Download Number 2 - American Nyckelharpa Association

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Nyckel Notes Oct 1995 4 Tierpspolskan (excerpt) & # 4 3 ≤ j œ ≥ œ ≤ œ. ≥ œ œ . ≤ œ ≥ œ œ œ œ ≤ ≥ . œ œ. ≤ œ œ œ. œ œ. œ œ. œ œ. œ œ. œ 3 Gärdebylåten (excerpt) & # ≥ ≤ # 2 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ≤ ≥ œ œ œ œ œ œ ≥ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ≤ œ œ œ œ Byggnan (excerpt) & b 4 3 œ ≥ œ œ œ œ ≤ œ œ œ ≥ œ œ œ œ œ ≤ œ œ œ ≥ œ œ œ œ œ ≤ œ œ œ The bow should touch the string you’re playing about halfway between the bridge and the end of the keybox. An excellent way to practice moving the bow in a straight line and keeping it at the proper place on the string is to play in front of a mirror. Find a comfortable playing position, then watch your bow as you play. Play open strings as a start: without worrying about what the left hand is doing, you’ll have more concentration available to watch the bow. Most people play with the bow leaning (rotated along its axis) away from the bridge. This gives you better control of the hair’s force against the string, and helps keep the bow from bouncing. Moving from string to string Of the nyckelharpa’s four strings, you play one at a time or, occasionally, two. To move from one string to another, your arm changes its position and your wrist and hand change the angle of the bow. This is easier than it sounds, and becomes one uniform set of motions rather than individual conscious actions. You can practice this while you’re making the bow go straight, too. Move from string to string and learn where the bow should be to play only that string and not its neighbors. Articulating notes with the bow Many Swedish fiddlers and nyckelharpa players play with very light bow force but apply extra force (from the right hand’s fingers) at the beginning of each note. This gives a light, singing tone and accents the rhythm; it also helps with string crossings - notes on different strings played with the same bow stroke. The muscle skills to do this are subtle and take some development. If you’re relatively new to bowed instruments, they’ll take some time. Don’t worry too much about it, but experiment with bow force, how it affects the sound you make, and how you can use extra force to mark the start of each note. Bowing patterns It is with the bow that you play the rhythm of a tune, thereby lifting up the dancers and moving them around the floor. Playing fluidly and rhythmically makes the difference between a tune and a random bunch of notes. Slurring - playing multiple notes on the same bow stroke - is a powerful tool for rhythmic expression, based on when the slurs occur and which notes are slurred. There are some basic bowing patterns in Swedish music. We’ll look here at two of the most common. The polska bowing turns up in eighth-note polskas: hambo, Uppland (Viksta) bondpolska, Boda polska, to name a few. The bow "dances" in time to the
Nyckel Notes Oct 1995 5 music: down-stroke on beat 1, up-stroke on beat 2, down and then up on beat 3. The fragment of the common tune Tierpspolska illustrates this. Of course, some measures of some eighth-note polska tunes don’t fit this pattern - maybe there are too few distinct notes for all those bow strokes - so you won’t use it 100% consistently. Still, you should be able to play it without thinking about it, to use it as the base pattern that you’ll vary as the notes of the tune warrant. (On the musical examples, a curved line extending over two or more notes is a slur, indicating that those notes are played with the same bow stroke. The square symbol above a note denotes the bow frog and indicates the note should be played with a stroke that starts at the frog, i.e., a down bow; the "V" symbol above a note denotes the bow tip and means an up bow. And the funny dots and lines are musical notation describing the tune.) The second common bow figure applies to a group of four sixteenth notes, a pattern common to sixteenth-note polskas (southern slängpolska, some Hälsingland polskas), schottisches, walking tunes, but found in other tune types as well. This bowing slurs the first two notes, then plays the last two with individual strokes. The example phrases, of the common walking tune Gärdebylåten and the sixteenth-note polska Byggnan, show this. Other bowing patterns exist and are used. There are even other common ways to play the example phrases. But the two discussed here are worth knowing, to the extent that you can automatically play an eighth-note polska with the polska bowing, or automatically play a group of four sixteenths as two slurred, two separate. Then you can apply your concentration to higher-level issues. Hints for practicing Every aspect of nyckelharpa technique is suitable for practice: bowing, bow patterns, scales, arpeggios, string changes, double stops, and so on. If you're like me, exercises wear thin after a while. But all of these are used in making music, so it's only logical that you can practice technique by choosing some tunes that exercise the relevant skills. If you're practicing polska bowing, play every eighth-note polska you know with consistent bowing. For string crossings, take applicable phrases and slow them down and play them over and over (the second and third parts of Spelmansglädje, for example). For left-hand position shifts, choose a tune that gives you trouble and spend a half hour with the intent of learning it rather than just playing it. In future columns There's a lot more left to cover. Trills and other ornaments. Choosing, playing, and articulating double stops. Left-hand technique for position changes. Tunes that sound difficult but aren't so bad. Tunes that sound simple but are difficult. We shall see where this all leads. Odds and Ends (A column devoted to cooperative self-help among geographically isolated nyckelharpa players.) by Mel Meer For this quarterly feature we invite nyckelharpa players to share their solutions to the inevitable problems of tuning, fixing, sources for supplies, etc. Some of what works for other bowed instruments works for us; some does not. Send your ideas for sharing what has worked for you to Mel Meer 2510 Oak Circle Bryan TX 77802 scandia@tam2000.tamu.edu If you’re tuning impaired, as I am, you probaby are using a tuning machine to get the nyckelharpa into shape for playing. I use a Korg DT1 chromatic tuner which I've had around for many years. You'll know how many when I tell you that I paid about $40 for it. It's always worked flawlessly, but now it costs just under $100 if you shop around. It's exactly the size of a music cassette box, and works with LED's (LED = light emitting diode = tiny red light). A pair of LED's surrounds the center position when you're tuned exactly to the note, the name of which is lit up by another LED. Why all this LED talk you ask? Well, when Bart Brashers first suggested the Eric Sahlström tuning method (which worked wonders for my harpa) remember the suggestions of a "tad" high and a "bit" low? Now Bart tells us that a "tad" is 2 cents. A "bit" is 4 cents. Perhaps 6 cents is a "smidgen"? Most tuning machines can't resolve these small variations with any accuracy. But the Korg can. It has a long row of LED's. Only the center pair lights when you're exactly "well-tempered" tuned. The next pair of LED's gives the exact 2 cents mark either up or down, the next 4 cents, and the next 6 cents. The LED's are very small but the arrangement seems quite accurate and the tuning impaired (have you
Page 1 and 2: January 1996 Number 2 Nyckel Notes
Page 3: Nyckel Notes Oct 1995 3 Spela Bätt
Page 7 and 8: Nyckel Notes Oct 1995 7 Sahlström
Page 9 and 10: Nyckel Notes Oct 1995 9 a harpa fir
Page 11: Nyckel Notes Oct 1995 11 Jun (?) 19

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