Time for some Bluegrass

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Ed Cosner & Katie Bern
Saturday, April 14, 7:30,
Room E324 in Old Town School East

Transplanted southerner Ed Cosner has been introducing scores of younger fiddlers in northwest Indiana to the sounds of bluegrass. Katie Bern, a past winner in our Midwest Fiddle Championship, was one of his finest students.

Some tunes from the teacher, Mr. Cosner . . .

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Dreamer’s Waltz

And one from Katie, the student . . .

Festival Rag

$15 dues for this meeting, click here, or choose the year-long subscription option ($60 for 12 months of Fiddle Club).

Tune of the Week for March 26, 2012

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Paul Tyler

I’m a little late posting this weeks TofW. Sorry about that. Sometimes life in the fiddle-industrial complex gets hectic. But my mind is back home in Indiana, so I think it’s time for a Lotus Dickey tune.
Sugar Hill Serenaders
Lotus Dickey, Paul Tyler, John Bealle, Teri Klassen

Little Bess

X:13
T:Little Bess
M:C|
L:1/8
S:Lotus Dickey from Poindexter Ainsworth
K:D
D2f2 fgfe | d2F2 A3F | E2AB cBAc | d2F2 A3+EA+ |
+D2A2+fe fgfe | d2F2 A3+FA+ | +E2A2+AB cBAc | +F4d4+ +F4d4+ :|
K:A
e4 e3f | e2c2 +c4e4+ | B4 g2eg | aeae c’3c’ |
e4 e3f | e2+ce++ce+ +c4e4+ | B2ef gefg |1 +c4a4+ +c2a2+z2 :|2 +c3a3+z =+B3g3+z ||

Tune of the Week for March 19, 2012

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Let’s stay on the Irish theme for one more week. Here’s one of my favorite jigs, one we can play on Friday, March 23 with Deirdre Ní Chonghaile visits Fiddle Club. This was the first in a set played by Kevin Burke & Michael O’Domhnaill in Bears Back Room in Bloomington, Indiana in February 1982.

I was there. It was heavenly.

The Frost Is All Over

Note: Kevin didn’t give a name to this tune. I learned it from one of the first recordings of Irish traditional music I ever owned. The great piper, Seamus Ennis, played it in a medley with The Hare in the Corn and one more jig. He sang a bit of lyric with it.

“The praties are dug and the frost is all over,
Kitty, lie over, close to the wall;
How would you like to be married to a soldier?
Kitty, lie over, close to the wall”

I can’t find that record any more. Maybe Deirdre can help us through The Hare in the Corn.

X:12
T:The Frost Is All Over
M:6/8
L:1/8
R:Jig
S:Kevin Burke
K:D
AFD DFA | B2d BAF | ABA F2D | FEE EFG |
AFD DFA | ~B3 BAF | ABA F2E |1 FDD d2B :|2 FDD D2e |:
fdd dcd | fdd d2e | ~f3 def | gag e2g |
fed Bcd | ABd F2G | ABA F2E |1 FDD D2e :|2 FDD d2B ||

A bit of Irish fiddling, with Deirdre Ní Chonghaile

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile,
Guest at Fiddle Club of the World
Friday, March 23, 7:30p,
Old Town School East

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile is a fiddle-player from the Aran Islands in Ireland. She is currently the NEH Keough Fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she is revising her PhD into a book about music collectors and music-collecting. This summer, she will take up the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies before returning to Ireland to start her next project, a comprehensive collection of songs composed in the Aran Islands over the last 200 years. She also works as a broadcaster, musician, and teacher of music and dance.

$15 dues for this meeting, click here, or choose the yearly dues option.

Here are some fairly easy tunes we could play together, as found on YouTube.
Na Ceannabháin Bhána, a slip jig (9/8 time)
Nead na Lachan sa Mhúta, another slip jig, also called The Fox Hunter’s

The Peeler and the Goat, a slide
slow and fast

Also, check out the Tune(s) of the Week for the last two weeks for
a set of polkas and a set of hornpipes or barn dances

Finally, here are the ABCs for tunes that Deirdre suggested.

Tune(s) of the Week for March 12, 2012

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, Guest at Fiddle Club of the World
Friday, March 23, 7:30p, Old Town School East

We’ll have an Irish session, with some craic and ceili (stories, talk and fellowship). This will be an easy-going introduction to the world of Irish tunes. Here’s another set of dance tunes that can be learned quickly. The first one is Sullivan’s, not the same tune as Tom Sullivan’s polka that Kathleen Keane taught us last year. Many of you already know the second tune Britches Full of Stitches. In this video, they’re played by Jackie Daly on accordion and Seamus Creagh on fiddle.

And here’s another performance of the same two tunes ending a set of four polkas played by Kevin Burke and Michael O’Domhnaill in 1982, in Bloomington (Indiana)’s beloved Bears Back room.

Tune(s) of the Week for March 5, 2012

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Paul Tyler

It’s that time of year when many of us wish we were Irish. That was one of my life goals when I was 15, due in part to a vague notion I had then that traditional Irish music might be found along my pathway to a satisfying and exciting future.

A few years later, at the end of 1969, I made first and only journey to Ireland, including a boat ride out to the Aran Islands off Galway Bay in the West. During my few days on Inishmaan, I tried to attend a dance or find a fiddle player, with no success, due to my own social clumsiness. I did hear a few sean nos (old style) songs at night, sung in Gaelic by one or another old man in an Aran Sweater, while we all nursed a pint in the island’s pub. Meanwhile, the young folks–most home for the holiday from work in England–were having a fine old time dancing away the darkness.

Last fall I had the great pleasure to meet Gaelic scholar, Deirdre Ní Chonghaile at an American Folklore Society meeting in Bloomington, Indiana. We played some tunes together with our fellows, and I had a chance to dance a bit with her. And since, Deirdre is from Inishmore, the largest of the three Arans, I finally fulfilled my 40-year-old quest to dance as they dance on the Aran Islands.

Here is a set of two tunes commonly played together on the Arans for a couple copy. The recording is taken from a YouTube video of a kitchen session in County Mayo with Caomhie Donlon on fiddle, her father Larry on banjo, and Cormac Gannon on pipes. The first tune is a common hornpipe, The Stack of Barley. Deirdre calls the second tune Some Say the Devil is Dead and Buried in Killarney.

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
Guest at Fiddle Club of the World
Friday, March 23, 7:30p, Old Town School East

Arto Järvelä’s 2009 visit – reprise

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Links to tunes he taught

— NEW! – –
All the tunes Arto taught in September 2009 gathered onto one page . . .
on DrDosido.net

From the Flog [Fiddle student blog (now defunct)], here are links to all the tunes he taught in workshops and to classes during his residency at the Old Town School in September 2009.
Weeks 1 & 2
Weeks 3 & 4

From the Fiddle Club blog, here are the tunes he gave us in 2009.
Arto Järvelä tunes

Tune of the Week for February 27, 2012

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Minuet after Matti Haudanmaa

I was taught this tune by Patrik Wekman on my visit to Finland in 2009. Later that year, Arto Järvelä taught it a workshop on archaic Finnish tunes at the Old Town School. Two years later, we had a magical session with the tune in my Fiddle 4 class when Arto and Kaivama dropped in. You can hear it on this earlier post.

Matti Haudanmaa was a master fiddler from the Ostrobothnian district in western Finland. An early Finnish folklorist made field recordings of his playing in the first half of the 20th century, thus preserving this wonderful tune for us to play in the 21st.

