Tuesday, February 06, 2018

Hmm, that's odd

I find myself lined up to pipe at a wedding in June of this year in the USA. As a consequence of this, I thought it would be quite nice to play something suitable American for the event, and while the "Star Spangled Banner" doesn't work terribly well on the pipes (due to the range of notes available), "America the Beautiful" should indeed work.

Or so I thought.

The thing is, while I've found sheet music for the tune easily enough, and although that music seems to match up with the way I'd expect the tune to be played, all the videos I've found of people playing the tune are at odds with this - there's a High-A being played where the sheet music shows a High-G. And as a consequence it all sounds really weird, and obviously wrong.

I suppose it's possible that Sinatra just sang it wrong, and that the tune should indeed have that High-A. But that really doesn't feel right, given how obviously wrong that High-A sounds in that context.

I dunno. It's just odd.

Anyway, the upshot is that I'm going to learn it the way that the music says, and if anyone questions it I'll just blame Frank.

No comments: