The Rainy Day reel

This is the tune recorded by the Bothy Band, Mary Bergin and Trouble In The Kitchen. There is another tune called the Rainy Day, but it is not the same (both get played at our session). The only similarity is that it’s a reel in the same key. This one is more similar to tunes like The Bunch Of Keys https://thesession.org/tunes/344 and Junior Crehan’s Farewell To Miltown https://thesession.org/tunes/539, but more often than not, those two are played in G dorian. My transcription is from the Bothy Band’s first album, where it is paired with The Navvy On The Shore https://thesession.org/tunes/1273 (mislabelled on the recording as The Navvy On The Line). You can hear Trouble In The Kitchen playing this here http://www.thepuredrop.com.au/artists/titk.htm.

Good stuff!

Bt that I meant it’s good to see it transcribed. It’s a bit misleading when you see Mary Bergin (version I play which is pretty much as you have it) and you bring up the dots and that’s not it!

This distinct version is also on Breda Keville’s stunning fiddle solo album. She cites another East Galway musician Conor Tully as the source. Joe Burke, also from E. Galway, didn’t record this version on his album. Where does this come from?

This is different, but IMO still related to the more common setting: https://thesession.org/tunes/1807

Other related tunes are:
Mills are Grinding (in Gmaj): https://thesession.org/tunes/5779
The Ewe Wi’ The Crookit Horn (Gmix/Gdor): https://thesession.org/tunes/5610

Merro, it was you who made me think to post this one actually, since you’ve started this tune the last couple of times you’ve been at the session and reminded me of its existence.

Dow, do you know there’s a cool Gm Scots reel called “The Old Reel,” or “Cairngorm Brooch”? That’s also similar to this. Wish it were a flute-friendly tune….

Yes, I do know. It’s the same tune as the Bunch Of Keys, which I pointed out when I first posted this tune https://thesession.org/tunes/344/details.

Slainte, did you know that some people play it in a flute-friendly key, just for you? https://thesession.org/tunes/338

Sadly the lad hasn’t the pads to half-hole… 🙁

Slainte - Bunch of *Keys* …. hint, hint. Where have you been? Paddy Carty copped on half a century ago.

🙂

I actually prefer the Scots version and am not very interested in playing The Bunch of Keys in Ador. I’d rather learn to play this lovely version of the Rainy Day, after hearing Breda Keville’s haunting playing of it.

No, I don’t any pad on my flute to play good tunes.

I once had a chance to see and touch legendary Eddie Moloney’s keyed flute with all the bunch of keys ripped off. Do you believe he and Mr. Carty were almost neighbours in East Galway?

You’d learn this version of the Rainy Day, Slainte? But only yesterday you said “But I don’t feel like playing any Ador reel at the moment”. Make up your mind! 😉

As a substitute for the Scots Gm reel…. And I want to try the set of “Mills are Grinding” into this “Rainy Day.” It’d be a nice set just like Copperplates.

I think I should have typed: Eddie Moloney’s “keyed” flute with its keys violently ripped off…. On second thought, it might have been Stephen Moloney’s.

Here’s Breda Keville’s version:

K: Gdor
F|DGGF G3A|Bcde fdcB|AFFE F2cF|~F2cF dFcF|
DGGF G3A|B2GA Bcde|~f3d cAFG|AFcA G3:|
c|dggf g2fg|ag~g2 aggf|dffe ~f3g|af~f2 afgf|
dg~g2 gfdc|Bcde f2gf|dggf dfcA|AFcA G3:|

Hope there’s no serious mistake. To put it in Ador,

K: Ador
G|EAAG A3B|cdef gedc|BGGF G2dG|~G2dG eGdG|
EAAG A3B|c2AB cdef|~g3e dBGA|BGdB A3:|
d|eaag a2ga|ba~a2 baag|eggf ~g3a|bg~g2 bgag|
ea~a2 aged|cdef g2ag|eaag egdB|BGdB A3:|

I don’t feel like learning this in Gdor. Most people learnt this tune from the Bothy Band album, so I’ll stick with the majority.

In some parts of UK and Ireland, people don’t learn tunes from recordings, so you can’t say the Bothy version is definitive. But I agree this should be played in Ador. Otherwise it’d be just a version of “Bunch of Keys.”

