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"Londonderry Air"
Arranged & Produced: 2006 Jun 15 / Mixed: 2008 Dec 10
I arranged this beautiful Irish traditional tune when I was
collecting a number of tunes from more than a century ago, and trying to learn them.Those tunes included Greensleeves, Home On The Range, Santa Lucia, Sag Vreneli, and so on.
Londonderry Air, an Northern Ireland anthem, is the tune to which the Danny Boy lyrics were written. As the name suggests, it supposedly originates from the county of Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and it first appeared in the book published as The Ancient Music of Ireland in 1855. It's sometimes also called Derry Air, reflecting the Derry-Londonderry name dispute.
I recorded this arrangement in June 2006, with a K-Yairi acoustic guitar. The guitar had Martin steel strings, which is part of the reason you hear relatively large amount of noise from my left-hand fingers sliding over the strings. It was only after this recording that I started using the coated Elixir strings.
I'm quit fond of the compositional technique called contrary motion. I use it in many places in my works, as it also appears in this arrangement. The image on the right is from the 6th measure. The bottom note(B) moves downward into F# in the next bar, while the top note(D#) moves upward into G#. (It's in the key of E, hence the F# and G#.) This creates a motion of notes moving in opposite directions, like the top one moving up and the bottom one moving down.At Berklee, I had many interesting teachers, among them Al Defino whose lectures on reharmonizing techniques were always impressive. I can't help remembering him when I'm handling contrary motion.
Score
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(Continued from the left column)Let me talk some more about the technical aspects on this arrangement. The image on the right is from the 4th measure and it shows the use of harmony of 6th interval.
On the first 8th note are F# and D# from the bottom. (Again, it's in the key of E, hence the #s.) The interval between these two notes is called 6th, due to counting the notes from the bottom up, diatonically - F#, G#, A, B, C# and D#. If F# is 1, then the D# is the 6th, so the interval between the two is the 6th.
The 6th is one of the intervals that can be used continuously. In this example it's used for 3 contiguous beats of 8th note, and it doesn't sound too repetitive or artificial, as the other intervals like the 4th or 5th does when used continuously.
The 3rd interval is much like the 6th, and it can also be used continuously. In fact the 3rd interval is the inversion of the 6th. Let's take an example in the key of C. If you take a C note and a E note above the C, and count the notes from the bottom, it would be C, D and E. This is the 3rd interval. And if you take that C note an octave higher and then count it from the bottom, it would be E, F, G, A, B and C, constituting the 6th interval. Therefore the 6th interval is the reversed 3rd interval, and vice versa.
Actually, in the previous example we've just seen in the left column uses the continuous use of the 3rd interval. See the higher two notes are in the 3rd interval and stay in the same proportion for the 3 beats of 8th note, and into the next bar? They start out as B and D#, the 3rd interval, and goes on to become E and G# which is still the 3rd interval.
The 10th interval, which is the 3rd interval plus an octave, can be used continuously too. This example from the measure 11 uses the 10th interval. The first two notes are B and D#, from the bottom, and they keep the 10 interval for 4 beats. (The last two notes, F natural and G#, are the augmented 9th interval and minor 10th interval at the same time.)Read in Japanese