RE: [Harp-L] Ashokan Farewell

[Steve Shaw <moorcot@xxxxxxx>]

>On the other hand, there can be beauty in spareness too. I think of the Ashoken Farewell less as a waltz than as an air, and a lot of the old airs pre-date harmonised accompaniment. I like the sound of the >diatonic  (Seydel Melody Maker) for (Southern) American fiddle tunes although it would be really great to have a "diatonic" with BOTH the flatted and sharped sevenths available without having to bend. 
Emily, a lot of slow airs started as songs that were sung unaccompanied, as, for example, in the sean-nós tradition in Ireland. The melody would be highly-ornamented, rhythmically very flexible from verse to verse and replete with pauses and drawn-out phrasing. You might just get away with that in Ashokan first time through, but otherwise there isn't an awful lot to play with unless you add plenty of harmony. You'd just sound as if you were pulling the tune about. There is a version somewhere with words put to it, but it made me clench a certain portion of my anatomy when I heard it!!
Some of those piping tunes with flattened 7ths are best played in second position. The ones with both both Cs and C sharps have me reaching for my D chrom. A valved diatonic would do the trick as well as long as your bends are in good order.  I'm a self-confessed non-overblower and I suspect I'm not alone!