I think you’d be hard pushed to find a single traditional musician who doesn’t learn at least some of their tunes from recordings these days, Slainte. They might be learning tunes from other sources too, but the Bothy Band were too influential to ignore. I don’t know if you realise this, but the reason a lot of the tunes you play are popular today is because influential bands like the Bothies recorded them, or earlier musicians like Coleman. Why do you suppose everyone knows the Coleman sets like Tarbolton etc? It’s because the tunes didn’t just emerge magically from a peat bog somewhere. They had to be popularised by someone and then passed on from musician to musician (after all, recordings are hardly a new thing). To ignore that fact is to miss the bigger picture of how the session repertoire came about, I think.

Also, a tune doesn’t cease to become a version of something else just because of a key change. Musicians change the key of tunes all the time to suit their own instruments. That doesn’t mean they’re suddenly playing a different tune.

Of course, I know all what you mean. Most of common tunes were popularised through the recordings of influential musicians or bands. But few people would cite those recordings as the direct sources. This means tunes wouldn’t be played just as recorded. And you are not copying the exact version of this tune note for note from the Bothy, are you?

Anyway, I don’t think we have particularly different opinions about this music in general. So, shall we shut up and just play? Was it me or you, who started this?

You, definitely 🙂

Glad you got that sorted. Thanks for posting this one, Dow.
I remember looking up the dots for this tune a couple of years ago on this site and thinking that’s not the same as what I am hearing on the Bothy Band album. Trouble in the Kitchen’s version is pretty inspiring as well. I might give it another go.

Pardon?

Dow, let’s not forget to play this tune when we meet up again.

This particular version of the tune is also on Chris Droney’s “Down from Bell Harbour.” I just heard him play it on the radio weeks ago, so don’t know the source.

Here’s my transcription of what is for me a definitive version of this reel: Séamus Ennis on “40 Years of Irish Pipering.” It sounds in G dorian and sits very nicely there on fiddle. I’ve read somewhere that Séamus recorded using C# pipes but I wonder if that’s true in this case. As I said, it’s in G dorian using A=440 tuning. I use cuts between the repeated notes especially in the B part to get it sounding right, but don’t indicate it in the transcription for simplicity and ease of reading.

joe fidkid said: “I’ve read somewhere that Séamus recorded using C# pipes but I wonder if that’s true in this case. As I said, it’s in G dorian using A=440 tuning. ”

Séamus’ antique Coyne set was made long before there was any notion of A=440.

You need to wind the spring on your turntable a bit tighter, Joe. If your recording is coming out in Gmin there’s something wrong with the playback device. Séamus’s pipes were pitched between modern C# and C. I was told of a recording that’s probably him playing a C set but never got a copy, the Coyne is the only set he ever played, otherwise. Ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz3i0E1p8b4

play video

Pat Mitchell transcribed this in exhaustive detail, too.

The Bucks and Paddy O’Rafferty sets which come after The Rainy Day/First You Must Learn the Grip cuts on the 40 Years LP were at the wrong playback speed, as it happens.

Hmm. Thanks for the responses, Kevin R. and An Draighean. I transcribed The Rainy Day from the 2010 Compass Records CD version of “40 Years of Irish Pipering.” Is it possible the pitch was shifted in the CD release? In the Green Linnet 20th Anniversary compilation “The Rainy Day/First you must learn the grip” it’s in Gdorian, too. I used the Green Linnet 20th Anniversary track for a short animation a some years back. Check it out, it’s in G dorian I’m pretty sure, just the short snippet at the beginning:

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

play video

Where could I get Pat Mitchell’s transcriptions? It might have saved me some time to know he’d already transcribed it. Er, but saving time isn’t really the point with all this, now is it? It was time well spent with a great bit of music, in any key. As an aside, I was inspired by the playing of this by Breda Keville (also in G dorian unless I’ve gone completely mad) on her recording The Hop Down; it made me want to go back and learn the reel as I thought Ennis was playing it.

“Where could I get Pat Mitchell’s transcriptions?”

http://pipers.ie/store/products/dance-music-of-seamus-ennis/

That particular “album” (rather a collection of recordings of Ennis from a variety of sources, not all of them happy to have had them published for profit), ie 40 years, has a lot of issues with recordings not in the actual pitch they were recorded (compare the two tracks of the Bucks - vastly different pitches, despite the set being the same set of pipes!)

He definitely played it in “Ador” fingering.

One comment, though - from the various recordings, especially the better quality ones, I would conclude that the “C#” set is actually just a touch sharp of C, about halfway between C and C#. So if the recording had been slowed just a bit, or your fiddle just a bit sharp, it would come out in Gdor. I’ve read other people who say the same thing about the pitch of the pipes, too.

Transcription of version by Dana Lyn and Kyle Sanna from their album “The Great Arc”. It’s a fantastic track, and in the second half they actually drop it down to Edor but keep the A pedal tone in the bass an it’s great.