The Trip To Cartmel reel

Although it has 2 sharps, I think the key is actually A mixolydian.

If I had to harmonise it I would get
line 1
A A | D E(poss 7th) | A A | D E (again, poss 7th) :|
line 2
A G | A A | AG | A E :|

I am using Emajor or E7th, although the G in Amix is natural; the minor chord doesn’t do it for me.

So, I am thinking an “A” key.

If I needing a “chord” to finish this off (say at the end of a set) I would use an open 5th E/B (i.e. not committing to whether it should be a G sharp or G natural!)- resolution to an “A” chord doesn’t sound right to me.

I think the time signature is probably 2/2 or, more likely, half common time; is that available as an option on this site?.

All the best

Peter Jenkins

I’ve looked it up! Half common time is available in abc as
M:C|

All the best

Peter Jenkins

Could you tell us where you got this tune, Peter?

Sorry, Edgar…

Initially from a local fiddler friend. I don’t know where he got it from. Out of laziness I tracked it using JC’s ABC tunefinder and edited it to reflect the version I had been given.

Of the ABCs I retrieved, one version is from the the Village Music Project (credits to Chris Partington); another cites the origins as the Browne Collection, Armitt Library, Ambleside.

The tune seems to be a variant of the High Road to Linton

Key: A mixolydian - yup

The tune is reflected in two recordings listed in this site - the notes for Pete Cooper’s recordng (with spelling “Cartmell”) attribute it to the Browne Family of Troutbeck, 1830s,

Can be found in the Browne Family manuscript (11) here:

http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/b.htm

Oops Cross post!

Must admit, I’m hearing this tune as firmly in D, not Amix.

Well, firmly-ish …

🙂

Nah, Amix

The abc on the VMP site is an accurate rendition of the manuscript version - the last bar is cAAB {cd}d2B2

This makes little sense in the playing, and neither does the abc currently here. My reading (and playing) would be cAAc {Bc}d2B2

It’s not, imo, a variant of High Road To Linton though they do have some notes in common.

Not how I hear it, Doc. It sits nicely in D. 🙂

There’s no way it’s D! The tonal centre is A, with 2 #s.

Nah. It’s D. Tell you what it seems like to me - kind of like the way Green Fields of America starts on a chord which isn’t the key it’s in. Starts on a C, but it’s in G. Well, this one starts on the dominant (A) but it’s in D.

Maybe just the way I’m hearing it. (Or you’re hearing it. 😉 )

Nah, this is SO Amix. I bet you 20 quid.

It’s Amix for the same reason as this tune https://thesession.org/tunes/1231 even though the parts end on D.

I don’t agree that those two tunes are both Amix for the same reason.

And the bet is meaningless. ’Cos, at the end of the day, I’d doubt whether there is truly a definitive answer.

BTW, I totally agree that yer other tune in in Amix. This one’s in D. 😀

The parts of this one end *in* D, not just on it. In fact, it keeps coming back round to a tonality of D. ’Tother one (which, as you know, I play) only has the last note as D because it’s a passing note on its way back to A.

The D at the end of the A-part is just in passing. The majority of the tune’s tonality is A. You can tell that because there are so many C#s which clash with D but not A. The C#s and Es outline a very strong A major triad. The Gs and Bs in the 2nd part outline a very strong G major chord suggesting a progression from tonic to subtonic and back, not a weak V to IV progression. Honestly, you bloody fiddle players!

I reckon the first and third bars (first part) are *on*, not in, the dominant chord of D, with the second and fourth bars firmly in D (the key the tune’s in 😉 ).

The second part is a little diversion away from that, and I’m going to skip over that because it doesn’t support my argument strongly enough. 🙂

…haha and also because the 2nd part establishes the tune more firmly in Amix for going back round into the 1st part 😉

No no no! It couldn’t be anything like that.

It’s in D. 🙂

If you’re so sure, you could get 20 quid out of this, Ben.

No?

No?

No, ’cause it’s in Amix 😀

Who’d be the arbiter? Bagsy it’s me. 😀

LOL that’d be right!

Amix.

Clearly.

Not that you’d be biased or anything. 🙂

Well I love A mix so yeah maybe I am biased.

