Arianna’s Tower (reel) on The Session

WARNING!! this is not a traditional tune!!!
composer: gian marco pietrasanta
rhythm: SLOOOOOW reel

My 3 year daughter Arianna was building a little plastic bricks tower, I took my flute and this tune came out.
It is not a reel, it’s somthing like a very slow reel, or a slow air.

Arianna’s Tower

Nice as a slow reel. Well done Gian Marco.

Absolutely lovely, Gian Marco. That G# fits in perfectly.

Adrianna’s Tower

Wonderful tune … I play a CGDa mandola and it has some marvelous double stops implied in the structure. It seems to almost come alive at 75 - 80bpm.
Send more neat - potentially traditional tunes. This is how traditions start.

That’s a great tune, Gian Marco.
In the second last bar isn’t it a (long) ‘f nat’ instaed of a ’ f sharp’ ?

Is the WARNING for hard-core traditionalists or does it mean we shall not introduce it into the traditional, oral transformation process?

Urs, I prefer the Fsharp in that bar , but it works with the F nat too.
WARNING is for musicians interested in traditional tunes only.

I wrote this tune ( actually this it is a self-composed tune ) one years ago, and there is a special reason becouse i posted this tune in these war days. This tune has a conncection with childrens, love and peace.

Very Dramatic

Thank you for this tune - I love it!

Ebbravo Gian Marco!

Veeeeery nice reel.

Arianna’s Tower

I agree, it’s very well composed GM. I remember you posting it last year but I must have forgotten to comment at the time. I reckon it works nicely at a fast pace too. Like urs, I find meself playing an Fnat in that penultimate bar.

Beautiful!

I love this tune, it’s absolutely gorgeous! Some slow reels can feel a bit drawn about and long, but this one has enough momentum and melody to keep it flowing. I played it for about 20mins non-stop because it just felt lovely! Gracias!!!

Lovely tune and now even better for having heard your own recording on the craic-online.
Just to put another take on the Fnat/sharp: you could even play a G there as well. Maybe vary it each time around.

Arianna’s Tower

Thanks again for the tune! Thought you might like to know that I’ve been playing your tune with my little sister (she’s 11) and last weekend we went to the Hexham Youth Gathering and played it several times as part of our performance set. It went down really well and everyone said it was a gorgeous tune. We were playing it really slowly, on fiddle with a guitar backing. Gorgeous tune! :-)

Thanks to you, Roisin.

Arianna’s Tower

Lovely,
I just found the live version of you playing it. Bellisimo!

great!!

im kind of new to tin whistles, and i was thinking if it is posible to play this tune on a D whistle using scale A …… if in not mistaking that only means that G should be half hollin

Please help me and excuse all my mistakes i probably just writen ….

Thanks for all the help, i will appreciate it beacuse i realy want to learn this tune

It is perfectly possible to play it on a D whistle looking at the dots. In fact I don’t know why you would use any other whistle.

You will need to cross finger for the C nats (oxx ooo - on most whistles) or half hole iif you are so inclined and you can either half hole or cross finger the G# (xxo xox).

Thanks for the anwser ….I got confused beacuse it says in the sheet music that the key is Ador or Adorian ….so i thought it is ment to be played in a key of A whistle ….

The problem is that i still dont understand what is the deiference betwen A or Ador and G or Gmayor ……if someone could expalin that to me i would be most gratefull

and i apologice if this is explained somwhere obvious and i didnt manage to see it

Thanks for all the help in past and in the future

It would be a very difficult, if not impossible tune to play on an A whistle. The range is just not suited there are also issues with the number of sharps in each key.

On a D whistle you can comfortably play most tunes in D, G, A, Bminor, Eminor, F#minor, Edorian, Adorian, Bdorian, Amixolydian, Dmixolydian and Emixolydian as well as various other keys as long as the tune fits within the overall scale of the instrument or can be made to fit.

There are a number of discussions in the past on the discussion forum that discuss musical keys and modes. I would suggest doing a quick search.

Briefly however A major has 3 sharps in it C#, F# and G#. G major has 1, F# and D major has 2 - C# and F#.

A dorian has the same number of sharps as G - just F# as you will see in the sheetmusic. It is effectively a G scale but starting on the A note. So instead of:

G A B C D E F# G

you get:

A B C D E F# G A

There is so much more to say about all of this but that will do for now.