Folk workshops in West London
Here are the dots, PDF and video for the Dark Girl Dressed in Blue, also known as The Duchess (at least to me and Kerry Fletcher, can’t find it listed as this anywhere else!) and as Over the Waterfall in Old Time circles, albeit with the A and B sections reversed. There appears to be a song version of the tune dating back to about 1850, with lyrics by music hall star Harry Clifton (1824-1872), though recordings I can find are to a slightly different though seemingly related tune.
Here are the video, dots and PDF of the Holborn March, which was published in ‘Wright’s Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances’ in 1740.
Here’s the faster, frillier version:
In preparation for our appearance at Ealing Country Dance Club, I’ve pulling some tunes out of the archive – I’ll recap these over the next couple of weeks, developing chord sequences, harmonies and the like. In addition to the tunes we’ve learned this term, I’ve chosen:
and also Soldier’s Joy, which I’ll film and post later in the week.
More to come!
Here’s a flyer for an old time workshop, dance and concert coming up in Richmond on Saturday 10th November.
Here’s the Whitehall Minuet, a tune in three from the Playford collection which dates from the early 1700s.
Here are the dots for the tune (PDFs here for the tune, and the tune with ornaments and phrasing):
In the chords, we alternated between a playing a straight three for two bars (1 & 2 & 3 &), and playing a syncopated rhythm for two bars (1 & 2 & 3 &), which looks a bit like this:
Technically we’re going from a 3/4 feel to a 6/8 feel, giving the tune a bit more movement and forward momentum, maybe verging on feeling a little like a jazz waltz. We kept it to two bar chunks for the sake of clarity and ensemble but you could experiment with changing the rhythm in different places at home. Here’s me noodling about with the rhythm:
