The College Groves (reel) on The Session

Also known as College Grove, The College Grove, Cottage Grove, The Cottage Grove, Cottage Groves, The Cottage Groves, The Mill Stone, Millstone, The Millstone, Miss Corbett’s, The New Demesne, Paddy Reynold’s.

Seventeen comments

This version seems to be a transcription of a performance, but I have no further information.

Just a hunch

I’m thinking that you are very familiar with the fiddlers fakebook printed by Oak publications. Satisfy my curiosity if you would.

In the meantime, whether intentionally or not - Many of the tunes that Trevor has posted are available in the Fakebook. Those tunes used to be up front ahnd they will be again. I thought It was a great book for me to begin learning what kind of fiddle music I really wanted to play. The book pointed me toward Irish. I soon began to buy pure Irish Tunebooks but I had a good start for someone who just wanted to fiddle but didn’t know what style.

No, Mark, I don’t have the fiddlers fakebook - although it is on my list to get sometime. The College Groves comes from an old and very tattered A5 loose bound volume of about 200 tunes, minus covers, title pages and lists of contents, that I got in a second-hand shop. Fortunately, the tunes appear to be pretty well intact. Many are already on this website in one version or another, and some of them look suspiciously as if they are transcriptions of performances, as in the case of College Groves. I check out a tune to see if its name is on this website and also do an advanced character search using the first bar to see if it’s already posted under a different name. But this technique won’t work if it’s been posted in a different key (any suggestions on this one, Jeremy?).

trevor

Don’t bother, the Fiddlers Fakebook is not really all that great. It’s got a few useful tid-bits but overall it’s got boring settings.

Shannon Heaton once told me that College Groves is a very old tune and that it has the structure of such tunes, but I didn’t have time to pump her for more info on that. It’s a lovely tune, I think.

The tunes in the Fiddler’s FakeBook are usually hybrids of whatever recordings the guy could find of the tune — which may be why most people find the settings fairly boring, because they often cram everything that he heard in there, sometimes obliviating the melody of the tune (a really obvious demonstration of this is his transcription of Kid On The Mountain). It’s a good overall resource for somebody just starting out on the fiddle, but not for someone who wants to play Irish, as there are many different tunes from different sorts of traditions in there.

Zina

There’s a fine young box player in my area who plays a version in C (with B-flats). I suspect he probably got it from another box player. I presume what David Alcock means by Dmaj is that all the Cs are sharp rather than natural. Trevor’s version is notated with a Dmaj key signature, although some of the Cs are natural, so that it fluctuates between Dmix and D maj.

Played by Kevin Burke

on, I think, either "The Cap Fits" or "Up Close." He sticks an extra part in at the end, I think of his own concoction.

Most players play C# in the last part, not Cnatch.

Listen to Jesse Smith’s great fiddle playing of this tune: http://www.claddaghrecords.com/www/music/mp3/spin1007/spin1007trk6.mp3

In both Kevin Burke’s and Jesse Smith’s recordings of this tune, the first and fourth parts are repeated, but the middle two aren’t.

College Groves a la Kevin Burke

Here’s how Kevin plays it on ‘Sweeney’s Dream’ (and later albums with variations). I’ve written it out without many repeats (which is a lot, given that he puts 16 bars to each part!) because his variations sound really good. When he comes back to the beginning he always replaces the first 4 bars with one of two variations which are set out at the end of this transcription (they smooth the transition back to Dmix from D, which would otherwise jar a little). The first one of these uses a couple of F naturals in the fist bar and is a real delight to the ear.

T: The College Groves
R:reel
S:based on Kevin Burke’s version from ‘Sweeney’s Dream’. Transcribed by Mark MacDiarmid.
M:C|
L:1/8
K:Dmix
D2 (3DDD ADE{G}D|DE [Ec]E [Ed]E[Ec]E|E{G}D FA d3 B|{d}BAGE {G}EDCE|
D2 (3DDD ADE{G}D|DE [Ec]E [Ed]E[Ec]E|E{G}D FA [F3d3] B|{d}BAGE {G}EDCE|
DEFB ADE{G}D|E2 [Ec]E [Ed]E[Ec]E|E{G}D FA dged |cAGE {G}EDCE|
D2 (3DDD ADE{G}D|DE [Ec]E [Ed]E[Ec]E|E{G}D FA [F3d3] B|{d}BAGE {G}EDDg||
f~d3 fa{b}af|e~c3 ef{g}fe|fd{e}dc dcAB|(3ccA GE{G}ED Dg|
f~d3 fa{b}af|e~c3 ef{g}fe|d2 (3efg fagb|afge f{a}~d3|
f~a3 f~d3|e~g3 e~c3|f~a3 fd{e}dB|{d}BAGE {G}ED D2|
fgag f~d3|efgf e~c3|d2 (3efg fagb|afge fdde||
K:D
|:f2df {a}fedf|(3.e.f.ecf (3efece|f2d~f3af|{a}fec feddf|
{a}fed f{a}fedf|(3.e.f.e ceAece |d2 (3efg fagb|1afge fdde:|2afge fdd2||
K:Dmix
"The following 4 bars can replace the first 4 bars of the reel 2nd time around"|z|z|z|
e|=f2d=f (3efe ^cA |d2AGFGEF|DEFG Ad{e}dc|(3ABc GE{G}EDCE||
"And here’s another of Kevin’s variations for the first 4 bars"|z|z|z|
dcAG FGAB|[E3c3]c{d}cAG E|DEFG Ad{e}dc|(3ABc GE{G}EDCE||

This tune is in the Gunn Book (Fermanagh 1865) as The New Demense. I think Seamus Ennis called it that as well. there’s just 2 parts in the Gunn Book version