Tag Archives: reel

Scottish flute and whistle tunes

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Last week the Flute and Whistle 3 class looked at a couple of reels, one traditional, the other contemporary, and so began what is going to be a bit of a theme this term — modern Scottish tunes written on the flute or whistle.

The Brig o’ Tilt is in a few collections. I think I initially learned it from Kerr’s Merrie Melodies, but it is also in the Athole Collection, and it perhaps celebrates the new bridge over the north road built at Glentilt in 1823. Bridge of Tilt is near Blair Atholl and today the A9 flies past.

The tune is solidly in D and has a distinctive second part where an arpeggio “tune within a tune” element prevails. There aren’t many places to decorate, so much depends on the breathing to provide emphasis. A couple of places do exist for cranning however. If not feeling confident on this, try cutting to separate the D notes.

The second tune is a three-part reel in Em by Niall Kenny, The Trip to Pakistan. Niall used to live in Edinburgh, but is now based in Lanarkshire and can been playing regularly in Glasgow and Edinburgh sessions.

The trip to Pakistan has been recorded a few times, appears in many collections and has a pipes setting too. Here’s a video of him playing it (right at the end of two sets, but it is well worth watching all of the video just to enjoy his music):

There are a few places to roll and cut, but much the genius of the tune is in the tune is in the third part, where the emphasis of the descending lower notes of the phrases invert the rhythm. There’s some discussion of it on The Session, to which Niall contributes and describes his intentions behind the tune.

The class resources for the tune are on the usual page.

Photo: Gilbert’s Bridge by Anne Burgess, some rights reserved

An impromptu reel: Jenny Picking Cockles

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Barra Cockle Beach by Fiona BownieSo there I was ready with a couple of reels for the week’s class and this reel popped into my head instead. Inspired by Rieke’s trip to Barra to pick cockles, we did Jenny Picking Cockles — I hope that the weather was good!

Jenny Picking Cockles is an Irish reel with a few variants and titles. In D mixolydian (it has C naturals instead of sharps), some versions have F naturals in the second part, which possibly borrows from a very similar three part reel called Jenny’s Welcome to Charlie. The version we did lifts and slides the C naturals in the second part through what was once termed “C supernatural” in online message boards to C# as it the tune transitions from C natural to D.

There is a suggestion that this reel may be associated with the north of Ireland and my own personal feeling is that “Jenny” tune titles also betray a Scottish connection, both Jenny and Jock(y) appearing in many earlier Scottish tune titles as generic female and male names.

It’s just an observation however and I have no other evidence for this wild assertion. More information on the origins over at Tune Archive. Different settings of the tune can be found over on The Session website. Our version can be found on the Resources page.

Here’s Eric, Hugh and Colm Healy, Noel O’Donoghue, Seán McGrath playing Jenny Picking Cockles, George Whites, Jenny’s Wedding:

Photo: Barra Cockle Beach by Fiona Cownie, some rights reserved.

 

A highland tune in a modern style: The Lochaber Badger

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Fred Morrison

This week we continued looking at the tunes that Amble Skuse taught in February. There was a big pentatonic theme and we focused on a modern one by the highly-regarded Fred Morrison, who plays various pipes and whistles and writes distinctive tunes.

The Lochaber Badger is a relatively simple reel with modern-sounding, syncopated phrases that come out of the Highland piping tradition. It makes a good introduction to this style of tune, having a hypnotic quality and able to take being played fairly slowly. Where the notes are held across the main beats, you can provide more air on the beat to make it pulse and give it a bit of swing, which is what we did in the class.

Other Fred Morrison tunes are to be found in two collections of his compositions that can be purchased through his website.

I have recorded Lochaber Badger on flute and whistle, but not provided notation, which can be found with some discussion at The Session website (ours is the first one, in Em). My recording of a simplified, slowed down version can be found on the Resources page. Here is Fred Morrison himself playing it with Michael McGoldrick (the second tune in the set):

Photo of Fred Morrison by BedwyrPhoto.com, some rights reserved.

