dum ti-ti | ~

Words in lower and upper case, ahhhh! :-D Is your spring sprung yet? So, it's 7/8, so no difference between the "dum" or the "ti" when it is all lower case... "dum-dum" = "ti-ti" = hee hee = ha ha ~ but not quite ho-ho-ho, one too many ho-s!!!

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by ceolachan

Coloured Knots ~

So mc, can you give us some links to some coloured knots?

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by ceolachan

C, did you intend that frankly awful topological pun there?

http://www.popmath.org.uk/exhib/pagesexhib/colour1.html

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by martin clarke

Beethoven wrote his Erotica, I'm going to write my Exotica

I like the | 123 12 12 | way of describing 7/8.

I'll have to make some tunes up in this! The Roman poet Horace patted himself on the back (not unfairly) for being the one who -

"Princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos / deduxisse modos..."

" - was the first to put Greek song into Latin measures..."

though what he actually did strikes me as being more the other way round - he wrote Latin poetry in Greek measures / rhythms.

With such an august forerunner for inspiration, when more appropriate than now to bring in the 7/8s, with an olive grove growing in Devon and the North Sea filling up with octopi? And they're so much more user-friendly than those things with time signatures in prime numbers which Andy Irvine etc. liberated from Rumania / Bulgaria / Macedonia...

Contemporary church songbooks contain at least one well-known 7/8 (The Calypso Carol), and one or two more crop up in this rhythm.

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by nicholas

Calypso Carol

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by martin clarke

I love it guys, and the coloured knots ~ lovely!!! Hey Martin, I forgot to tell you that I had forwarded your recommendations to others, including me da...

Calypso eh? ~ now we could be crossing on thin ice...

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by ceolachan

All this is fine Martin, but in a pinch can you tie a bowline or a reversed half-hitch? 8-)

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by ceolachan

Calypso Carol

Martin, I imagine you're right, though I might have had another tune in mind. It seems to me that these syncopated 8/8s and 7/8s can slip from one rhythm into the other / be confused with each other quite readily! Next time I hear what sounds like a 7/8 song, I'll try and listen hard to see if it isn't really an 8/8.

# Posted on January 26th 2008 by nicholas