Category: Major key tunes

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!

The Bonnie Pit Laddie

Here’s the video of The Bonny Pit Laddie, a song/tune from Northumbria, printed in the 1882 Northumbrian Minstrelsy, with earlier versions printed elsewhere in 1812 and 1770.

The Bonnie Pit Laddie.png

 

Click here for the dots in PDF form.

 

In the version I know, each line is sung twice, meaning that you’ll get through the tune twice, but in others I’ve found the second and fourth lines are follow one another making up one B section:

The bonnie pit laddie, the canny pit laddie, the bonnie pit laddie for me, oh (x 2)

He sits in a hole as black as the coal and brings the bright silver for me, oh (x 2)

 

The bonnie pit laddie, the canny pit laddie, the bonnie pit laddie for me, oh (x 2)

He sits on his cracket & hews in his jacket & brings the bright silver for me, oh (x 2)

 

The pit in question would have been a coal mine, and the ‘bright silver’ refers to money earned.  For those of you in education, or for anyone who wants to know more about mining songs, there is a great digital info pack available from the EFDSS website here.

 

The Beggar Boy

Here’s the video for Playford tune The Beggar Boy, from the 1651 manuscript – it was included in subsequent editions right through to the 7th in 1686, and Chappell (1859) notes that there are several ballads written to the tune, as tended to happen with popular tunes.

 

 

And here are the dots:

The Beggar Boy.png

Here are the dots, for those who want to print them out.

We created contrast between sections with drone-like minor chords in the A section and swifter changing major chords in the B section.  I’ve tagged the tune as both major and minor as it can be harmonised as either, giving a different character.

We created a groove for the A section by picking out notes from the D minor and C major triads.  Since Dm and C are neighbours, it’s possible to move between the chords in a scale pattern.  Here’s a link to a chart explaining this: for each of the main beats listed at the top, pick a note from the coloumn beneath. There is an example of how you could do this at the bottom, with notes highlighted in red.  You might want to print this sheet out and circle one note in each column to create your own part.

 

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.

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.