Dark Girl Dressed in Blue

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.

 

The Dark Girl Dressed in Blue

Tunes to recap!

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:

Holborn March

Bagpiper’s 

Lord Frog 

and also Soldier’s Joy, which I’ll film and post later in the week.

More to come!

Whitehall Minuet

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):

Whitehall Minuet with ornaments

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:

WHM chord rhythm

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:

Tunbridge Beauties

Tunbridge Beauties is a tune from ‘The New Country Dancing Master’ collection by Walsh and Randall from 1711.  It’s been recorded by Boldwood on their fantastic ‘Feet Don’t Fail Me Now’ album.

 

Here are the dots (PDF  here), with a basic version and an ornamented, phrased copy.

Tunbridge Beauties score

 

Below are the basic dots for the groove (PDF  here) that we created to accompany the tune.

Tunbridge Groove

 

Epping Forest

Here are the videos from guest tutor Beth’s class, where she taught Epping Forest, a tune from the 4th edition of Playford’s ‘Dancing Master’ manuscript (1670).  Huge thanks to Beth for covering the session!  Here’s the tune:

 

And here’s the riff:

And here’s the riff for Lord Frog, the tune for which can be found on the old Ealing Session website here:

 

Here are the PDFs for the tune, the tune with bowing, the the tune with bowing and riff and the Riff, with the regular dots below.

epping-forest-with-bowing-and-riff-score-1.png

epping-forest-with-bowing-and-riff-score-2.png