The Charlesworth Hornpipe three-two

I got this from Pete Cooper & Richard Bolton’s CD, “Turning Point”. It’s the last in a set of three 3-2s. I’m still trying to learn the other two.

Great tune! We started learning it this evening at our weekly tune workshop.

What is very effective in this tune is the way it unexpectedly goes into Dmaj from Bmin at the start of the 5th part.

sounds good in Bminor too (parts 3 n 5 nicer in this key?)(a bit breton and a bit baroque)

…actually, in minor and as a waltz it sounds amazingly good!

how is it done?
very simply: just move the bar a crotchet forward:
can you hear!! 🙂

(you can also, when suitable, shorten the quaver groupof each bar to 6 (or change some of them into semiquavers) and lengthen by one the crotchet group…)

This is REALLY good Joe!

Thanks a million for posting this. What a grand tune. Deffinitely my top tune right now. Got to go play it some more. I’ll make sure to try it as a waltz. Not sure how I got along before without this tune.

post the other two once you’ve learned them.

I wrote this tune in 1988 while I was working on the Northern Frisk Collection with Jamie Knowles and Pat Chandler-Knowles (RIP). I’m pretty sure Pete Cooper credits me as the composer on the CD, he does in his on line tune collection. I always envisaged it as a Bm tune predominantly. It was written for Dave Godwin (RIP) who lived in Charlesworth Derbyshire. Dave played Piano Accordian and guitar with the Bilbo Baggins Barn Dance Band with whom I played fiddle for many years. We used to rehearse at his house. The tune is popular with musicians around Saddleworth in Greater Manchester. I’m hoping to record the tune next year with my current band Run Out The Guns together with a variant called the Charlesworth Polka. I tend to play the double hornpipe at a more sedate speed than is normal and sometimes add a bar of 4 at the end of the tune, just to confuse people. Ralph Smethurst (Melodeon) has recorded a version of the tune which is more or less bang on to the way I play it. I’m glad people like it and are playing it.

Top work Sam. It’s nice to be able to put a name to the person who penned this.

I thought all along that this was an old English tune, such is the effectiveness of the melody!

Thanks Dan, thinking about it, it’s a bar of two semi quavers at the end. I hold the last note for four beats. I was going to put the polka that goes with it up, but there’s a caveat against posting self penned stuff. If you’d like a PDF copy of the dots for the polka let me know and I’ll e-mail them to you. Cheers, Sam.

From the tune book Northern Frisk. For more information email jamiefknowles?googlemail.com