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 played for a number of years with Folk Dance Remixed, a dance company combining traditional dance with hip hop and street dance styles, and 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.

Arrangements for May 27th concert

Here are the arrangements for the May 27th concert at Gunnersbury Park.  We’re playing 2:00 – 4:00 (with an interval), and I’m hoping we can get in before that to have a rehearse and to settle into the space.  We will do a concert spot of our arrangements and a ceilidh spot playing for some dances that I’ll call (I’ll put list up later in the week, though it’ll all be things we did at the Ealing Folk Dance Club).  We may also be joined by a local Morris team, though I need to finalise the details with my contact as Gunnersbury and with the team themselves.

There are full details on the Gunnersbury House page here, including the address and transport links, and details on how to reserve tickets: http://www.visitgunnersbury.org/west-london-folk-band-summer-concert-2/.  Spread the word – tickets are free but you can book, just in case we get inundated!

 

The Lollipop Man/Shepherd’s Hey

Here are the videos for Monday’s Morris Medley, The Lollipop Man first:

 

… and Shepherd’s Hey here:

 

And the dots for each are below, with a PDF file here.  We did a basic harmony for the beginning of Shepherd’s Hey, but other than that concentrated on emphasising the rhythm in particular bars (Bars 2, 4, 6 and 8 in Lollipop Man and bars 5 and 6 in Shepherd’s Hey).

The Lollipop Man and Shepherd's Hey.png

As promised/threatened, here is a link to the recording of Lollipop Man from The Mother of All Morris album (not from the Morris On series as I misremembered), it’s NSFW:

 

Dusty Miller

Here is the Dusty Miller, a fantastic 3/2 hornpipe first published in England in 1718 – it seems to have been very popular in the 1700s and early 1800s in England and Scotland in particular, and it also made its way to Ireland and America.

Here’s the video of the tune:

Here are the videos for the close harmony (2nd line of each system of the music):

…and the independent harmony (3rd line of each system of the music):

Here are the dots, with a PDF here:

Dusty Miller.png

The original and alternative chord sequences are available here.  Enjoy!

Pull The Knife and Stick It Again

Here’s the video from Dave’s session on April 8th, with apologies for the delay in posting.   Here’s the tune:

 

…and here’s the chord part:

 

The dots for this tune can be found by clicking here.  Massive thanks to the incredible Dave Delarre for this great session, and I’ll be back for the beginning of next term on April 29th.

This week’s class – informal concert

This week we’ll spend the first half of the evening upstairs learning some basic arrangments of tunes from this term before coming down to the bar and sharing them in an informal concert, after which we’ll have a bit of a session.  Here is a file of the arrangements, for anyone who wants to try them out or print them beforehand.

For the following two weeks we’ll have guest tutors Beth Gifford (April 1st) and Dave Delarre (April 8th).  There will then be a break for Easter, with classes resuming on April 29th.