Cavan Potholes reel

This infectious tune, written by Donal Lunny, comes from the playing of Sharon Shannon.

great transcription! I’ve been looking for this tune for the longest time!

Great Tune for a Great Box Player….Love it!
However, is it triplets or rolls what Sharon does in this tune?

This is one of my favourite tunes at the moment so catchy!!

So good, it’s also the Fiddle I listen for because I may get to learn how to play this but the Accordian is so ideal and rhythmic.

Seems to me it’s in Eminor. Correct me if I’m wrong, please!

The structure is mainly hexatonic, but where there are ‘c’ notes in the triplets, they are played sharp. It would be closer to say that it is in E dorian. I tend not to take too much notice of the key entry in the text. It is often there just for convenience in transcription.

I couldn’t quite get jdicarlo’s great transcription to fit my befuddled fingers so I made some minor changes and threw in some reasonable chords. There are a bunch of guitar chord positions that fit this song so what I’ve added are just the very most basic ones that might make sense.

Chords on Sharon Shannon recording sound something like:
|:Cmaj7-Bm7-Em-Em-Cmaj7-D6-Em-Em:|

I’ve got at least 5 different chord forms at each chord change I could use and they’d all sound fine regardless of their actual chord name but the guitar player I play with would get lost in about 4 seconds if I asked him to play them, hence the very simple selection. The Cmaj7 or Am9 stuff and so all sound just fine and I’m good with letting the guy on the guitar do his thing while my fingers trip over themselves trying to play the melody well on the mandolin. I’ve a ways yet to go on that score.