Major key tunes – Page 2 – New Ealing Sessions

Jock’s Bear Dance

Here is another French tune that I know as Jock’s Bear Dance, having learned it from fiddler Jock Tyldesley. It also comes up as ‘Branle de Bourgogne’, a branle being a type of dance that dates back to 16th century France. Again, we added turns in places where the melody moves by step or in skips.

jocks-bear-dance Download

La Roulante

Here is Monday 29th November’s tune, La Roulante, by French musician Jean Blanchard. It’s in mixolydian mode, so a major mode with a flattened seventh, in this case D major with C naturals, and has a lovely syncopated feel in the B music. We tried adding turns in places where the melody moves by step or in skips.

Here are the dots, with a PDF and video underneath:

la-roulante Download

My Darling Asleep

Here is the tune from November 15th, another Irish tune to go in a set with Lilting Banshee. Look for the fidget shapes to add rolls (highlighted example in blue), and for the crotchet-quaver rhythm moving by step (highlighted in red) for adding turns. Some of the turns work better on the fiddle and others work better on wind instruments – try the notated version in the PDF and see which ones work for you.

Here are the dots:

Here is a PDF with some more ornaments written in:

mda Download

Spring at Last

Here is the video from Beth’s class on Monday 18th October, with a link to Bandcamp where you can buy the tune book in which it features: https://mattbrookes.bandcamp.com/merch/the-tyranny-of-jigs?fbclid=IwAR3sru4bAlnCeGdK_lSCNziCCh1Q3G2KwETdsc66kCTZBnjFGRXnxmnUxpo

Here are the dots:

Try adding a walking bass line to the A music, as explored in our arrangements of Sir John Fenwick and Star Above the Garter!

Sir John Fenwick’s the Flower Amang Them

Here’s a tune from the Northumbrian Minstrelsy, Sir John Fenwick’s the Flower Amang Them.

Here’s a video of the tune – we’ll go over some of the variation ideas next time:

And finally a PDF of the dots:

sir-john Download

Rig a Jig a Jig arrangement

Here’s the video for the Rig a Jig Jig arrangement, with a rhythmic feature (as written below) in the A section in the chords the second time round.

Dory Boat arrangements

Here is a video of the Dory Boat arrangement from Monday 20th September:

This used a D/A drone under the tune the first time through and the printed chords the second time, with the following riff throughout:

McKinnon’s Lament

Our last tune of the term – McKinnon’s Lament. I found it in Michael Raven’s English Country Dance Tunes book, which was first published in 1984, but I’ve not unearthed anything else about it. We varied the dotted crotchets by splitting some of them into crotchet-quaver.

Here are the dots:

Here is the PDF:

mckinnon Download

Stewart’s Rant

Here’s a Scottish dance tune, also known as General Stuart’s Reel and The New Way of Gildon. It dates back to at least 1749 when it was published in the Menzies Manuscript.

Here is a video of a slower and faster rendition of the tune, with some rhythmic variations in the B section:

Here are the PDFs of the music and the two sets of chords that we used:

stewarts-rant Download

stewards-rant-chords Download

Old Joe

Here is a polka that works nicely as a partner to Leather Away the Wattle. I know it from Dave Townsend’s English Dance Tune books though to me, the A part feels possibly Irish and the B part more English. As I suspected they might, efforts to find out more about this tune have proved fruitless. I’ve looked for both the title and the melodic shapes and while it bears similarities to other tunes, there’s nothing there to give any real leads on the mystery.

We played a little with the rhythms in the B part, and added turns and/or triplets in places where the melody moves by step.

Here is a video with a slower and faster version of the tune:

Here are the dots with a PDF below:

old-joe Download