The Air Tune reel

This is my version of Liz Carroll’s composition, which is slightly different from the original, I believe. I’m not sure how it should be categorised but I think it’s a slow reel. It’s a fiddle tune but sounds nice on whistle.

I’ve never tried playing this tune in the session, but I might do in the near future. Rakish Paddy is a nice tune to follow it.

I got this from “Her infinite variety - celtic women in music and song” (I think that’s the name of it), a collection of female “celtic” artists. On that CD it’s played by Trian together with two tunes called “The cliff dwellers” and “Cutting the waves”. Not sure if they’re here already, but I’m working on them.

Very nice tune, anyway. And it works great with Rakish Paddy. 🙂

I just saw that Trians recording is listed here, but the other two tunes are not. Well, I’ll transcribe the if I find the time…

I’ve learnt it off Enda Scahill’s “Pick it up” album…he does a fantastic job of it…he calls it Liz Carroll!

i got this tune off sharon shannon’s album “the diamond mountain sessions”.she does it with Liz & Yvonne Kane.they play a version of this, followed by “Road to Recovery” and “Farewell to Chernobyl”

Certainly looks like a slow tune to me:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fim7fOqCC3g

play video

Transcribed from the ‘Slow Drive’ track on Kenneth and Angus MacKenzie’s great CD “Piob is Fidheall”

Here is a very nice version done by Seamus Hernon on flute on the Hernons album. It is called ‘Fire in the bellies’ on the album, and is followed by Bucks of Oranmore.

X: 9
T: Fire in the bellies
T: The Air Tune
R: reel
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Dmaj
Affe f2de|fade f2ed|Beed faed|BA ~A2 BAFG|
Affg a2ag|fade f2ed|d2Be dB(3Bcd|1 FGEF D3B:|2 FGEF D3g||
abga fgef|edcd FADA|Beed fded|BA ~A2 BAFG|
abga fgef|edcd FADA|GBBA BdcB|1 Affe defg:|2 Affe d3B||

This is how I believe Liz plays it in the video above. If I have a note or two wrong then please let us know what you think should change as I played along without using any slow down software.

Re X5 I don’t know how the lines and the no 3 over part 1 got there . If I put them in then it was an accident .Please ignore or maybe Jeremy might remove them . Thanks.

Managed to remove them so no need to worry.

Does anyone know the chords to go with it?

Erin, I play:

||:D|D|Em D/F#|G A|D|D|G D/F#|A D:||
||:D D/C#|D/B D/A|Em D/F#|G A|D D/C#|D/B D/A|G D/F#|A D:||

This is my take on the same video as posted above, and with chords added

This is basically an accurate ABC rendering of the transcription presented in Liz Carroll’s own book of her collected compositions, published in 2010, except for a minor tweak I’ve made to the format - I haven’t changed anything material, I’ve just added the Last Time bar.

Note there are no “triplets”, the little runs in groups of 3 notes being correctly notated as 2-semiquavers-plus-a-quaver. Where those grouplets are of repeated As (Bars A4 & B4) I would, as a fluter/whistler, play A rolls, but I wanted to preserve the book (fiddle) text rather than substitute dotted crotchets with a roll sign (~A3).

Also note the 1st and 2nd time bars of the two sections - I don’t think any of the other transcriptions posted here have quite got the details of those right (or some other bits….. except perhaps if they’re accurate transcriptions of someone playing it “differently”! 😀 ).

Here are the ABC header lines for my transcription which The Session entry format doesn’t accept:
T:The Air Tune
C:Liz Carroll
O:USA
B:Liz Carroll Collected (2010 - ISBN 9780615378145)
Z:Jem Hammond 20:6:19 after David James (transcriber for the book)
R:“Slow Piece”
M:C
L:1/8
K:D

You can download a Word document containing both dots and ABC notation of my transcription (above) after the one in Liz Carroll’s tune book here: https://app.box.com/s/3o0fk9pc30aem3wlqlzwb2chhml4lt03