New Ealing Sessions

Kate Dalrymple

Our first tune of the term! Kate Dalrymple is a fabulous tune from Scotland, Mary D has found the following information on it: Kate Dalrymple is a traditional Scottish reel dating back to the late 1700s, also known as The Highland Laddie, The New Highland Laddie and Jingling Johnnie. There are accompanying words in Scots written by William Watt telling the tale of the eponymous spinster, with an amazing recording of The Corries to be found at http://scotsongs.blogspot.com/2009/04/kate-dalrymple-words-william-watt-1792.html. This tune is used by the BBC as the theme music for the BBC Radio Scotland dance music programme “Take the Floor”.

The assertion that our Kate was a socialite painted by Gainsborough should be taken with a pinch of salt, as no such person was ever painted by the artist though he did paint a Grace Dalrymple Elliot twice.

Here is the video, with the variations covered in Monday’s session:

Here are dots: the idea is to learn the standard, simple and double versions, and then to mix up the phrases to create variety within the tune. We also played with extending the descending scale in the B part, to mirror the similar shape in the A section. I’ve put the two guitar patterns under the standard and simple versions of the tune for convenience, and a PDF can be found here. If played for dancing then it should be played AAB, but we played it as AABB as the B part is so fantastic!

kate dalrymple_1

New term!

The new term will start again on September 16th, in our usual venue and at the usual time of 7:15. Prices are going up to £9 per session, as they’ve been at £8 from at least 2017, if not before! Those of you paying for the whole year up front will be charged £8 per session. I look forward to seeing you all soon! Debx

Maggie in the Woods

This is Maggie in the Woods, a fabulous polka from Ireland, but again one’s that’s put its boots on and travelled the world! It will go in a set with Battered Hake and then Tralee Gaol.

Here are the videos of the tune

…and the harmony for the B part here:

Here are the dots:

Maggie in the Woods.png

There is a PDF available here.

Tralee Gaol

This is Tralee Gaol, an Irish polka that I know from playing for ceilidhs. It goes by many names and seems to be pretty widespread in Ireland and also across various parts of the world!

Here’s the video:

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

Tralee Gaol.png

Mount Hills

This is Mount Hills, from the Playford collection.

Here’s the video of the tune played slowly:

And then the tune played at speed, in the higher and lower registers:

Here are the dots, with the chords from memory so apologies if they aren’t what we had on the day, I will change them if necessary! The PDF is available here.

Mount Hills

The Mallard no 2

Here is the tune ‘The Mallard no 2’. It’s in Dave Townsend’s English Dance Tunes book but I can’t find it anywhere else – there are other tunes and songs that share the title but none with the same melody.

The Mallard no 2

The PDF can be found here. Fiddle players might want to try double stopping with the open G string in the first two bars, then the D string in the next bar before going back to the G string for bars five and six. In the second section, you can double stop with the open G string for the first three bars.

Battered Hake

This is a fantastic tune by banjo player Colin Cotter.

Here are the dots for the tune:

Battered Hake.png

Click for the tune in PDF form, and here is a version with the A part harmony and B part variation.

Lastly, here’s a video with a suggested chord rhythm.