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General and Technical Notes for This Collection
- Why these tunes: A long time ago (I think in 1977), when I was living in the Washington DC area, I happened to go to a "Kalevala Festival" at the Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University. Among the various performances was a series of folk dances done to recorded music. Afterwards I went backstage to talk to the woman who obviously ran the dance group, and suggested that live music would be much more effective. Had I known who I was talking to, I might have said otherwise. Eira Mattsson was a force to be reckoned with, and I was in for a long stint of playing accordion for the performances of the Finlandia Foundation DC chapter's little band of folk dancers, as part of the "Kalevala Combo," along with Eira's husband Nils on mandolin and her son Erik (Erkki) on clarinet. She had arranged medleys of simple Finnish songs for the dancers, and I arranged others.
Later, I went on to more complex Finnish tunes under the influence of accordionist Fred Aalto when my folk dance band, The Peascods Gathering, began hosting a couple of decades of monthly Scandinavian folk dances. We even played for a few of the Finlandia Foundation's Johannes (Midsummer) dinner celebrations, and perhaps it was my yearly jumping over the kokko (the Midsummer bonfire) that cemented this music into my psyche.
The tunes on this page come from both of these experiences.
At the celebration of Trevor and Anu's marriage, attended by Anu's many colleagues, friends and relatives, I had the pleasure of playing three "classics" -- Metsäkukkia, Säkkijärven Polkka, and Heili Karjalasta, to a very enthusiastic and receptive audience. It was obvious that familiarity with any aspect of Finnish culture on the part of Americans (other than perhaps Marimekko) was considered unusual by these Finns.
- Words: A large proportion of these tunes are songs, some traditional and others modern compositions. However, the ABC protocol used to produce the music on this site has no way of showing words and music together, so words are shown on a separate song words page. So far, I have access to only a few sets of words, but will add more if and when I find them or people send them to me (atlee at wam dot umd dot edu).
- ABC: ABC notation is a method of expressing music using a code of simple letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. It is probably the most efficient way to store written music, particularly the relatively simple music of the folk tradition; hence the large collections of such music on the Internet (e.g., John Chambers's tune finder at MIT). There are a number of computer programs (lists are here and here) available for translating the ABC code into sheet music or sound, or both. An excellent tutorial (actually, a reference) also exists.
- Mechanism: Finnish tunes that were part of the Peascods Gathering Scandinavian collection I have transcribed this into Jim Vint's Win2ABC program (screenshot). This program is the primary reason I maintain a Windows partition on my Mac:
- it is the only ABC program I've been able to find on Mac or Windows that produces elegantly simple and attractive printed output, which I've used with a particular set of print settings to generate screen-shot "sheet music" files, linked in the table below as "sheet."
- it interfaces well with Henrik Norbek's ABCMus program (screenshot) to produce serviceable "midi" (sound) output good enough to give a sense of the tune and check for transcription errors, for which I used a particular set of settings. (Note: MIDI -- "musical instrument digital interface" -- files (linked in the table below as "play") are computer-generated sound files that aren't beautiful renditions, but are convenient and compact in size.)
The files linked below are the output of these programs -- ABC2Win for the abc and sheet files, and ABCMus for the play files.
- Tempo: The MM tempo recommendations in the abc files are reflected in the play files. These tempos are the ones at which I would feel comfortable dancing. I am told that Finns like to dance polkkas fast, and that jenkkas are modern schottisches that are danced faster. I had to leave Helsinki on my one visit there before I could observe this firsthand, so (with apologies to the fast lane) I've tended here to fall back on my own preference for more leisurely tempos.
- Fixing the files: As good as the ABC2Win and ABCMus programs are, they each have quirks that affect the way the abc/sheet files look and the play files sound. This note is only of interest to those interested in working technically with the tunes.
The "Fix" -- In such a situation, I apply a "fix." This involves creating a "playback" version of the abc file to produce a correctly playable sheet file and/or a play file whose melody is correct or whose rhythm sounds best. In such a case, the play link is the fixed playback version and has an asterisk next to it. In the table's Fix-related column you will find the playback version's abc and sheet files and the unfixed version's play file.
- Ties: ABCMus plays tied notes as separate notes, which can be a real problem where ties are needed for the correct sound. Sometimes this can be fixed by creating a playback version of the tune, but when a tie crosses a measure line or a chord change, it can't be fixed. So to understand what a tune should actually sound like (i.e., where two shorter notes should be actually be a single longer note), it is helpful to look at the sheet version while listening to the play version.
- Rhythm: ABCMus handles backing rhythm well for many tunes; for others, not so well -- particularly a failure to provide the kind of upbeats that make a tune danceable. In a few cases, this can be fixed by "lying" to ABCMus about what kind of a tune it is. 2/4 tunes generally play well, but for most 4/4 tunes (marches, humppas) and hoijakka polskas (3/4), a 2/4 version of the "fix" has to be applied.
- Third/Fourth endings and returned-to parts: Most of the tunes consist of several parts, each repeated. These parts often have two different endings. Occasionally the whole part, with two different endings. To save writing the whole part out twice, it's convenient to mark the two endings as "1,3" and "2,4." ABC2Win does not support this convention. In other cases, the ending for the last time through a piece is different from all the others, or a part other than the last is repeated to end the tune (where a "D.C. al fine" or "D.S. al fine" is used). ABC notation doesn't support this. In such cases, the "fix" involves including all the necessary material, repetitive though it may be.
- Chords: (not yet provided) Chords are available under the "Crd" column. Over the years I've encountered string rhythm players who have difficulty reading chords from plain sheet music when the chords aren't strictly one per measure, with every measure's chord written out. So I've developed a simple format with chord letters shown between measure lines -- e.g. | Am | E7 |. In cases where there are two chords in a measure, if this only occurs a couple of times in a piece I simply cram them into the measure. But if the piece is characterized by such patterns, I include dashes in all single-chord measures to indicate a repeat of that chord -- e.g. | Am ‑ | Am E7 |.
The chords are available in two formats: Print format (PDF) and -- for those whose browsers don't immediately render PDF files -- a Screen format (PNG graphic).
- Extras: Occasionally it is useful to have a tune presented in another way, which can be linkded from the Extra column. For example, the tune might be danced at a different speed. Or, Scandinavian tunes often have multiple repeats or repeats of long sections, which are unnecessary if you're just trying to get a sense of the tune; such tunes would be linked as "no-rpts."
- Online live performances: I have tried to find live performances of these tunes online, whether instrumental or vocal, and have linked them to the tunes' names, or to a "vocal" annotation. Where there are quite a few, I've chosen the one that most clearly illustrates the tune, or is just plain delightful. I've also provided links in the section headers to videos of Finns doing the dances. If you know of online renditions of tunes not linked here, please let me know (atlee at wam dot umd dot edu)
- Note on Finnish introspective standoffishness: Two views -- CBS and FreeHugs.
- Finlandia Foundation Capital Chapter: The organization's site -- http://finlandiafoundationdc.org -- has a Google warning saying it may contain malware to attack your computer. I'm not sure what's going on there, but for now, better safe than sorry. . . .
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