The Yellow Haired Laddie

With Burns night approaching, it seemed appropriate to learn a Scottish tune; this tune dates back to at least the early 1700s, remaining popular for quite some time as it was used in several ballad operas in the 18th century as well as being used as a retreat march by the British military, specifically by the 37th Regiment.  It was printed in many books across Scotland as well as making its way into a few English books too.

 

The Yellow Haired Laddie

The PDF can be found here.  We used two basic accompanying rhythms for the drums and guitars:

yhl rhythms

Bacca Pipes

A delayed post from January 13th: Bacca Pipes is a tune and dance from the Cotswold Morris tradition and is danced over two crossed tobacco pipes, making it a form of sword dance of the kind found across Europe.  It’s related to the tune Greensleeves and was collected by Cecil Sharp on August 30th 1909 from musician Thomas Delaney in Sevenhampton, Wiltshire.

 

Here are the dots, with a PDF here:

Bacca Pipes

Kit White’s Camel!

Monday 6th January was our first week back and we covered a range of tunes, starting with the Plane Tree jig and its possibly original 4/4 counterpart Schottishe a Bethanie (video link to the fabulous Mel Biggs of Morai and ‘Pick Up and Play’ fame).  We used this tune as inspiration and the second half of the night was taken up with Kit White’s no.2, which we recapped and then collectively turned from a polka into a jig. 

I’ve roughly notated the various stage we went through to reach the end product; at stage one we played even quavers in 6/8 to fill out the bars, at stage two we simplified the rhythm and at stage three we replaced key patterns with ‘hill’, ‘ditch’, ‘zig zag’ or scale shapes.  Each replacement was selected from two or three options presented by me and voted on by the group – the title refers to the idea that a camel is a horse designed by committee!  

 

Dots in PDF form can be found here.

 

Kit White's Camel_0001Kit White's Camel_0002.png

Goddesses

Here’s Goddesses, a tune from the Playford collection.

 

Here are the dots with a PDF available here:

Goddesses.png

Printed versions often have the last bar of each section printed the other way around, so as ‘crotchet crotchet minim’ – I’ve always played it this way and I can’t remember why!  Apart from that I like it, and that seems as good a reason as any to me!

Carol of the Bells

Here is the piece we learned on Monday 11th November, Carol of the Bells.  This was arranged by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in 1914, based on a Ukrainian folk chant called ‘Shchedryk’.  We divided the piece into four phrases – phrases one and two can be played simultaneouly and with the bass line.  The structure is pretty free at the moment, with everyone following my hand signals, we might formalise it later.

 

And here are the dots, with a PDF available here:

Carol of the Bells