Easy session tune music (dots)

Subject: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Mo the caller
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:03 AM

Where can I tell the family of a beginner fiddler to look on the net to find the dots of well known session tunes?

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: GUEST,Dazbo at work
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:14 AM

The Lewes collection has plenty of easy session tunes but they are in ABC format. Copy the ABC (including all the title,key etc and paste into the tune-o-tron in Concertina.net. This will convert the ABC into dots which you can "publish" as a pdf file which you can then send to the printer.

Sorry haven't time to sort out blickies

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: sian, west wales
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:19 AM

It might be a bit advanced but they should perhaps look at the BBC's Virtual Session

sian

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Zen
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:28 AM

The Session site will give you the dots to hundreds of session tunes. Just enter the name of the tune you are interested in in "search" or scroll through the lists of tunes. Many have the ABC notation too.

Zen

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: GUEST,Meggly
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:35 AM

Sian,

That BBC Virtual Session is brilliant. Thanks for posting it.

For a shorter set of easy tunes (if your friends find it difficult to know where to start when faced with the large (but brilliant) collections in the other sources), try the Bellowhead website. They held a session in London before one of their concerts once and published the dots on-line before hand.

Meg.

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Mo the caller
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:40 AM

Wow, that was quick! I'd found the Lewes tunes myself, they do have a Noteworthy version as well.
I'll bookmark all these for my own use too.
While I've got all you experts here, I'll repeat my last night's question. Which tunes are easiest on the fiddle?

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: GUEST,Ebor_fiddler
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:55 AM

Try Soldier's Joy, Speed the Plough, The Girl With The Blue Dress On, Jenny Lind and Sheep Shearing. All standards, but easy enough for a beginner to feel confident with fairly quickly. Avoid the more complicated polkas (eg Bluebell, Primrose or J D Milne) like the plaque until his/her confidence is built up.

Good Luck and enjoyment.

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Mo the caller
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 06:40 AM

I found some contra dance tunes here

Look like standard stuff, but I don't know if they are easy.

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: greg stephens
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 07:03 AM

I would say after many decades pondering the "easy tunes for a session" question, that the best answer is Winster Gallop and Cripple Creek. Now, these are both easy, and both very well known(and easy to join in). They may not be the tunes that experienced players necessarily choose to play at a session, but they are great for that virginity losing moment when the diffident beginner turns up, and somebody asks "What do you know? Start something up".Either of these tunes will cheer people up, show the beginner in a good light, and most imporatant it will get everbody else at the session instantly joining in. What more could you want?

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 08:21 AM

I have a set of basic Scottish session tunes on my website, in ABC:

http://www.campin.me.uk

Most of them are fairly easy.

thesession is entirely Irish (except for the rather large fraction of tunes from other places mislabelled as being Irish). It doesn't separate out a category for easy or generally familiar tunes. It also has a weird policy that you *aren't allowed to state the composer of a tune* in the ABC. They actually *prefer* misinformation. I'd never submit anything to it.

BTW I haven't heard Winster Gallop in a session for several years. I've never heard Cripple Creek played live and would be amazed if any other session player here recognized it - I'm in south-east Scotland. Repertoires vary a lot by location.

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Mitch the Bass
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 08:38 AM

To illustrate the variation by region, Winster Gallop is very popular round here and is often heard as a starter to get everyone going at sessions. But then I live about 15 miles from the village of Winster.

When I was a lad we used to say when in doubt play Jimmy Allen usually followed by Huntmans Chorus.

Mitch

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 09:19 AM

The trouble with so much of this literature, whether it's on the net or in books, is that it's imprisoned in fiddle tradition. Fiddlers, who ordered their fiddles from Sears and didn't have any tuners, had a simple philosophy: 'Keep it moving. Don't let them dwell on the quality of the sound.' The result is a huge collection of dance tunes which are all eighth notes.

When I come across a tune that's 95% eighth notes, and it's a good tune, I put it in MIDI and remove a few. My wind players need to breathe, and my harpers need to look at their strings once in a while. I have eye problems, and I lose my place among notes which all look alike.

So if this fiddler is truly a beginner, I would not suggest s/he start with tunes such as are on TheSession. (The tunes I sampled there were almost entirely eighth notes.) Unless some friendly musician wants to troll the waltzes, airs, and laments for something a beginner will enjoy.

If it is absolutely essential to have that session sound, I do suggest 'The Battle of Aughrim,' which seems a very easy tune. Moves up and down the scale, for instance.

=========
I used to go to meetings of a dulcimer club. One of our favorite tunes was 'Over the Waterfall.' When I came across that tune in The Fiddler's Fakebook, it had been chopped up into so many eighth notes that I hardly recognized it. The melody was obscured, and the plunge into the minor in the first phrase (going over the waterfall) was nowhere near so clear. That was when I first realized what fiddlers have been up to all these years.

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: GUEST,Ebor_fiddler
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 09:26 AM

Oh, dear! I hadn't realised we were that bad! I hereby grovel.

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 09:41 AM

Harpers play more eighth notes than anybody else - the instrument is so quiet that you need all the twangs you can pack in. Divide a long note into a four-note arpeggio and you quadruple the sound energy.

Which said, I basically agree. Look at the version of the Mason's Apron in my session tunes file - it's the way I play it, and I think the tune comes through much more clearly than in any of the printed versions with their obsessional arpeggiation.

Catriona Macdonald teaches by getting people to sing the tune before picking their instrument up. That's a good way to discourage gratuitous note-spinning.

