Hi there, Shenlong!
Well, it`s a killer of a question you asked, actually... But being russian myself hopefully I`ll be able to give you some hints...First of all, russian folk music is quite versatile. But a great deal of russian folk music, especially romantic ballads in fact often based on/or is itself gypsy music, to be exact folk music of russian gypsies. In your examples it`s "Dark Eyes" - a gypsy ballad, commonly thought to be a russian folk song.. Well, as I said even if it`s a russian song it often may be based on gypsy music.
In terms of music - first of all, scales:
Most often they use harmonic minor scale in russian folk songs, sometimes mixed with gypsy minor scale or natural minor scale. Or with both. And sometimes it`s just natural minor scale.
Though it`s quite common for a composition to "drift away" into major for a couple of measures and then return back to minor.
Lets take a closer look at the melody of "Valenki"
Say, the key is Dm:
(the number after the note means octave)
F3 E3 E3 D3 Ab2->A2 C2 A#2
Oh my win ter bo ots
A2 A2 B2 C#2 E3 D3 D3
you`re all ol` and worn
( its an approximate translation, of course
Ok, lets take a look at a harmonic scale with the root of D:
D E F G A A# C# D - as you can see, all notes from the melody fit perfectly into this scale, except for the Ab and B...Well, B belongs to natural minor scale and Ab to gypsy minor scale.
Actually, the best choice of the melody to show the use of gypsy scale in russian music would be famous russian folk ( and thieves` ) song "Murka". Almost completely based on gypsy minor scale.
What regards time signatures - most often it`s 2/2, 2/4 and 4/4 in russian folk music, though its not uncommon to use odd meters.
What else - well, you may like to use lots of triplets instead of single notes every now and then - it may somewhat simulate "ballalaika".
Of course there are lots of things Ive not mentioned - mainly because Im not that good at music theory, and partly because nothing comes to mind at the moment. Anyways, I could some research, ask some friends around here who are music theory gurus
if you re interested...
Best regards, Vlad.
