Folk dance music with improvisations

Når vandet fryser (Freezing Waters)

Niels Mejlhede Jensen, Bøgeløvsvej 4, 2830 Virum, Denmark. e-mail (web master)

Old tune used for folk dancing in Denmark 1999 arranged with improvisations

CONTENTS: (remember: you can use Ctrl Home in usual browsers to get to the top of this page, to the links here)

Dance of the week 1999 April 12: Når vandet fryser (Freezing Waters), 3 corner dance
Dance description, will open on a new page, in a new window, so that this window with music is kept behind
Music description (you stay on this page)
Performing proposals (new page, in a new window, with this window behind)
Music scores for C, A , Bb, Eb, F, and bass instruments (to text on this page)
(c1, c2), (a1, a2), (b1, b2), (e1, e2), (f1, f2), (bass1, bass2); (note sheet will open on a new page, help here)

Photo of chain in 3 corner dance

Photo 1 of this week: A tuesday evening dance with Spillemandsdansen (Fiddlers' dance) at the Technical University. Musicians are in the middle of the ballroom, in the middle of the dance. We here have the chain in a 3 corner dance: when you meet your partner in the chain you give your partner a left arm hook and turn around your partner and walk the opposite way back home with a normal hand chain.

Photo of two step in 3 corner dance

Photo 2 of this week: after the chain phrase in the 3 corner dance, there are couple wise two steps (= pivot) in the small circle of 3 couples.

A little story:

Frozen water in taps is a problem many knew of in my childhood countryside with occasional hard winters. Frozen water in the drinking troughs for the hens and some other domestic animals. Frozen water pipes, because winter again came one night, and you were late in getting prepared for it, hoping that the winter should be mild. Or previously: frozen outdoor hand pump by the well, despite it was packed with straw.
But frozen waters were also of benefit. Then there was access to and across swampy areas. With better possibilities to improve the area for use also the rest of the year. With access to exploit the swamps, like e.g. harvest reeds for thatched roofs.
Winter could be a tough period to go through with poor houses and lack of energy (see the old story in Danish dialect language).
With the oil crisis we in 1974 feared that frozen water taps could again get to be a problem of the daily life in cold winters. But then the Technical University came forward with their big salvation programme: the Zero Energy House. A one family solar energy house that needed no energy supply for heating. But this showed to be a big fiasco: the house would in all the winter be cold as the old-time unheated dance room of the better farm house, where only energetic folk dancing gave the heating. (Two of the guest researchers living in the Zero Energy House came to join our folk dancing during their months in Denmark).

Photo of soil investigation from the sea ice cover Photo 3: Benefit of frozen waters now a days: together with a colleague I am here performing a geotechnical investigation of the soil of the sea bottom off the coast of Denmark, by drilling into the soil from the ice covering the sea. So the winter with frozen water can also be useful now a days, to make this engineering work much easier and more economical.

Dance of the week, 1999, April 12:

Når vandet fryser.

(English: "Freezing Waters").
Dance of 3 couples.
Music and dance from Denmark

The melody can be heard in midi on computer piano in my tempo (if you have a sound card). (The melody will loop here until you stop it. In the table below it will play once). (I have not played the tunes here with the "drive" I want for dance music).

Music description:

The music notes are written as a score of 12 staves on one A3 page = two A4 pages side by side (= an open A4 book).
Place the two note sheets side by side. Then staff 1 (= melody) on the left page continues as staff 1 on the right page.
The 12 staves:

1	melody		the traditional good dancing melody, polished through generations of use on the fiddle
.	chord text	Midi metronome: dotted crotchet = 90 crotchet = 135	simple (folk music) chords, natural for playing the accordion; these chords are used to make the other parts or voices in triad harmony; there should be no tension from dissonance anywhere including in octave
2	A		(Above), parallel part nearest above in third or little more above
3	B		(Below), parallel part nearest below in third or little more below
4	ns		simple n part; often with the tonic feeling and often with the basic dance rhythm ("motor part")
5	C1		C parts are made from A and B parts, and so they are two parts to the melody
6	C2		C2 is less simple than C1
7	mod = contra part		voice up and down (mostly) contra to the melody; it is also made from A and B
8	n1		n is a less constricted part, and tones from the melody are freely included
9	C1		octave down
10	n1		octave up
11	B		octave up
12	blank	.	blank staff for making your own part according to the principles here

(The midi music is not repeated, except for 1' and 2' voltas).
Use also octave, up and down.
Where wanted, notes can be changed according to the principles (use a colour pencil), e.g. to improve the B part with some notes from A.
The music is aimed at dancing, so part of the orchestra can be the underlying "motor" when another instrument group is playing its "solo" part (improvisation) as one of the many repetitions.
The double bass may play its usual notes, because of its low pitch.

It is better to choose a more simple part and play it well.

Accordion: beats per bar: 2+2 on beat 1, 3, 4, 6, where 3 and 6 are light chord beats, (to "lift" you over to the immediate following marked beat on the single bass).
(It is not a song with only 1+1 beats per bar, and it is not a waltz with 2 x (1+2) beats per bar).
I find it very OK with 2 beats per bar (for two steps and walking steps) with 2 almost alike beats.

Music scores:

Each score consists of 2 pages: page left and page right. They are given on separate pages with links on the top of this page (use Ctrl Home to go to the top). The links are repeated here:
(c1, c2), (a1, a2), (b1, b2), (e1, e2), (f1, f2), (bass1, bass2)
When you click a link the music note sheet will (should) open as a new page on top of this main page, so that you can easily return to this main page. And you can easily open 2 windows of note pages to have both the left and right page in smaller windows, the right below the left.

(Help coming back from that note sheet: CLICK the note sheet to come back to this page, or just close the note window.
Remember: the note sheet opens in a new separate window, and that may cover the whole screen. The back button in the tools bar does probably not work because the window is new, with no history. All you see on the page are notes because I have placed no link back here for not disturbing easy submitting to the printer. Close the note window with a click at the top or with Alt F4, or minimize or reduce the window, or ..., and you are back to the main page that was there behind all the time).