Actually, people ought to learn to split and combine sub-beats on the fly, it's a useful way of generating variety. With an instrument like the recorder you can usually leave the fiddlers standing and fracture a reel into semiquavers if you want to.

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Graham and Jo
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 10:39 AM

The session is a great site, but there are an awful lot of tunes there, including harder and less played ones.

If your fiddler is anywhere near Beverley, get them to come to the Tuesday tunes workshop in the Tiger. Every level of player comes, including complete beginners. A regular has put together a home made book, 'Beverley easy sessions, the first 100 tunes'.   Some of the easiest tunes are Salmon Tails, Davey Davey Knick Knack, Iron Legs, Boys of Bluehill, Bear Dance, Oyster Girl.

Also, Dave Mallinson, who wrote 'Mally's Melodeon Method' that so many learned melodeon from, has written other books and you can get CDs to go with them. I think there's 'The first 100 Irish tunes for sessions' 'The second 100 Irish tunes for sessions' and '100 less played Irish tunes for sessions'.
Google 'Mally' or try www.mally.com

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: oggie
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 10:50 AM

Whilst looking at Mally's site his "Easy Peasy Tunes" is a good way in.

Steve

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: TheSnail
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 10:52 AM

The Lewes Favourites might be a good start. These are tunes actually played in sessions in the Lewes (Sussex, UK) area, including Winster Gallop.

(Iron Legs? Easy?!)

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Jess A
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 12:33 PM

another place worth a look is sheffield uni ceilidh society's tune book pages

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Dom Sheeran
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 01:05 PM

The Foinn Session
CDs and acoompanying Books are a good starting point as the tunes are arranged in sets that are frequently played in succession eg

The Cork
Boys of Bluehill
Cronins

All hornpipes

Available from Comhaltas.com

the site belongs to Comhaltas Ceoltórí Éireann

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: greg stephens
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 02:42 PM

A lotr of tunes described as easy in this thread would take the average player a few years to get to, from scratch(I use the word advisedly).I recommend learning some really easy ones, and jumping in the deep end.People will support you: even the ten miles a minute super-Irish and bluegrass boys and girls will slow up and join you in Winster Gallop if you look appealing and frightened.

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Tootler
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:27 PM

From the Folkworks Session collection book 1.

Egan's Polka
John Ryan's Polka
Winster Gallop - mentioned several times already
Jamie Allen
Salmon Tails
Davy, Davy Knick Knack
Hesleyside
Fairy Dance
New Rigged Ship
Athol Highlanders (I find it a pig on the flute or whistle but fiddlers seem to like it)
Out in the Ocean
Spirit of the Dance
Drops of Brandy
Peacock Followed the Hen
Harvest Home
Trumpet Hornpipe (Increasingly called Capt. Pugwash [g] )
Boys of Bluehill
Margaret's Waltz
Give me your Hand
Road to the North

That's the list of tunes in the first book described on the cover as "Twenty great tunes to help you enjoy taking part in informal music sessions"

Some of these tunes are straightforward, others are quite notey. I cannot say which are easy and which are not on the fiddle, as I play flute, whistle and recorder, but many of the tunes can be simplified while retaining the essence of the tune. I find Athol Highlanders tricky as you seem to be moving lots of fingers at once all the time and I often leave out the middle quaver in a group of three to make it more playable for me.

If you live in NE England the Folkworks session collection is a useful set of tune books. There are three and they each come with a CD with the tunes played slowly and at moderate tempo for ear learners.

I'm not sure what the price is these days, but it is reasonable and they can be got from the Sage. Ask for the Music Education Centre.

Geoff

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 06:47 PM

That list would work pretty well across the border here in Edinburgh, except for "Spirit of the Dance", which I've never heard of before, and "Give Me Your Hand", which is not often played these days and is a whistle showpiece anyway.

Athol Highlanders is a pipe tune - those arpeggios work great on a G recorder or G Italian ocarina, as your fingers are basically in the same places as a piper's would be. Fiddlers don't seem to have a problem with it.

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Tangledwood
Date: 11 Jun 08 - 06:25 AM

The book "Begged, Borrowed and Stolen" is widely used around
Aussie clubs. It's available with CDs of the tunes at reduced and normal speed for learning purposes.
http://www.celt.com.au/austune.html

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 11 Jun 08 - 09:25 AM

All of the above.

Also try the Shrewsbury Folk Festival website it has a down loadable tune book which will be used at the easy tunes workshop at the Festival. Another excellent reason for going to the Festival.

I started Mandola as a non-reader about 6 years ago. After playing a few tunes from memory I followed the dots on easy tunes. I found jigs easiest because the go 123, 123, 123, or diddly, diddly, diddly! It is much easier than trying to play song tunes - they don't really have enough tune!

Cheers

Les

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jun 08 - 05:38 PM

I bought the book "Begged, Borrowed and Stolen" as mentioned above 25 years ago at Cleethorpes festival,it was one of the best buy's I've ever madeand I still refer to it even after all this time

Gerry (Banjo-Flower)

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Tootler
Date: 11 Jun 08 - 06:44 PM

Jack Campin wrote:

That list would work pretty well across the border here in Edinburgh

I get the impression there are a number of ex-pat Geordies hang out in Edinburgh sessions <g>

Subject: RE: Easy session tune music (dots)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 05:27 PM

Thanks to Lizzie Cornish on the "more session rudeness" thread for pointing this one out (and for having the patience to find intelligent life on Radio 2 - I haven't listened to it for years):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sessions/

Very clever. It's a basic Irish repertoire done in Flash so you get both audio and dots, and the musicians involved know their stuff.