Tag: Scales

Tim Cummings: Tunes in B-minor

Tim Cummings: Tunes in B-minor

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #75, 2015. I have a hunch that you might be familiar with something called fish and chips.  I’m also willing to bet that each time you’ve partaken of that meal, there was a fair bit of salt added, which no doubt enhanced the […]

Tim Cummings:  Tunes in A pentatonic major

Tim Cummings: Tunes in A pentatonic major

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #74, 2015. In the last article in this series, we examined a scale and its associated tunes which contain fewer than the usual seven notes that make up standard Western musical scales. Specifically, we explored a ‘gapped’ scale in A — that is, […]

Tim Cummings: tunes based on a ‘gapped’ A scale

Tim Cummings: tunes based on a ‘gapped’ A scale

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #73, 2014. When people refer to musical scales, they are normally referring to the conventional major or minor, seven-note, “diatonic” scales.  If you’ve been following the recent Piping Today articles on music theory, you’ll know that seven-note scales can also be something other […]

Tunes in the key of A-Major

Tunes in the key of A-Major

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #72, 2014. This article is the third in an on-going series focusing on specific musical keys found in our Scottish piping repertoire.  Having already looked at the two most common musical keys in our light music, D-Major and A-Mixolydian, we’ll now put a […]

Tunes in the key of A-Mixolydian

Tunes in the key of A-Mixolydian

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #71, 2014. In the last issue of Piping Today, we took a close look at the key of D-Major.  That article was the first of what will be a series designed to supplement previous articles1 that painted broader pictures of multiple musical keys2.  […]

Tunes in the key of D-major

Tunes in the key of D-major

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #70, 2014. Piping Today published a series of articles in issues 57, 58, 63 and 64 that addressed the topic of musical keys and how they relate to our music. I understand that some readers have enrolled in therapy since trying to digest […]