The Dogs Among The Bushes reel

This tune is also played in A mixolydian.
Like many other reels, it is a descendant of a Scots Strathspey (to be found in the Atholl collection - I forget the name). The Chieftains (Chieftains 8) play it as a Strathspey (or Highland?), then break into the reel, all in Amix.

Also recorded by “Planxty” on “Cold, Blow & The Rainy Night”
and Paddy Carty - “Master Collector Series Vol 1”

I’m not sure what recording I’m basing this on or whose playing but for my ear it sounds better with a change to F natural in bar 4.
Try it and see what you think.
Cheers
Donough

That was what I meant by A mixolydian - although, of course, in Amix it would be G-natural instead of F-natural. Am I making sense?

As a struggling piper, I find that popping the high f in the first part sounds preety good to, just don’t over do it!

The strathspey variation is called Athole Brose - key of D…

Altan and Solas both recorded this in E Mixolydian, I’m not sure how common of a variation that is? I prefer playing it in E on the fiddle.

B3 A|:GE~E2 B,E~E2|GE~E2 AcBA|GE~E2 B,EGE|FDD2 dBAF|
GE~E2 B,E~E2|GE~E2 AcBA|GFGA BcdB|1AFDF A2 BA:|2AFDF A3 c||
|:Bee2 efed|Beef gefe|Bddc dedc|Bdde fdec|
Be/e/e/e efed|Beef gefe|ge/e/e/e ~B3 c|d2 dc dcBA:|

Is this an ancestor of “Kiss the Maid behind the Barrel”?

Here’s the setting we play in our session. It’s similar to Altan’s setting (although they recorded it in Emix). In the fifth measure of the B-part, we often play that first F as an F#.

X:1
T:Dogs Among The Bushes, The
M:4/4
L:1/8
R:reel
K:Gmix
|BG~G2 DG~G2|BGAB cedc|BG~G2 DGBG|AFAc fdcA|
BG~G2 DG~G2|BGAB cedc|BABc defd|cAFe fdcA:||
g3g2 agf|dgga bgaf|dffe fgfd|cdfg afgf|
dggf gagf|dgga bgag|bggf d3e|f2fe fdcA:||

A mixolydians’ relative major is D Major. Not G, or F.

About errik version X:2
the Key mentioned is G, but it sounds obviously as an E minor tune, so I think that “K:Em” would be more accurate to keep the same key signature (F sharp) 😉.
But then it’s to me a quite different tune, which make me think of Fermoy Lasses, at least for the first part (except that the “B” of the 1st part are “B,” one octave lower in errik version):
P:Dunmore Lasses (as I transcribed it … years ago)
K:Edor
F|GE~E2 BEEF |GFED B2BA |GE~E2 BEE2 |FADE FGA/G/F |
GE~E2 BEEF |GFED B3A |GE~E2 BE E2 |FADE FGAF ||
P:Dogs Among the Bushes (X:2 errik version)
|:GE~E2 B,E~E2|GE~E2 AcBA|GE~E2 B,EGE|FDD2 dBAF|
GE~E2 B,E~E2|GE~E2 AcBA|GFGA BcdB|1 AFDF A2 BA:|2 AFDF A3 c||

But all of that is finally to conclude that the key of X:2 is probably wrong and that more certainly it has to be “A major”, what drive us back to Dogs Among the Bushes 🙂

That’s a funny but interesting experimentation of the feature of the abc langage to create a quite new tune just by changing the K: field 😀

I like the darker mixolydian mood of this setting, which I prefer to the G major one. Picked it from Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh’s album The Nervous Man (he plays it in Eb on the CD).

A transcription of John Doherty’s recording.

This seems to be the reel version of an old Scottish strathspey called Athol Brose, or Niel Gow’s favourite.

A setting in A mixolydian from the wonderful playing of Angelina Carberry on her CD “An Traidisiun Beo”
https://thesession.org/recordings/1873
On that album, follows the A mixolydian setting of “Finbarr Dwyer’s” reel
https://thesession.org/tunes/5623

The (#) over the G is to indicate that the g# is played only on the 2nd repeat of the entire tune.