Tom Keane’s (reel) on The Session

If anyone should recognize this tune, I’d love to know the name of it.

your abc’s need some work i think

Key

The key is definitely Amix. It circles around A permanently and has a low seventh (g).

Duplicated

your right, i’m not thinking straight now! and I knew it rang a bell somewhere in my head!

But

"Put the barlines in the right place and you get Scotch Mary"

Yes, but it’s quite a different version to the one posted there (although I see you have posted a version simiar to this one in the comments). If Othello had provided a title, I would happily grant it ”different tune’ status - in fact, I would be very surprised if it doesn’t turn out already to have been posted as a tune in its own right, with its own title. If every tune-that-could-be-considered-just-an-alternate-setting-of -another-tune were to have its database entry removed and placed on the comments page, there would only be half-a-dozen tunes here, each with 500 alternate settings posted in the comments.

But then, I’ve been known to do The Guardian crossword.

Yes, it is quite a different version, indeed.

I think the 1st part might be a bit of a mix up with the Monaghan Twig, though. I’d want to know what the source was, i.e. if it’s transcribed from a session tape, or whether it’s half-remembered from a friend’s playing or whatever.

Yeah, it’s just a composite of two fairly common reels and so doesn’t deserve a separate entry.

"it’s just a composite of two fairly common reels and so doesn’t deserve a separate entry."

If we were to grant ‘tune’ staus only to those tunes, none of whose parts were shared with any other tune, we’d only be left with three entires - and a half, for the odd stray B-part.

MIxing up tunes, intentionally or unintentionally, must have played a significant role in the augmentation of the collective repertoire of Irish traditional musicians to the many thousands of tunes it now includes. The problem with all this modern technology (email and eye-pods and mustard-boards and windproof smoke signals) is that it all happens so much quicker - so quick, in fact, that we notice it happening.

My first time

It is the first ABC i’ve ever made, so I am pretty sure it is a mess..
I learned the tune a couple of years ago from a danish band.
I have no idea what they have done to it

You’ve gotta watch those Danes, they are always adding extra parts to old standards and mixing things up…

Options for ‘first tunes’ ~

Some folks, when they are unsure of their ABC’s or the title of a tune, have been using the ‘Discussions’ area to seek help and answers, I think that isn’t a bad idea, rather than roughing it out here… Maybe you’ll consider that option next time ‘Othello’…

"And of the Cannibals that each other eat, the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders."
~ Othello / Shakespeare

Gan Ainm - Options for ‘first tunes’ ~

I had the pleasure of seeing a professional performance of "Othello" here in Bristol at the Tobacco Factory Theatre a couple of weeks ago. Just a Shakespeare would have liked it - the stage was a floor area surrounded on all four sides by no more than five tiered rows of seats, the actors entering and exiting via the entrances used by the audience. No scenery, just a handful of props as required - table, chairs, a bed for the final scenes. Costumes were vaguely Late Victorian/Edwardian, and no curtains of course - the divisions between scenes being done by controlling the lights. The result was an immediacy and closeness between the audience and actors that is impossible to get with a curtained stage looking out over an audience. I felt that I was actually an invisible observer in every scene, as a fly-on-the-wall, as it were.

The actor who played Iago had a remarkably good singing voice for the Elizabethan song he sang in the first act, and was accompanied live by another member of the cast playing a guitar very well. The part of Iago was a virtuoso performance. It’s the longest part in Shakespeare and the actor was on stage for almost every scene for a 3-hour period, with some devilishly long speeches (how did he learn it all?). He exuded a quiet but intense malevolence arising out of jealousy of his General, Othello. The give-away of his attitude was when he said his age was 35 - surely bad news career-wise for someone who was, at that age, still an ensign, the most junior commissioned officer rank. Today, he’d doubtless be called a "loser" - a dangerous loser.

You can find out about current and forth-coming Shakespeare productions at http://www.sattf.org.uk/ - "sattf" = "Shakespeare At The Tobacco Factory".
"Othello" finishes on March 17.

🙂 I wish we’d been there. It sounds perfect…

So near and yet so far away…

“Scotch Mary” / “The Abbey Reel”

Tom Keane’s / Abbey reel

Reel du Gaucher in Quebec?

A friend on Facebook, Vonnie Estes, pointed out that this was pretty much Reel du Gaucher, the popular Quebecois tune. Good point!

Maybe…

Sounds like it as played by John Kelly in Geraldine Cotter’s link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8tnrb1IhLU

play video

Close but not quite the Reel du Gaucher

I learned the Reel du Gaucher in Québec as the following:

X:1
T:Reel du Gaucher
M:4/4
R:Reel
K:Amix
egag efed | cdef g2(3fgf | egag efed | (3cdc (3BcB A3 e|
egag efed | cdef g2(3fgf | eaae (3fgf ed | cABG A3 A ||
AAcA B2AG | FGAd BGGA | BdcA (3BcB AG | FGAB A[EA][E2A2]|
AAcA B2AG | FGAd BGGA | BdcA (3BcB AG | FGAB [E3A3] e||

The setting I’ve added above is the way I learnt it from Aisling Gheal (https://thesession.org/recordings/1298) - not an exact transcription, but I’ve tried to get the "feel" of it down. MacMahon and Hill obviously vary it a lot with each repetition, but that’s the thing with live music isn’t it? 😉

Tom Keane’s reel

Six settings

Twenty-three comments

Key