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.

The New Rigged Ship no. 1

Welcome back!  Here’s the New Rigged Ship no. 1 in D major.  I have found this tune in several sources, the earliest of which is an 1800 edition of Thomas Hardy’s manuscript (from Dorset), it also pops up in an 1853 Scottish book ‘Hamilton’s Universal Tune Book no.2’ and there’s an 1908 version collected in Derbyshire titled ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Get Warm’.  There are both reels and jigs from the Shetland Isles called ‘Da New Rigged Ship’ or the ‘Da Full Rigged Ship’, however these do not seem to be related!

 

the new rigged ship in d

 

The warm ups and drills we started with are on a new page that you can find on the top menu – the main thing to note is that this tune contains lots of 3rds (that is to say a small jump of three notes), for instance in the D to F#s in the first two bars of the A section, and in bars 9 and 11 of the B section.  This is a really handy interval to listen out for – think ‘cuckoo!’ – and it gives us lots of scope for variation!

We started by filling some of these 3rds in with the ‘missing’ notes (see HERE for a written variation).

We then took a load of notes out to create more space, before adding some slightly different patterns back in (see HERE for the written variation).

Please note that these variations are designed as a starting point, recapping some of the ideas we covered in class, and are not supposed to be a perfect examples although I have tried to make them at least reasonably musical! Other possibilities for melodic variation could include playing down the octave, or varying the order of the notes in repetitive sections, for instance in bars 3 and 4 of the A section.

 

The End of Term, and an Informal Concert

Next week, December 10th, will be the last session of term and we’ll mark it with an informal concert and session at the Trade Union Club.  Please invite your friends and family – we’ll meet as usual at 7:15 for a quick rehearsal, and then play some tunes for our audience at 8.  After that we’ll retire downstairs for a session.  Rather than selling tickets, I suggest we take a collection at the end which will then go to a local charity for the homeless.  There may even be a raffle!  Hurrah!

Dark Girl Dressed in Blue

Here are the dots, PDF and video for the Dark Girl Dressed in Blue, also known as The Duchess (at least to me and Kerry Fletcher, can’t find it listed as this anywhere else!) and as Over the Waterfall in Old Time circles, albeit with the A and B sections reversed.  There appears to be a song version of the tune dating back to about 1850, with lyrics by music hall star Harry Clifton (1824-1872), though recordings I can find are to a slightly different though seemingly related tune.

 

The Dark Girl Dressed in Blue