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.

Schottische a Virmoux

Here is the video for Monday’s tune, Schottische a Virmoux (also listed as ‘Schottische Virmoux’ and ‘Schottische de Virmoux’) by Frederic Paris.

 

Our variations were pushing the G chord in the second bar, and tying the A over the bar line (there’s a version with these written in here.)

Here are the dots:

Schottische Virmoux.png

If you want to download or print this out, click here.

As promised, here’s a video with the strumming pattern for the chord players:

 

 

Serpentiner och Konfetti

Serpentiner och Konfetti (Streamers and Confetti) is a fantastic reijländer tune by Swedish melodeon player Mats Edén.  We’re not trying to play it in a particularly Swedish way, also I somehow only played the B section once on the video – apologies, it had been a long day!

 

Here are the dots for the tune:

Serpentiner och Konfetti.png

We varied the rhythm by anticipating (or ‘pushing’) some of the main beats in the melody and also in the chord sequence – dots can be found here.

 

Picking Up Sticks

Picking Up Sticks, or The Picking of Sticks, is a Playford tune and is in the earliest editions of the manucript from 1651, though only the A part is listed.  It’s not clear when the B part came along, though it’s in a rough and undated manuscript by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924).

Here is the video for Picking Ups Sticks, with thanks as always to Mary D.

 

Here are the dots – we learned the tune, and named the melodic figures ‘runs’, ‘hills’ and ‘skips’ before paring the tune back to the bare bones and reordering the figures to create variations.

pickingupsticks

 

There is a PDF of the tune and chords here, for those who can’t print the graphics file.

Kit White’s no. 2

Here’s Kit White’s no. 2, a tune I know from various sessions.  I’ve had trouble tracking down who Kit White was or is – it’s not a good phrase to Google, though if you need a teeth whitening kit then I can tell you that have lots of options available, see also the drummer from the White Stripes and white football uniforms – and the Vaughn Williams Library archives (one of my ‘go to’ sources) doesn’t have any records of either the tune or the person.  I have however found him listed as performing melodeon on a recording of traditional music from Yorkshire made in 1950, so that’s a start!  My version differs slightly from some of the notated versions I’ve found, as so often happens in traditional music.  Here’s the video, with a slow version, a faster version with variations and the chord rhythm:

 

Here are the dots for the standard version of the tune:

 

Kit White's no 2.png

The variations we tried involved switching the rhythms around in the A and B parts, and using the chord rhythm:

kw2 chord rhythm

The notation for the variations is here.

Folk Choir

This info for those of you that might be interested:
GOLDFISH FOLK CHOIR ON THURSDAY 17 JANUARY
 Join us for weekly harmony singing; there’s no need to read music as everything is taught by ear. We sing rounds, ditties and folk songs – anything from Sea Shanties to Bob Dylan. Please get in touch if you have any questions at all.
Thursdays, 19:00 – 20:30 £6 on the door  
 The Grosvenor Pub (Upstairs) 127 Oaklands Road, Hanwell, W7 2DT
Email: fredadsouza (at) aol (dot) com

The Girl With the Blue Dress On

‘The Girl With the Blue Dress On’ is a chirpy polka that turns up in English and American traditions as a ceilidh tune, contra tune and as a North-West Morris tune.

 

the girl with the blue dress on

 

There is a simplified version here, and a more decorated version written out in full with the ‘tumbles’ (embellishments at the end of phrases that connect up the different sections) and the alternative chord sequence here.