How about you plat a D chord through this tune and see how crap it sounds?
Replace said D chord with an A chord with G chords and hear the improvement

It would be daft to play a D chord throught the tune. Just like it would be daft to play an A chord throughout this tune. I don’t go that much for chordal accompaniment for trad tunes in any case - IMO it tends to straitjacket the tune, and force it to sound in a particular way, when the tune itself may be fraught with ambiguity, and often is.

But all that’s a whole ’nuther story. 🙂

i’m not suggesting you do that as a way of accompaniment!

it would just show you the root note of the tune, that’s all

No, I don’t think it does. It just shows that either way sounds wrong. Doesn’t prove anything.

just do it and see

I have. In my head. Which, honestly is the same as playing it aloud, for me. Better, since I can ‘hear’ both the tune and the chords, and play back from wherever.

lol

Just ask a guitarist what he/she would play to go with (I won’t say accompany) this tune. I would be surprised if I heard many D major chords.

I have put my ideas in my first post - see top of thread; but, hey, I’m a box player and I’ve got to do something with my left hand (now, keep it clean, chaps!).

All the best

Peter Jenkins

I’d put quite a few D chords in there, but that doesn’t negate the fact that I’d be playing Amix progressions (which is the mode of the tune) 🙂

Let’s see if we can get other people to join in the pointless argument

I don’t think there’s anything else to say about it, is there? It’s not a vote. I’m going to think what I think, and you’re going to think what you think. Which, of course, is the main reason that it’s pointless. Especially as I don’t think the chords that a guitarist might put with a tune is the determining factor in deciding what tonal centre or mode it’s in. Or any factor.

Yeah true. It’s just that what I think is correct lol

Sorry EB, but if you’re hearing this in D it’s no wonder that you don’t like chordal acompanyment. 🙂

Or accompaniment. Anybody seen that edit button?

Heh, heh, heh…

Yeah, for a progression, I get

|: A A7 | D G | A A7 | D A/G/ :|
|: A G | A A7 | A G | A D :|

A little old-timey, so maybe dropping the 7th, sus the D at the end, and definitely Amix.

E is a hard chord to ‘push’ when the melody is trying to resolve to D. Amix has to due with the nature of the progression.

As it ends on a D chord in one or both of the parts, it’s not one of the neat and clean ones that cycle like this and end on an A note and chord.

Amix, in this case, is a matter of convention and tends to result in more conventional chordal approaches.

Pete Cooper
Schott, ED 12758 (CD edition), 2006
ISBN: 978-1-902455-57-0

Page 32, tune #31: “Trip to Cartmell”

Crediting the original source…

I’m a bit late joining this pointlesss argument, but I am definitely a member of the A mixolydian school; the A bits sound like the ‘floor’, the D bits sound like a ‘ledge’. But I do suffer from earwax buildup.

The version posted here looks much like that which appears in ‘A Northern Lass - Traditional Dance Music of Northwest England’ - except for the last bar of the B-part, which I remember as | cAAB/2c/2 d2 B2 :| - but I might have misread it (I don’t own a copy of the book).

I first heard the tune from Eliza Carthy on ‘Heat, Light and Sound’. If my aural memory serves me correctly, her setting lacks the semiquaver passages and is, overall, a simpler version, something like this:

X: 1
T: Trip To Cartmel, The
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Amix
|: ceeg aeeg | fddf feed | ceeg aeeg | fddf f2ed :|
|: cAAc BGGB | cAAg aeed | cAAc BGGB | cABc d2 :|

Very entertaining reading this ten-year-old dispute! I also think of it in A mix - and I’m a fiddler!

It throws up such interesting considerations though. I can certainly hear /why/ someone would think of it as being in D, but myself would tend to think of the D as a point of repose rather than the goal of the tune.

I play also (french) bagpipes and I hear in my head a “A bass” drone while playing this tune on a whistle. So Amix certainly too. This tune can be played on a GHB, I suppose.
The explanation of the “dispute” is perhaps also the difference between “plagal” and “anthenticus” plainchant modes, and how we hear them now, but I don’t know much about them.
The “g” of the second bar of Part B can be also played as “^g” without altering the tune.

>think of the D as a point of repose rather than the goal of the tune.

So do I.