Oh, Maggie

It's been a while since my last post here, so, I thought

I'd better get typing...

November was a good month, and a busy month for RMPB...

a successful fundraiser... a few good practices... a

few good parties... a few good shuffleboard tournaments...

I thought I'd continue with the "Drum Score of the Month"

series by featuring a tune from our new MSR...

Maggie Cameron!

We're playing this classic strathspey between Miss

Elspeth Campbell and The Rejected Suitor; all new tunes to

the band this season.

Maybe surprisingly, this is the first time I've written a

score for this tune, although I did play the Duthart

score with Alberta Caledonia for a few years in the early

2000's. In fact, you can hear the AlCal version on the

2000 and 2001 Worlds albums. I just had a quick listen to

the '01 recording, and was pleasantly surprised; not a bad

version of the score, actually! I hear lots of little

problems that show the inexperience much of the corps

had at the time, ie- mushy accented roll patterns, and very

little unison playing on the fortes (lots of lead-only

playing). You can also hear "chickenshit" roll endings in

a few spots. A chickenshit roll ending is where a roll is

supposed to end strong, but players worry so much about

missing the end of the roll that they "chicken out",

thinking that they'll be able to hide if they miss it.

Trust me, it doesn't work! Play the damn roll!

Even worse is when you hear drummers do it on the attack:

ZZZZZZZZZZZZut....... ZZZZZZZZZZZZut. Oh, man.

Anyways, the '01 performance was nae bad in the end, and,

for a band that usually struggles with their strathspey

playing, that was quite a good one. Believe me... there

was a lot of heart and soul in that performance. Just now

was the first time I've listened to it in a long time,

and it brought back some great memories!

Speaking of the Duthart arrangement for Maggie Cameron...

if you don't know it... learn it. It's one of the great

old drum scores that every drummer should know.

Ok,

Maggie Cameron is a beautiful strathspey. We don't know

who wrote it (I guess that makes it "trad"), but it's been

published many times. The earliest published version I can

find is in James Scott Skinner - The Strathspey King's -

"Harp & Claymore Collection" published in 1904. Skinner

was a dancer and fiddler, and his hand written manuscript

for Maggie Cameron was marked with the phrase

"Pipe Strathspey for Violin". However, only the first two

parts were published in this collection.

Maggie, herself, was actually Margaret MacKenzie, wife of

the great 19th century piper Donald Cameron. Donald was

employed as piper to Sir James Wemyss MacKenzie at his

home, Rosehaugh, on the Black Isle north of Inverness.

Margaret was a maid at Rosehaugh and married Donald in

1841. Donald later became piper to Seaforth at Brahan

Castle and a highly decorated solo competitor. It's not

known, however, if he composed the great strathspey that

honors his wife.

I have a personal theory that this was in fact a two part

tune, with the 3rd and 4th parts added some time later. The

first two parts have wonderful 8 beat phrase patterns which

is not common in strathspeys. Most strathspeys follow a

strong-weak-medium-weak 4 beat phrase pattern with

the strong beat 1 giving definition to each bar. Composers

tend to add contrast from one bar to the next, with an almost,

"call and answer" style of phrasing (think Arniston Castle,

Athole Cummers, Blair Drummond...). A few strathspeys,

however, lend themselves better to an 8 beat phrase

(S-W-M-W-M-W-M-W); less emphasis on beat 1 of bars

2 and 4, in other words. Maggie Cameron follows this pattern

beautifully for the first 2 parts, not for the last 2 parts. I also

hear this phrase pattern in a few other strathspey: Bob of

Fettercairn and Susan MacLeod to name a couple.

My objectives in writing this score were, obviously, to match

these phrase patterns in the tune. The first 2 parts are

played as 2 bar phrases, the 3rd and 4th parts played as one

bar phrases.

I won't go into every aspect of drum score composition

here, ie- dynamics, tension and release, and the rest of it...

that should be an aspect of every drum score. I'm just

touching on a couple things that were very specific to this

tune when I wrote it.

The other main focus of mine (after defining the phrases)

was separating the groupings. It's so important in a

strathspey to keep each individual triplet grouping "clean"

with a wee bit of space between them. When we refer to a

band playing strathspeys "too round", it has a little to do

with the interpretation of the dotted 1/8th and a lot to do

with the lack of separation between beat groupings. We

don't want our triplet grouping to sound like:

tu-ku-tu-tu-ku-tu-tu-ku-tu-tu-ku-tu, we want

tukutu-tukutu-tukutu-tukutu. It's that separation that

gives this simple time signature a compound feel. (This also

probably explains the lack of open work and straight ahead

singles in the score).

Cheers!

...'til next time,

-Ryan.