Music For A Found Harmonium reel

I have to confess that this isn’t my favorite tune. It strikes me as more of a scale exercise than an actual melody, and part of it is not an easy exercise. So it can be less than fun to play, downright boring even, when you’re first learning it and it sounds like you’ve had one pint too many as you slide from key to key.

So…it’s a six-part tune, starting and ending in D major, with significant detours into C and F. Despite it’s repetitiveness, audiences seem to enjoy it, at least when played with verve and spontaneity, which I’ve never been able to muster. My cohorts, however, have performed it with great success.

The only real difficult part is fingering the third and fourth measures of the fourth part—getting frtom B flat down to F and E and back, especially at speed. I can’t offer much help here—just work at it slowly until you can do it. Or file your fingernails during this part while the bouzouki player carries the lead….

Enjoy!

Check out Patrick Street’s rendition—contrary to most tunes, it’s a lot more fun to listen to than it is to play.

Sorry…should be a lowercase c on the second ending of the third part. All else is accurate.

I LOVE this tune. I play it on the harmonium. My son plays it on the mandolin.

Alice Flynn

On line 5 all the second c sharps in the bar should be played an octave below the first one, that is, on the g string. It’s like a diminished chord.

This is a hard task unless you switch to 3rd position at the start of the bar. It’s well worth doing, by the way.

I used to play a harmony to this tune when the guitar player in my band carried the lead - and yes, I pretty much filed my nails in the tricky bit. I never quite understood it. I guess it’s never too late to try…

This is by Simon Jeffis (?) I think. The Penguin Cafe Orchestra played it.

This tune was written in the early 1970’s by Simon Jeffe,leader of the Pengiun Cafe Orchestra.It was written on an old harmonium that he found.The tune proved to be popular with audiences,and the band had to lug around the harmonium just to play the one tune.The tune was used as the theme music for an arts programme on the BBC,which is where I first heard it.Simon Jeffe sadly died a few years ago,but I think the Penguin Cafe Otchestra are still going.I’ve seen this tune credited as trad. on a couple of cd’s.Has it passed into the tradition?By the way,The Penguin Cafe Orchestra played it slowly. David Meredith

The most confusing thing about this tune is the sequencing of the parts. Everybody does it differently but for what it is worth most people play the A & B parts twice (AABBAABB) before moving on to the middle bit with its funny key changes. Then AABB before doing the middle bit again. And finish with AABBAABB. Like everything in ITM it’s hard to say what’s right and what’s wrong but uniformity does help the tune get played successfully in sessions.

I really enjoy playin this tune (if it works), i had the pleasure of playin it in a session with the kathryn tickell band when they came out here to play at the Hong Kong Folk Festival. I learnt it off a recording i found on the net where its been played at the Celtic Fiddle Festival where they do a really interesting version using this tune as the main one and then changing throughout to give certain players solos. Anyway if this rings a bell to anyone, i’m dying to find out the tune the guitarist plays as his solo, can anyone help me out?
much appreciated

oops sorry forgot to look in the recordings section, my mistake, im still new to this website

They have this tune on the movie "Napoleon Dynamite" it is the Patrick Street version. The movie is hilarious thought I would add that.

I don’t really like this tune much, I think it’s rather silly. But I have learnt it on the whistle just for the challenge. It’s good practice.

that’s actally why i was looking for this tune, from napolean dynamite! i was so sureprised when i heard an irish tune on this movie!

can anyone send me or let me know where i can get the tab and chords for patrick streets version of music for a found harmonium please? my pals and i are in an irish band and that tune would be an amazing encore.

I heard the Celtic Fiddle Festival live version first and thought it was a really cool set. I still do. Of course, the Harmonium tune didn’t stand on its own. It was stitched together with several other tunes and it all came together in a very satisfying whole. Later, I heard the Patrick Street version and thought it was a little disappointing. If I’d heard it first, I might feel differently.