Spoots and Salmon

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This week we consolidated the two tunes that Amble Skuse taught the class while I was away. She focused on examples that are built on the pentatonic scale, illustrating with the Shetland reel Spootiskerry and the march/ rant/ polka Salmon Tails Up the Water.

Spootiskerry is so well known that it is easy to forget that it is a modern tune, written by Ian Burns from Shetland and named after his farm. A skerry is a shoal of jaggy rocks usually found offshore protruding out of the water (from the Old Norse language and also found in Gaelic), while a spoot is a razor shell, which can be found and harvested on beaches.

The reel fits the flute and whistle very readiily and has some syncopated phrases that are quite distinctive. My version is a little different from Amble’s, and it may be one that I have developed in order to emphasise that rhythmic play. However, the version that I have recorded is Amble’s.

There is some good discussion on it at The Session, including an intriguing comment from Kenny Hadden who suggests that it fits the whistle in A as well. I haven’t tried that but it is very tempting. Kenny will be teaching again at this year’s Flute Day on 9th May.

Amble’s other tune, Salmon Tails Up The Water, I am less familiar with to play, but I have been aware of it for many years and should have known it. It is one of at least two tunes going by this title and this version is also known as The Banks of Inverness. I have seen it in Scottish collections, (but possibly the other tune with this title) and it feels to me like a march, but I see online it is claimed by Northumberian pipers as a rant, written in the 18thC by piper Jimmy Allen, who sounds like a colourful character.

There is once more some decent discussion on The Session, where it has also been associated with Irish singer and mandolinist Andy Irvine, once of the influential Planxty. It seems that the tune may be part of The Siege of Ennis set of Irish ceili tunes, probably as a polka. Good tunes tend to stick around and gain acceptance in other traditions.

We consolidated the tune and explored a couple of settings of it, one as taught by Amble, the other published by Nigel Gatherer in one of his many fine tune books. I have recorded and provided music for both of these, as well as music for Spootiskerry, on the Resources page for this year. Thanks are due to Amble for teaching these fine tunes and to Sarah and Adelheid for joining me on the recording.

 Photo: Salmon Jumping by Karen Miller, some rights reserved.

In a minor key: Molly Bán

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The third tune in our set of Irish reels has a less certain history than the other two. Molly Bán (or Molly Bawn) has been widely recorded but doesn’t seem to feature in collections earlier than the 1880s.

However, it shares a title (meaning Fair Molly or Fair Mary) with a ballad (in which a hunter mistakes his lover for a swan and accidentally shoots her) that was widely sung in the 19th Century in Ireland, England, Scotland, and Canada. Some history here, including reference to the publishing of the melody in the 18th Century before the ballad was written an published by Jamieson in 1806. There is a suggestion that it was overlooked by the main ballad collectors, although it doesn’t seem very clear to me why that was.

Jennifer J O’Connor has also explored The Irish Origins and Variations of the Ballad “Molly Brown” for the Canadian Journal for Traditional Music (1986). There was a book by the same name written in the 19th Cantury by Irish novelist Margaret Wolfe Hungerford and apparently the origin of the phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

Regarding the reel, I haven’t seen a reference connecting it to the ballad melody. Maybe it would be worth exploring further. More on the reel at the Fiddlers Companion and over at TuneArchive. Irishtune.info has a list of recordings with some short samples too.

The tune has been recorded in various keys and I was surprised to find a version I had submitted to a discussion group in the 90s showed up in a search. I had forgotten about it, but “Young” John Naughton’s is a fine Clare version of the tune with a tonal centre on A. Ours is in a modal E, with a minor feel to it and although we aren’t doing this for a week or so, a recording and music is now up, with some suggested harmonies.

There’s a particularly fine recording on Youtube by the great Paddy Carty (The Flow himself) with Conor Tully and Frank Hogan.

Finally, I came across these striking illustrations of the ballad by Owen Gent.