by Mark
(Texas)
You gave advice on finding chords matching the note in the first or third beat of the measure.
I tried this on the "The Road North" by Alisdair Fraser but failed.
Would love to know why, and what the chords for this tune are.
Dana: Hi, Mark! I went to YouTube and listened to this version of The Road North, with a "drone" background - it is very beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FRwMxUfdWw
The background "chord" isn't really a chord, but an unchanging "drone" based on the A chord... you could simply hum an "A" or have a fiddler continuously bow an "open" A chord, which is just an A and E together. If you are a guitarist, you could pluck the notes of an A chord, leaving out the "C#."
As for the melody, it seems to be based on a Mixolydian scale... that is neither major nor minor, but the same kind of sounds you would get playing a G to G with all white notes in the scale. However, in this case, the musicians have chosen to overlay that scale on A to A, which requires the Fs to be F#.
About a minute and a half into the video, the chords begin to break away from the all-drone sound and add D and G chords. That makes sense; the D chord family is D, G, and A.
I haven't yet listened to the whole recording - I have a tendency to get really sucked into music, and I need to get some work done tonight, but if you have further questions, feel free to reach out.
By the way, the first melody note is an E, which is part of the A chord.
Good question!