I’m delighted to say that Dr David McGuinness from the University of Glasgow will be speaking at the International Centre for Music Studies on Wednesday the 3rd October, at 4pm in the Armstrong Building on:

 

Bass culture in Scottish fiddle music from 1750

 

Writers in pop songwriting teams can find themselves categorised either as topline (melody and lyrics) or as production (arrangement and grooves), with a smaller group of composers who successfully do both. In traditional music in Britain, it is generally the topline which receives serious consideration from scholars, and which is considered to carry the ‘traditional’ content. Paradoxically, this can exempt it from commerce as ‘trad.’, resulting in the opposite of the pop music model, where the topline and lyrics are most likely to have copyright protection. This paper traces bass traditions (arrangement and grooves) in Scottish fiddle music through written and printed sources and into the recording era, and it observes the interaction of these traditions with those of the topline.