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. She is a member of Stepling, a band performing English music, step-dance, song and percussion. She also plays for a number of function bands, performing at barn dances and ceilidhs across the UK. Deborah has played with a number of folk artists, dance and theatre projects. She plays with Folk Dance Remixed, a dance company combining traditional dance with hip hop and street dance styles, performing as such events as Car Fest, the Southbank's Festival of Love and Glasgow's Commonwealth Games Festival. She 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. Deborah 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. She is currently studying on The Teaching Musician MA degree course at Trinity Laban.

Kit White’s Camel!

Monday 6th January was our first week back and we covered a range of tunes, starting with the Plane Tree jig and its possibly original 4/4 counterpart Schottishe a Bethanie (video link to the fabulous Mel Biggs of Morai and ‘Pick Up and Play’ fame).  We used this tune as inspiration and the second half of the night was taken up with Kit White’s no.2, which we recapped and then collectively turned from a polka into a jig. 

I’ve roughly notated the various stage we went through to reach the end product; at stage one we played even quavers in 6/8 to fill out the bars, at stage two we simplified the rhythm and at stage three we replaced key patterns with ‘hill’, ‘ditch’, ‘zig zag’ or scale shapes.  Each replacement was selected from two or three options presented by me and voted on by the group – the title refers to the idea that a camel is a horse designed by committee!  

 

Dots in PDF form can be found here.

 

Kit White's Camel_0001Kit White's Camel_0002.png

Goddesses

Here’s Goddesses, a tune from the Playford collection.

 

Here are the dots with a PDF available here:

Goddesses.png

Printed versions often have the last bar of each section printed the other way around, so as ‘crotchet crotchet minim’ – I’ve always played it this way and I can’t remember why!  Apart from that I like it, and that seems as good a reason as any to me!

Carol of the Bells

Here is the piece we learned on Monday 11th November, Carol of the Bells.  This was arranged by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in 1914, based on a Ukrainian folk chant called ‘Shchedryk’.  We divided the piece into four phrases – phrases one and two can be played simultaneouly and with the bass line.  The structure is pretty free at the moment, with everyone following my hand signals, we might formalise it later.

 

And here are the dots, with a PDF available here:

Carol of the Bells