SHOUTING: the lost episodes

[Arnold Zwicky]

mark mandel, about fasola singing:
 >Actually, the first three notes of the major scale are "do, re, mi",
 >as made ineluctably famous by Rodgers & Hammerstein + Julie Andrews
 >in the song of that title from "The Sound of Music", beginning
 >"Do(e): a deer".  If you start a scale with fa you get the Lydian
 >mode.

i'm amused that you would presume to lecture a long-time participant
in a tradition you know nothing about on the technical details of that
tradition.  i was reporting, absolutely accurately, how things work in
Sacred Harp singing.  if you think i have reported things
inaccurately, check out our website, http://www.fasola.org.  note the
same of the organization.  or i could arrange for you to get a copy of
the 1991 edition of the Sacred Harp (Denson Revision), the book we
sing from, which has an excellent compact introduction to the
rudiments of music *in our tradition*.

i suppose this is just like people refusing to believe that other
dialects work differently from their own and helpfully "correcting"
the "mistakes" that others make.

the major scale in Sacred Harp music goes fa so la fa so la mi fa
(and the minor scale goes la mi fa so la fa so la, with the seventh
*not* sharped, and, especially if you're a southern singer, the
sixth usually sharped).  period.  that's just the way it is.

there are several different singing traditions that use different
books but share the four shapes.  and there are still other
traditions, including several black ones, that use a seven-shape
system of the do-re-mi sort.  there used to be a mennonite shape-note
tradition, with the songs in german.  enough variation here to give
pleasure to any student of culture.

meanwhile, stop telling your grandfather how to suck eggs.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)