The Red House Reel

A classic dance tune The Red House Reel – I know this from a Jimmy Shand album (as per the video below), but it’s earliest collection appears to be in the 9th edition of the Playford Collection 1695. It was used in a range of theatrical productions in the 1700s, with more info available here on the invaluable tunearch.org website. It has various titles in English, Scots and Welsh and there are both major and minor versions, showing it to be a very popular tune that was absorbed into various different traditions.

The tune is often played in G minor, with F#s rather than F naturals, but E minor is also common, either with D#s or D naturals.

We are using the tune to accompany a 40-bar dance and so are playing AABBC – this is also a useful tune for the Eightsome Reel, the beginning and end sections of which are 40 bars long. The tune may be also be played as a 48 bar tune, as AABBCC.

The Red House ReelDownload

The White Cockade

Belated Happy Burns Night! Here is a tune from Scotland called the White Cockade. It doesn’t follow the predictable pattern of some of the tunes we learned, so we sang through the A part (verse) using the Robbie Burns poem The Jolly Beggar’s John Highwayman:

A Highland lad my love was born,
The Lalland laws he held in scorn;
But he still was faithfu’ to his clan,
My gallant, braw John Highlandman.

Sing hey my braw John Highlandman!
Sing ho my braw John Highlandman!
There’s not a lad in a’ the lan’
Was match for my John Highlandman.  etc etc
https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/robertburns/works/the_jolly_beggars_john_highlandman/

Here are the Jacobite words, famously recorded in the 1970s by The Corries:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Scottish_Song/The_White_Cockade

We also tried some upper and lower cuts (ornaments) and tried a slightly different set of chords,

The White CockadeDownload
The White Cockade chordsDownload

Grimstock

New term, new tune! From the 1651 Playford collection, this is Grimstock.

We will explore some more strumming/accompaniment patterns next week. And who can resist a little Pride and Prejudice? There are some lovely videos of this tune on Youtube, I’d recommend having a look, though most are from the historical performance perspective rather than from a folk perspetive!

Wolves a-Howlin’

Here is our tune from the end of the Autumn term, Wolves a-Howlin’, aka Poor Little Darling. It’s a tune that’s spread widely among Deep South and MidWestern fiddlers, with a various versions of the tune present in various different places. I’ve chucked an E chord in here and there for variety but you can here in the first video that the chords are fairly stable and unchanging – this is not uncommon in Old Time and Bluegrass music.

Here’s another version of the tune on mandolin – you can here where it’s the same and where it’s different. Many thanks to David for sending these videos over, both are excellent finds!

Accompaniment patterns for Mynnyd Yr Heliwr

We tried three different accompaniment patterns for our tune, with an alternative set of chords from week one – each player picked a note from each chord, linking them together to create their own personalised part.

Looking at the PDF below, A is the short stabs, B has the overlapping patterns used earlier in the term and C is the feature rhythm for the A section only. All are illustrated with the A section and the notes used are also illustrative, please use your own chosen notes:

mynnyd accompDownload

Tune with new chord sequence:

Mynnyd Yr Heliwr 2Download

Extra task: try playing the tune in a different key, specifically A minor. Why?

1. Many tunes have more than one ‘standard’ key that they tend to be played in, and so being able to switch into a different key is a very useful skill to have in any setting. Examples of this are Cock of the North (G/A/D), Jump at the Sun (Gm/Em) and Mrs McCloud’s (G/A mixolydian).

2. Thinking in terms of intervals rather than in terms of fingerings/notes will make you more flexible as a musician. It’s good for your brain! I don’t expect many of you to be able to get it perfect first time, that’s not how learning music works, but practising this skill will also help to get the tune firmly into your memory banks.

Mr Moore’s Hornpipe

Here’s our tune from Monday 29th, Mr Moore’s Hornpipe. It’s widely used as a Border Morris tune, first (it seems) by the team Boggart’s Breakfast – the tune appears to come from the Thomas Watts manuscript of the late 18th century, from the Peak Forest in Derbyshire (researched by Brian Peters of Glossop). The tune as I know it is a little different from the manuscript,  I think this is most likely the ‘session effect’ where tunes get tweaked and rounded out over time.

Here’s the tune in action, in the dance Lorenz’s Shiny New Butterfly by Sheffield border Morris team Boggart’s Breakfast: