The Trip To Durrow reel

I couldn’t believe this great tune wasn’t on the site yet!

How do people play this one where everyone else is? I’ve heard that Trip is also commonly played with the first part single, and sometimes with the B and C double.

Zina

For a dance, you would play AAB. There actually is no C part to this tune.

I disagree with the last comment in that the final 8 bars are sufficiently different to be considered as a distinct C part. Most sessions I’ve been to play it as AABCBC. Although this may seem unconventional it sounds infinitely better than if played the predictable way of AABBCC - one of those anomalous tunes like the Sailor’s Bonnet reel (ABBABB) ! Many thanks for posting it; it’s a great tune.

Sorry, I should have said — round here, we play it AABCBC as well, although I haven’t heard this at every session in the city. But I have heard some players say that in "other places" it’s played AABBCC, which I’m not really sure I like, but perhaps that’s because I learned it the other way first. And lots of people don’t treat the C part as a separate part from the B, I know, since they learned the thing aurally and have never seen the C part written as a different part…

zls

Certainly, the AABCBC version seems to be the ‘standard’, but I’ve been in sessions where one or two musicians have been thrown off by the structure, probably because they are used to playing it another way. I have heard it played AABC and AABBCC, mostly by musicians form areas of Ireland which haven’t been touched by the sort of pan-Irishism which dominates many sessions outside Ireland.

It’s not a matter of opinion i

Please disregard my last comment. My computer has been playing games. What I mean to say is that all the collections I’ve seen list this tune with an A and B part only. The "Portland Collection" lists the tune with an A and B part. Regardless of how it is played, the tunebooks speak for themselves. I’ve actually never heard this played with a so called C part.

Well, I’ve never been at any sessions where Trip is played AABBCC either, but I do know that there are places in Ireland where the tune is played that way, and almost all of the more experienced players that I’ve heard talking about this tune mention that it *can* be played with the third part uncoupled from the second.

Tunebooks are a relatively new thing to Irish music (as are pub sessions, the "traditional" Daughter of Erin stepdancing costume, and the guitar as an accompaniment instrument, and the bodhran as well for good measure), and they usually only embody the settings of a tune that one person or a small group of people use for a tune, so I shouldn’t place *too* much trust in them as fonts of all knowledge where the tunes are concerned… :)

Zina

Tunebooks, in general, possess the body of a tune without all the lacings. In my opinion, this is the best way to learn. I don’t mean learning from a tunebook. But I do mean learning a straightforward version of the tune. If you have someone who plays it the "Dublin" way and then you have someone who plays it the "Clare" way, that just adds for interesting conversation. If you have the brunt of the tune as "commonly" played, well, I’ve found this to be the "best" way.

Noel Hill is the only person I’ve ever heard play this tune AABBCC.

This version is from Noel Hill’s "The Irish Concertina". Notice it is played AABB. I still maintain there is no C part. Although, I don’t deny that it can played with one.

I wasn’t talking about Noel Hill’s album. I heard Noel playing this AABBCC in Ollie Conway’s bar in Mullagh.

We often play this after Saint Anne’s (listed on the session), and usually play CABCBC AABCBC AABCBC which gives a lovely changeover from Saint Anne’s - Try it !

I like following it up with Earl’s Chair.

Zina

Thanks to Will Harman for letting me know the name of this tune that I’ve called "Reel in D" for years (Discussions, 11th sep02).
As regards the C part, I always treated it as a variation of the A part played only when the tune is repeated as in AABB:CABB etc. I like it that way ‘cos it kind of brings the tune back full circle in a less predictable way.
I originally learned it this way from Sid Cassidy (of Wexford) in a Carlisle session and have played it like that ever since. Maybe I just heard it wrong (horrors) and have been mucking it up since then! I haven’t noticed too many frowning faces mind you (maybe Scotsmen aren’t expected to know).
Anyway, seems to me that it just feels like a variation that can be treated as the player pleases and that whatever session will have a way they do it.
Does the AABB:CABB thing make sense to anyone else?

Is the second part played once or twice?

I would say, given the foregoing discussions, Eimear, that the answer is "yes". :) No, seriously, check with a muso at your local to see how they play it there. The way I’ve heard it most often is AABCBC (the way SPeak has it written, AABB), but obviously players play it differently.

Zina

You’re right Zina, I’m liking it AABCBC now, only thing is it doesn’t slide nicely into over the moors to Maggie any more.
Guess I’ll have to find another tune, maybe A Cup of Tea….

James plays it AABBCC. I’ver heard him play it that way anyway. I like it that way better myself. Everybody else around here plays it AABCBC so i just switch when i’m playing with another melody player.

PS Irish Trad. tune collections have been around for much longer than anyone now living or any recording—they’re perfectly good sources for tune validation, but like dictionaries, they don’t necessarily determine what is correct. But even if they hadn’t been around that long, i don’t see why they wouldn’t be just as valid a source as any player.

Well, I tend to think of them as basically *being* another player, pchaffee! As said above, tune collections have to come from somewhere, somebody obviously put them together. Tune collections just tending to be seen as having more permanence and sometimes even more authority than a player sitting next to you saying, "well, we play it like *this*…". (Castle Kelly always catches me out at new sessions — first part single or repeated? — and last night I discovered that some players play Bunker Hill as a single reel, which I’d never heard before.)

Well, I first learned this as notated here in Dublin and played it that way at a number of sessions around town in the 70’s, including The Culturlann in Monkstown, CCE’s heaquarters, but that don’t make it necessarily ‘official’. Latter I came across it also as a hornpipe. Then, playing with some other folks in the countryside I found it being played as a ‘sing’e reel’, meaning as given here but without the repeats. If you take it as folks are breaking it up and calling it A-B-C, instead of AABCBC or AABBCC, we played it just ABC… So, more grist for the mill, and not forgetting it as a hornpipe…

Unsure where the cut off is for ‘different’, I’m putting this in the ‘comments’, where I’ve resided since losing trust in my own assumptions. Anyway, I tried to remember this as I’d learned it as what I was thinking and had noted ‘hornpipe’, probably just in reference to it being swung, because now that I play it that way again it feels more like a set dance, what with the 8 bar A-part and 16 bar B-part. Anyway, here it is in that form, with some few variations given. You could also use the notes as given in the original reel versions available. So, for your fun and enjoyment, hopefully, here it is swung in the style of a hornpipe or set dance. I also play it without the ‘lead-ins’, just laying on a final ‘D’ in each final measure ~ F>D D2 :| ~

K: D Major
|: (3AGF |
D2 D>F A>DF>A | d>fe>d B>^AB>c | d>B (BBB d>B (3BBB | (3AAA D>E F>E (3EEE |
D>A (3DEF A>D (3FGA | d>ce>d B3 c | d>BF>A d>BA>F | A>D (3EFG F>D :|
|: D>c |
d>cd>e f>ef>g | a>f (3def g>fe>d | (3Bcd e>f g>eB>e | g>eb>e g>fe>f |
d2 d>e f2 f>g | a>fd>f g>fe>d | (3Bcd e>f g>ba>g | f>de>c d>cd>e |
f>de>c d3 e | f>de>d B3 c | d>B (3BBB d>BF>B | A>FD>E F>EA>F |
D2 D>F A>D (3FGA | d>fe>d B>^AB>c | (3dcd B>A d>BA>F | (3AGF E>G F>D :|

I’ve heard the second bar (and 6th and 22nd) played like:
|defd B3c|
instead of:
|dfed B3c|
I like it better.

There is a known composer to this tune according to Eddie Mongey from annaliviafm’s "Bothar a tsleibhte". It was composed by an Offaly musician (I think from Tullamore) and his name escapes me at the moment. He played with the Ballinamere Ceili Band and he was a fiddler and piper. It was something like Denis Carey (but its not because he is a piano with the Brock Maguire band). If anyone can shoot names out I could confirm.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=MWosPa3SuNM&feature=rec-HM-fresh+div

play video

I think it (personally of course *wink*) sounds better AABCBC. AABBCC works, but sounds odd to me, doesn’t have the same flow you know. Each to their own I guess…

Well even though Noel was playing it wrong it was a joy to listen to. :-)

I believe the musician that 52Paddy was trying to recall was Dan Cleary (fiddler/piper/whistler/accordionist) from Ballinamere, Co. Offaly.

The Fiddler’s Companion credits him with the tune and there is a website set up in memory of him that has the tune there in full:

http://www.dancleary.info/Homepage.html

http://www.dancleary.info/SlideShow_assets/SlideShow.html?lang=en

Hopefully this should also go some way to settling the debate on how the tune should be played. For what it is worth, in Glasgow it is played as written on Dan Cleary’s website - with a 2nd part that is twice the normal length and is repeated.

