New Ealing Sessions

Mr Moore’s Hornpipe

Here’s our tune from Monday 29th, Mr Moore’s Hornpipe. It’s widely used as a Border Morris tune, first (it seems) by the team Boggart’s Breakfast – the tune appears to come from the Thomas Watts manuscript of the late 18th century, from the Peak Forest in Derbyshire (researched by Brian Peters of Glossop). The tune as I know it is a little different from the manuscript, I think this is most likely the ‘session effect’ where tunes get tweaked and rounded out over time.

Here’s the tune in action, in the dance Lorenz’s Shiny New Butterfly by Sheffield border Morris team Boggart’s Breakfast:

Swanton Abbot Hornpipe

A tune from Norfolk, the Swanton Abbot Hornpipe (originally just called Hornpipe) collected by George Watson in the late 1800s. There is a nice write up on the Village Music Project website about the Watson collection, for anyone who’s interested.

swanton abbot Download

You’ll notice that the chords don’t resolve the D at the end of each section – this is on purpose! We often think of a 32 bar tune as being just that but in reality the tune will be played four or five times in a row, and so the constant return to the tonic key at the end of each section can become somewhat tedious. While we won’t use the G chords every time, this serves as a reminder to think of the whole arc of the repeated tune and not just the short, written down tune that we see in the notation.

Here’s a fantastic version of the tune by Nick Wyke and Becki Driscoll

https://nickwykeandbeckidriscoll.bandcamp.com/track/george-watsons-hornpipe

And a very different version by Dave Shepherd:

UPDATE:

Here’s a PDF of the accompaniment pattern, with its stereo effect:

swanton abbot w harm Download

and a video of the accompaniment alone (beginning) and with the tune (from 1:46) – my phone hasn’t picked up the pattern very well, but you can hear it in places.

Rondeau du Blaireau

Welcome back everyone! We’ve kicked off with an amazing French tune by the wonderful La Lampe a Folk; Rondeau du Blaireau.

Our accompanying pattern was as follows, creating a hypnotic texture (two-bar pattern in an ascending scale pattern):

Here’s the tune:

Rondeau du blaireau Download

ECDC visit

Here are a couple of videos from our recent visit to the Ealing Country Dance Club, kindly taken by Robert.

Ideas on Tom’s tunes & the plan for the last week

14th July Folk Class informal performance Download

Tunes from Tom

Here are the tunes covered by Tom at the end of June:

Go to Berwick, Johnny – Full Score Download

The Rolling Wave – Full Score Download

Riddle’s Hornpipe – Full Score Download

Peacock Follows the Hen v3 Download

The Rights of Man

The tune from June 9th, as requested by Mary D, The Rights of Man. This is a hornpipe that was first published in the 1870s, it’s played widely across Ireland, Scotland and England. I’ve included two chord progressions (as PDFs), we will examine the effects of these next week, amongst other things.

Here’s a video (with focus on violin left hand) with some of the variations we tried, there are also some interesting sound recordings on the TuneArch.org page.