The Windmill reel

Ciaran Tourish, of Altan, is one of my all-time favorite fiddlers. He has an amazing knack for finding harmonies and booming drones that punctuate Mairead Mhaonaigh’s lead lines, his technique is as crisp and clean as they come, and he’s quite capable of making those Donegal tunes as lyrical as the Clare repertoire. Tourish also composes better than most, and The Windmill is a great reel. It comes as the second tune in the set beginning with Tommy Peoples’ on Island Angel. For a fiddler, the tune feels challenging at first because of all the rapidfire string crossings. I set my tape recorder to slow it down by 20 percent, and even that was hard to keep up with at first. Work it slow to make sure all those notes are clear and individual before picking up the pace.

I cannot thank you enough for subbmitting this tune!!!
I always wanted to play it but wasn’t able to figure it out off the CD. Ciaran Tourish is one of my favorite fiddlers as well.

Hi Will,

Great tune! Thanks for lashing that in here enjoying playing all three of these, slowly but surely, love this stuff!

Regards

Shylock

Hey! Is breá liom Altan tá siad iontach! ach
Is there any explaination of how to read the chords?
are they in ABC?
I don’t understand those notations.
Especially with numbers and wonder why some letters are MAJ and some other MIN?
Please help!
Go raibh maith agaibh! ^^

There aren’t any chords symbols in this transcription.

… and I wanted to say, the A part is almost entirely arpeggios; so a straight forward backing is, well, fairly straight forward…

Dia is Muire dhaoibh!
So I wound the Windmill backing chords but didn’t for the 2 other tunes, Tommy People’s and Fintan Mc Mannus.
Would any backing musician have a idea or ’d know them?
TanX!
Go raibh míle maith agaibh!

Is this usually swung?

Well Eiluned, it’s a reel like any other, so just play it like one. Here’s the composer playing it (starts at 1:37):

https://youtu.be/VBCCjZfShuo?t=97

play video

A very good transcription, I think was useful a little substitution in 7th measure, not |GFGA Bdfa | but better |GFGB Adfa|