X:9
T:Minuet after Matti Haudanmaa
M:3/4
L:1/16
S:Arto Järvelä
K:G
FE | D3G {Bd}B2G2 {Bd}B2G2 | F3A {cd}c2A2 {cd}c2A2 |
D3G {Bd}B2G2 B2d2 | d2AB AGFE DCB,C |
D3G {Bd}B2G2 {Bd}B2G2 | F3A {cd}c2A2 {cd}c2A2 |
ABce d2c2 B2A2 | ABcA G4 G2 ::
Bd | g3g g2g2 g2ga | a3a a2f2 d4 |
e3d c2B2 c2e2 | d2c2 BcdB G2AB |
cBAB c2d2 e2c2 | BdcA A4 G2 :|

Special Meeting, Special Guests, This Saturday

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Arto Järvelä with Kaivama – Finnish Trad
Saturday, March 3, 7:30p
Old Town School East (4545 Lincoln), Rm E324

We welcome back Arto Järvelä, our good friend from Finland, for his second visit to Fiddle Club of the World. Many of us have warm memories of his residency at the Old Town School in 2009. Joining him for their second visit to the Old Town School is Kaivama, the duo of Sara Pajunen and Jonathan Rundman, from the Northwoods of Minnesota. Separately and together they have excavated many beautiful, archaic gems from the music traditions of the Finnish people, while also contributing new melodies in those ancient keys.

Here’s a sample, recorded during their visit in June 2011, when the three of them dropped in on my Fiddle 4 class.

Minuet efter Matti Haudanmaa

Arto Järvelä & Kaivama
(click here for another view)

To learn a couple of tunes to play with Arto, click here to listen, or here for the notes.

$15 dues for only this meeting, click here to register.

Join Fiddle Club of the World for $60 yearly dues, support our guest artists and save 20% off the spring schedule alone. You will then have free admission for the rest of your year-long membership. Plus you get your own very cool Fiddle Club card.

Notes for Arto Järvelä Tunes

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Arto returns for another good tune session
His first visit to Fiddle Club in September 2009 was a memorable night. He’d like to play some of those tunes again. I’ll post some links later this week. He also sent us a few new ones, which were posted earlier. Listen to the tunes, first and often, while learning to play them from the following notation.

ABC Notation. Free software to read, print and play the ABCs is available here. And a short tutorial on ABC notation for fiddlers can be downloaded from the Old Town School’s Tune Archive using this link.

X:5
T:Wikström Vals
M:3/4
L:1/8
S:Arto Järvelä
K:Am
A2 | d2d^c de | f2e2 d2 | d2^c2 cc | ^c4 A2 |
A2^cd ef | g2f2 e2 | f2dd d2 | d4 ::
c2 | f3e fg | a2g2 f2 | e3d ^cB | A4 A2 |
Ad2^c de | f2e2 d2 | ^c3A ce | a4 g2 |
f2e2 d2 | ^c2A2 c2 | e2d2 d2 | d4 :|

X:6
T:Starc 44
T:Stare 44
M:3/4
L:1/16
S:Arto Järvelä
K:D
d2A2 F2A2 d2f2 | {fg}f2ed c4 A4 | d2ef g2{fg}f2 e2d2 | dcBA B2B2 A2(3ABc |
d2A2 F2A2 d2f2 | {fg}f2ed c4 A4 | d2ef {ga}g2eg {fg}f2df {ef}e2ce d8 ::
a2f2 f2d2 d2A2 | b2f2 g4 e4 |d2ef g2{fg}f2 e2d2 | dcBA B2B2 A2(3efg |
a2f2 f2d2 d2A2 | b2f2 g4 e4 |d2ef {ga}g2eg {fg}f2df {ef}e2ce d8 :|

With the Starc polska, I tried to notate it roughly the way Arto played it, with suggestions for ornamentation. Here is a starker (pun intended) published notation for Starc 44.

Answers to questions I’ve been asked about Fiddle Club. If you have a yearly subscription, you do not need to register. We welcome everyone who wants to hear and/or learn some Finnish fiddling. It would be great if you register online, but you can also pay at the front desk on Saturday night.