Tag Archives: whistle

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.

 

FluteFling Summer Term details

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Flute players at the Flute Fling workshops

Flute players at the FluteFling workshops. (c) Ros Gasson

It’s shaping up to be a busy and exciting term. The second FluteFling Scottish Flute Day takes place on 9th of May, with workshops, sessions, a talk and concerts also taking place.

More is also being planned, so do make sure you don’t miss out on one of the flute events of the year.

Regular FluteFling classes also resume this week on Thursday 23rd April, with 5 fortnightly classes for two groups, taking us into the end of June.

Do come along and explore different techniques and expand on your repertoire of music from Scotland, Ireland and beyond. Open to wooden and metal Boehm system flutes, whistles and low whistles. Full details on the Diary and Booking pages.

There is additional good news about our regular venue of St James’s Church Halls in Portobello as the situation remains unchanged for this term at least.

Photo of FluteFling workshop particpants: (c) Ros Gasson

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.

Lucy Farr’s Barndance plus one

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This week we caught up with some of Amble’s tunes from when she took the class. Our main focus was Lucy Farr’s Barndance and we followed this with another, Where in the World Would we be Without Women?

Lucy Farr was a fiddle player from east Galway, who ended up living in London. She featured on the influential 1968 recording Paddy in the Smoke, which was a live recording from the London session scene of the time. There is a great profile of Lucy Farr here. Fetch a cup of tea to have while reading that one as it is as detailed as it is fascinating.

Our barndance is one of two associated with Lucy Farr, who called it The Kilnamona Barndance according to flute player Niall Kenny on this lengthy discussion on The Session. There is also some discussion about it’s identity as a German (Northern Irish dance form) and a 7-step dance (also German, possibly the same dance). I know little about this dance form other than it has a similar musical feel to a barndance, which in itself feels like a little like hornpipe.

Once in a session in Sandy Bell’s, someone from the Western Isles sang in Gaelic to this tune when I played it and told me it was well known and that the song translated as I Saw the Cat. It is worth checking out the recording by fiddler Martin Hayes, from neighbouring east Clare, of a much-slowed down and meditative version of this simple but effective tune.

If We Hadn’t Any Women in the World is a barndance that could follow Lucy’ Farr’s quite nicely. Harry Bradley recorded this on As I Carelessly Did Stray…, but he cites Hammy Hamilton’s recording on Moneymusk as the source. I believe that I may have heard this on an early cassette version of that recording (and have misremembered the title slightly too — Where in the World Would We Be Without Women?). Hammy Hamilton’s fine version is freely available online and I note that he freely switches phrases around, which may also account for my own fluid setting of the tune. Again, many versions and much discussion on The Session website. The tune was first recorded by James Morrison in 1928 according to the sleeve notes.

Dots, ABCs and recordings for both tunes can be found in the Resources section.

Photo of Lucy Farr via Mustrad.

 

 

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.