December 2021 – New Ealing Sessions

Jock’s Bear Dance (development)

Our last tune of the year, Jock’s Bear Dance, with an added harmony and rhythmic accompaniment. The purpose of the accompaniment is drive the tune, making it feel lively even though it’s not that fast. Here are the dots (with apologies to the whistle players for the low notes! The video below shows a couple of ways the tune, harmony and rhythmic accompaniment can be played to make an arrangement.

We’re finished for this term now, I hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Year. We’ll return on January 10th – whether this is in person or online remains to be seen, we’ll see what the regulations and recommendations are in the new year.

Jock’s Bear Dance

Here is another French tune that I know as Jock’s Bear Dance, having learned it from fiddler Jock Tyldesley. It also comes up as ‘Branle de Bourgogne’, a branle being a type of dance that dates back to 16th century France. Again, we added turns in places where the melody moves by step or in skips.

jocks-bear-dance Download

La Roulante

Here is Monday 29th November’s tune, La Roulante, by French musician Jean Blanchard. It’s in mixolydian mode, so a major mode with a flattened seventh, in this case D major with C naturals, and has a lovely syncopated feel in the B music. We tried adding turns in places where the melody moves by step or in skips.

Here are the dots, with a PDF and video underneath:

la-roulante Download

About Us

Classes are back at the West London Trade Union Club! We’ll be returning to face to face sessions from September 19th 2022 but we’ll retain the Zoom option for the foreseeable future. Let me know if you’d like a Zoom invite.

If you’ve enjoyed this site, or attended a session and you’re not a yearly subscriber, please consider making a small donation via the Paypal button below (you don’t need a Paypal account to donate).

The Ealing sessions workshops were founded by Laurel Swift in 2000, and the class goes from strength to strength, regularly playing concerts and ceilidhs as the West London Folk Band. Laurel handed the class over to Deb Chalmers in September 2018.

This site is designed to support the class, though of course anyone is welcome to learn the tunes and post questions.

Where and when? The class is held upstairs at West London Trade Union Club, 33-35 High Street, Acton, London, W3 6ND. Parking in nearby streets is fairly simple, lots of buses pass the door and Acton Central Overground station is 5 minutes walk.
We meet on Monday evenings, opening at 7:15 for a 7:30 start and finishing at 9:15. Check out the term dates page for dates.

Cost: £11 per night with discounts for yearly and termly subscriptions.

Who comes? Bedroom musicians, beginner musicians, starting-again musicians, younger musicians, late bloomers, musicians that think they can only read the dots, musicians who worry that they can’t read the dots – you are all welcome.

The old website with the videos and tunes is available here.