Fiddle tunes

[Coffee]

With respect to people not wanting to play "new" music...
As much as one might try to resist the new, it is absolutely the life-blood of any musical genre.
Case in point: humans have been singing for, what, 30 000 years? Maybe more if h. ergaster or h. habilis sang.
But new songs were needed as culture changed. Does anyone know any songs from 30 000 years ago? Why not? They must have been perfectly good songs...

No. New music is a must. If you put the tradition in a plastic bubble it'll suffocate and die. I'd wager it's happened before...

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

A chanter that could go down to low C and still be played tight would be handy. Some kind of popping valve apparatus that would close the end of the bore? See, even adding one note leads to utter confusion. You'd have to retool everything, different bore, the acoustics would be thrown for a loop.

You are aware of this yoke aren't you?

Vaguely recall it being discussed here. Nice idea, you'd have to jam a lunchbox under the body to get the regs in place though. Pity Kenna didn't have any neodymium magnets to work with...

Never Was Paddy Fahy So Gay, ugh. There are some annoying soundalikes but those two are basically identical twins. I actually broke down and printed out the #3 tune to remember what the minute differences were.

I agree i hate to buy a piping album only to find it I may as well just have put the Ennis CD back on. Same tunes recorded over and over. Doesn't make sense when there are thousands of tunes out there.

Well, that and the piping isn't exactly Ennis. Tall order, that! Hats off to musicians who seek out old tunes, or stuff that's perfectly pipes friendly but isn't played by pipers for some reason. Especially the old tunes, there are some real gems in old books.

[Mr.Gumby]

Never Was Paddy Fahy So Gay, ugh. There are some annoying soundalikes but those two are basically identical twins. I actually broke down and printed out the #3 tune to remember what the minute differences were.

Yesterday, after sorting out a few soundclips for a forum member, I learned a Joe Liddy composition, The Kilcoon, from one of the clips (of Bríd Harper's playing). Sits very well on the fiddle but goes lovely on pipes or whistle too. And while it heads in a different direction towards the end of the first phrase, it starts pretty much like the two above. More scope for causing confusion with people who expect one of the other ones when you start it. I remember getting some very dark looks from a visiting fiddleplayer when I played the Fahy one and she was trying, persistently but in vain, to fit the Reavey one to my playing.

[Seanie]

There is a small village outside of Mynooth, Co Kildare called Kilcloon. Edel Fox was giving a workshop in Maynooth a few years back and passed the sign for Kilcloon. She taught that Joe Liddy composition after seeing the sign and called it the the Kilcloon rather than the Kilcoon. All the local musicians now call it Kilcloon. A very nice tune up the middle row of the concertina.

Cheers

John

[Mr.Gumby]

I have seen it as the Kilcloon often too, in fact it was only yesterday I noticed the Brid Harper recording I was copying listed it as 'Kilcoon'. Checking the Liddy collection I found it was his name for the tune.

Also realised just now I probably picked it up quickly yesterday because I often heard Chris Droney play it. It's on the Fertile Rock recording. And it's listed as 'Kilcloon' there too. One of those tunes soaking in the subconscious until you hear a version that makes it 'click'.

[ennischanter]

I would agree, that as long as the tune has a good solid melody, things should be fine. I really don't think it matters, at least for me, whether a tune has a composers name on it, or lack thereof. That song called The Whistling Thief was written by a person called Samuel Lover, or The Morning Thrush by Séamus Ennis's father. Many old tunes were I think written by minstrels of the old.

Maybe that's what we need! A modern day equivalent to a minstrel...



Isn't there the phenomenon where somebody will learn a tune, but it's so heavily embellished or "modified" by said player that the tune becomes a completely different entity?

[oliver]

After having stayed in Donegal and played a few sessions there, I started learning fiddle tunes on the pipes when I came back home. Some are ok, but others I find quite challenging, like Dinky Dorrian's (not the worst though), in A of course, or Jimmy Lyon's highland... Octave leaps, G# and all. But a great thing to do, especially when you come back to piping tunes, they seem so easy then ! Someone this summer told me about a piper who has arranged Donegal fiddle tunes for the pipes, but couldn't recall the name. Has anybody heard of that ?

[Mr.Gumby]

Someone this summer told me about a piper who has arranged Donegal fiddle tunes for the pipes, but couldn't recall the name. Has anybody heard of that ?

Robbie Hannan would be the obvious one, Joe McLaughlin probably started it all (I got Dinky off him and his brother in 1982, they played it in D), during the eighties this was all the rage and Seán óg Potts played a bunch of them, Browne didn't avoid them and John Murphy had both Donegal and Scottish tunes. You'll find a few more. [added] saying that, Ciarán MacFheidhlimidh should probably get a mention.

[oliver]

Thanks. I'll do a search. What interests me is the way these tunes have been arranged, if they are in A still, or if the key has been modified to make them more pipes-friendly. I play Dinky's in A, 'cause the fiddlers in Donegal won't play it in D, so if you want to play along...

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Nobody except pipers plays Dinky's in D, I'd guess. No point in doing so on other instruments which can handle those jumps from A to a no problem.

Most of the tunes those pipers played stayed in the original key, far as I can recall. Cue up some of Robbie's records, you hear a few of them go by. There are other tunes you could try if so inclined, I play Frank Cassidy's version of the Japanese Hornpipe in G, instead of A, that's easier on the pipes than on the fiddle, actually. Have no idea what other pipers do with that one. Some tunes are a snap on the chanter, Australian Waters, Black Mare of Fanad. Others, not so much. Dunno if there's a good key for the Swedish Jig...nope, not really. It's a pretty pipes-unfriendly repertoire but was all the rage in the 80s what with Altan, it had a lot of novelty behind it.

Now, which is more impossible on the pipes - Donegal music, East Galway music, Reavy tunes...When I read about pipers taking to the Donegal stuff I was a bit puzzled - why not have a go at the Sliabh Luachra or Clare stuff? Maybe they'd been there and done that, or it was owing to Hannon and the McLaughlins being up in Ulster. Or it wasn't cross enough.

[oliver]

Thanks for these ideas. Talking about other styles, my wife found an interesting book about bowing styles from Comhaltas (Coleman, Killoran, Morrisson) and at the moment I'm learning some of these versions to play along with her, and it's interesting to discover some very standard tunes (some I've been playing for years) in other settings. Some of these settings are quite pipes-unfriendly as well, with notes below the low D... But to me it gives these tunes a new lease of life...