Of course, it’s not an ITM tune. We’re only discussing it because some folks who play ITM, among other stuff, happened to play it and record it. When I play it on the guitar, it does feel like an exercise, but it’s a fun exercise.

Now a Melbourne (Australia) Greek Rebetica band includes this in one of their encore sets. Quite amusing seeing it played on traditional DAD bouzouki. At Maldon Folk Festival one of the celtic type crowd was scrtaching his head trying to find the name of the well known tune. Context can do that to you. The band’s name… Rebetiki.

Yes, it’s in this movie, but they didn’t put them in the credits or pay them. There’s a lawsuit going on now, I think.

I am using it to practice 4th finger "D" as a full drone in the A Part. (not much divergence from the drone, admittedly… )
Bl**dy painful, let me tell you!!

|:[FD]D[DG]D [DF]DDD|[FD]D[DG]D [DF]DDD|[FD]D[DG]D [DF]DDD|"A"EDCD "D"[DF]DDD:|!

the is almost completely different from the version I know, only the first two lines are the same!

help!
can anyone tell me what bowing they use on this tune. i’ve just started to learn it and its very slow right now. am using all single bows because thats the only way i can make it sound like it should. is this a bad start to this tune? basically, will it be near impossible to play it up to speed this way.
i know i should figure it out for myself but i dont wanna get into a bad habit on it cause i find it hard to break it!
anything would help

The Sharron Shannon version seems to be an entirely different tune with the same name, at least on the CD listed. Yet she played the proper tune (Simon Jeffe) at the last concert of hers I was at..

Harmony Glen - the Dutch band who played the 2008 Feakle Festival have a version of this on their CD "Three Wheels"

This tune is copyrighted.
Are you obliged to pay a royalty to the owners for printing, posting or performing this tune?

Try using ADAE tuning.

It can be played on a G whistle, though it’s pretty tricky….

X: 1
T: Music For A Found Harmonium
C: Simon Jeffe
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K:Amaj
AB|:cAdA cAAA|cAdA cAAA|cAdA cAAA|BAGA cAAA:|
|:BAGA BAGA|cAGA cAGA|dABA GAdA|1 cAAA A2 AA:|2 cAAA A2 A=c||
K:Gmaj
|:gcBc {Bc}dcBc|1 gcBc BB2 c:|2 gcBc BB2 A||
K:Cmaj
|fcAc dcAc|fcAc dcAc|fcBc dBBd|fcBc dBBd|
|^gdBd gddd|^gdBd gddd|^gdBd gddd|^gdBd gddd|
K:Amaj
|:cAdA cAAA|cAdA cAAA|cAdA cAAA|BAGA cAAA:|
|:BAGA BAGA|cA=GA cAGA|dABA GABA|1 cAAA A2 AA:|2 cAAA A4||

Matto Congrio (previous band of Carlos Nuñez) play this tune too in the disc with the same name…

The piece was played in C by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, which Simon Jeffes founded in 1972. Youtube has a video of the PCO playing the piece in a 1989 BBC broadcast. I’ve only ever heard it played in D - probably because "Music For a Found Harmonium" is rarely ever played on a harmonium these days.

@Stíofán, sorry I’m late to this party, but the problem you’re hearing is that tracks 3 and 4 are the wrong way round on the Sharon Shannon CD. Listen to the one which is called "Queen of the West" and you’ll hear this tune, and vice versa.

I remember years ago visiting folk night somewhere and somebody actually played it on a Harmonium.
I don’t know where people get the idea it has several titles as it is not an old tune and it is well known and documented.

Another very fine version of this appears on the 2001 CD entitled "Fingerboard Grooves" by McMullen & St. Maurice out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. I’d add a new setting but I don’t own it and cannot say offhand what key they use. The example on the Green Linnet Twentieth Anniversary double-CD is ruined, in my view, by the slide guitar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps7rJ77tjFI

play video

Zoe Conway