Lucky Scaup

A cheerful tune to start back, this is Lucky Scaup, or Lucky Scaupie, a Scottish tune that I got from a Jimmy Shand album.

I believe that Lucky Scaup refers to an old Folly in Tayport, near Dundee. It was built in the 1860s and demolished in the 1979 when it had become unstable and potentially dangerous.

The structure is AAB, as the B section is long and references the A at the end. The D/F# chords (and others in this format) mean play a D chord with an F# in the bass if possible.

Lucky Scaupie PDFDownload

Here is the recording I learned it from, our tune starts at 1:08.

Throw the Beetle at Her

A slip jig (9/8) played in Scotland and Ireland. The beetle in question is “the name in parts of northern Ireland and Scotland for a heavy wooden implement shaped like a pestle or club that was used to mash potatoes (sometimes called a ‘potato-beetle’), and colloquially used as a verb meaning ‘to give a beating to’, as in “I’ll beetle him!” (Source; The Trad Tune Archive).

Throw the Beetle at HerDownload

Accompaniment patterns for tunes in 3 time

In order to create an accompanying pattern for our recent tunes in 3, we took inspiration from the melodic pattern in bar one of La Tete Ailleurs. This is essentially an E minor triad (three note chord) so we played it and then transposed the pattern for each chord in the piece, starting on an A for the A minor chord, a D for the D major chord etc.

We then took things up a notch, changing the inversions of the triads to keep the patterns a similar register. What’s an inversion? It’s the order in which you play the notes, for instance an A minor triad is ACE in root position, CEA in first inversion and EAC in second inversion. Below is a version that uses root and second inversion chords to create a part that flows.

We switched to long notes in the B section to vary the texture, choosing the root note of each chord.

La Tete Ailleurs with acc patternDownload