Ach the slideshow link doesn’t work.

http://www.dancleary.info/Photos.html

Photo 11

https://thesession.org/recordings/display/3860
I posted this recording just 3 weeks ago - see comments, where Dan Cleary is listed as one of the fiddle players. One of the tunes on that recording is a composition of John Brady’s called "Dan Cleary’s Ireland", named in honour of Dan Cleary.
I’m delighted that the composer of this fine reel has been identified. I first heard the tune played by Paddy Moloney [ and a fine job he made of it, too ] on the first "Drones And Chanters" LP record released in the 1970s. I have often wondered if that was the first ever recording of "The Trip To Durrow". Mick Moloney recorded it around the same time, but I think Paddy was first.

It’s also one of very few tunes in the Irish tradition which seems to only have one name.

This was recorded by "The Johnstons" in 1969 - Mick Moloney on banjo - making it the earliest recording of the tune that I am aware of, and not Paddy Moloney, as I had thought. [ see above ].

Breandán Breathnach got the tune from John Potts, well before any of these recordings. It is also much associated with the piping of Tommy Reck and recordings of Tommy playign it exist from well before the ones above.

I have a sketchy recollection of Breandán B. saying the tune was a two parter but when writing it down his informant (my recollection is that it was Reck but it actually was Potts) suggested he had heard it with an alternative first part , Breandán added that part as a third part for publication in CRE1.

In the notes to te tune in CRE1 he says :

‘The third part is an alternative version of the first part which John Potts heard from some flute player. ’

Thanks for that information, Prof - by the way, I’ve got an LP record to post to you, will do so tomorrow morning :)

Looking forward to it Kenny.

Al three part versions of the tune go back to the publication in CRE1. I couldn’t find a date on when Breandán received the tune from old John Potts but I think it’s safe to assume the tune must have been in circulation by the late fifties.

Just to add here I have a recording from oct 1964 of Tommy Potts playing the tune.

Moloney’s solo setting is distinct from the run-of-the-mill; beats me where that came from. It’s not Rowsome’s, who wrote out two parts, which are basically the usual, IIRC.

This tune is commonly played in Ireland like a AABB, and bear in mind the following:

- B part twice as big as part A.

- The last quater of part B part is the same as the second half of part A.

- This way of organising the parts is very similar to the one used for many set dances (I’m talking about the type of tune)

- If you want to use letters that represent the same length, taking into account that the endings will suffice to make them different, this is the formula: AB AB CDEB CDEB

Good example of video I saw of this tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvokqjbHqu4

play video

Here it is in E @4:25 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piwn-AkkQCk

play video

At the banjo festical in Tullamore recently (Sept 2012) I met a few people in a pub who said they were they sons (and a daughter) of a piper called Dan Cleary. They said he was an all-Ireland piping champ in the early days of the Fleadh back in the 50s, and insisted he was a legend. They also insisted that he wrote a tune called Trip to Durrow; and were chuffed that I happened to know this tune on a banjo (for the record I played the AABCBC arrangement; it’s the only version of it ever played live, apart from Noel Hills three-way break that I have on an old tape).

Dan Cleary(1918-2004) won the All-Ireland title, on pipes, in 1955-56-57. Scroll down to "Trip To Durrow" and
there’s an article here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/TRIP.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viWZeIOZpy4

play video

Here’s an interesting take on the order of parts… not to mention the curiosity of the combination of players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vELmgNk1oDw

play video

Thanks for that Tony…I know I’m very late spotting your reply, but the link is very interesting. Seems to more or less what those folks told me!

Noel Hill plays an AABBCC setting http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/1664-traditional-music/498011-noel-hill-on-concertina/

Aside from the structural question (and my sense is that AABB, with the Bs twice the length of the As, aka AABCBC, is the most commonly applied structure), I’m always puzzled about whether to climb up to or down from the f sharp in the second bar of the A part, and again in the 14th bar of the B part. The settings presented here suggest "dfed" but most of the Irish players I listen to closely either choose "defd"—or finesse the question by playing two f sharps, i.e., "dffd". I can never decide which I like best but mostly mix the second and third option when I play the tune.

From Tommy Reck, approx. as notated by Brendan Breathnach

A couple of different twists in this setting, like the repetition of the F# in the last bar (I’m not convinced this shouldn’t read the same as bar 8 .. ). This is the structure I’m used to: AA (bars 1-8, doubled); B (bars 9-16); C (bars 17-24, the last 4 bars repeating bars 5-8 in the A tune. Great session tune which goes well before or after something contrasting like the Star of Munster.

Taken from ‘A Fine Selection of Over 200 Irish Traditional Tunes for Sessions’, compiled by David Speers with a Forward by Matt Cranitch.