Author: debfiddle

Deborah is a violinist and violist specialising in English folk music. She trained in viola and Baroque viola at Birmingham Conservatoire, before returning to her first love of traditional music, song and dance. Deborah has developed a passion for playing for dancing since joining her first ceilidh band at age 13. She is a member of Stepling, a band performing English music, step-dance, song and percussion, and also plays with Folk Dance Remixed, a dance company combining traditional dance with hip hop and street dance styles, with whom she has performed as such events as Car Fest, the Southbank's Festival of Love and Glasgow's Commonwealth Games Festival. Deborah records on a regular basis for a number of people, including The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra, and for Laurel Swift's 'Travelling with Thomas' musical. She teaches music, song and dance regularly for The English Folk Dance and Song Society, as well as on a freelance basis for various workshop series, festivals and music services. Deborah recently completed The Teaching Musician MA degree course at Trinity Laban, graduating with Distinction.

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:

Swanton Abbot Hornpipe

A tune from Norfolk, the Swanton Abbot Hornpipe (originally just called Hornpipe) collected by George Watson in the late 1800s. There is a nice write up on the Village Music Project website about the Watson collection, for anyone who’s interested.

swanton abbotDownload

You’ll notice that the chords don’t resolve the D at the end of each section – this is on purpose! We often think of a 32 bar tune as being just that but in reality the tune will be played four or five times in a row, and so the constant return to the tonic key at the end of each section can become somewhat tedious. While we won’t use the G chords every time, this serves as a reminder to think of the whole arc of the repeated tune and not just the short, written down tune that we see in the notation.

Here’s a fantastic version of the tune by Nick Wyke and Becki Driscoll

https://nickwykeandbeckidriscoll.bandcamp.com/track/george-watsons-hornpipe

And a very different version by Dave Shepherd:

UPDATE:

Here’s a PDF of the accompaniment pattern, with its stereo effect:

swanton abbot w harmDownload

and a video of the accompaniment alone (beginning) and with the tune (from 1:46) – my phone hasn’t picked up the pattern very well, but you can hear it in places.