This autumn I've been playing a lot of old English reels and hornpipe tunes in 4/4, or more like 8/8 ,as they have mainly two groups of 8th notes (quavers?). per bar. I've been playing quite staccato as though for step dancing and found Spiers and Boden as well as Bob Cann, Scan Tester etc very stimulating in this respect.
Any way, back to the reels.

Coming back to Irish reels, which I've always played on melodeon but found challenging on Anglo, I found that breaking the tunes down into basic 2 x 4/8 blocks per bar has helped to establish a framework which then allows me to lengthen notes ,add ornaments and leave gaps and vary speed and rhythm, around that generic framework.

This may sound a bit mechanical and a computer could do it, which is not my natural way of approaching tunes, but it has been very liberating and allowed for variation on the theme rather than 'learning the tune' in a fixed form.

Yesterday,after planting some Japanese onions and broad beans on the allotment and gazing on the Peak District hills, gleaming in the late sun like the 'Ramparts of Heaven' I sought out and played 'The Mountain Top' in G , along with my Mrs Crotty CD! and adopted this approach to get the tune . To aid this I put words to the tune. "Oh can you climb the mountain top, oh can you climb it to the summit, If you can I'll come with you and then we will pass over it" A bit like we did as kids with 'Oh can you wash your father's shirt, oh can you wash it clean, oh can you wash your father's shirt and hang it on the green"

Before long I was messing around with it and had come up with jigs, hornpipes and reggae versions! I found this took me away from any soul destroying learning the rolls and grace notes in set places which I find so obsesses so many ITM geeks.

Has anyone else got any similar tricks when learning tunes, particularly the 'owd reels'?

Michael, help me out here. I'm showing my ignorance by asking the question, but what does this mean "2 x 4/8 blocks per bar"?

Which variety of broad beans did you plant, Mike? I've just planted out some Aquadulce Claudia, for early cropping too!
Chris

a reggea irish real? irie. :-)

Each bar has two groups of 8th notes (quavers) , Think of rhythm as /1234 1234/ ; " Here's the rhythm, here's the rhythm '' or any other mnemonic (great word)

Sorry I'm not a great theorist, just taught myself the dots etc this Summer.

Hi Chris
Sorry I don't know, we keep seeds from year to year and swap them around. I got these from a West Indian guy called Slim , who's been on the plots since 1970. The plants must have evolved tolerance to our winters 'cos they always grow. Some rogue self sown beans have come up already so I'll put some lagging over them if it gets frosty

I've noticed that the self seeded stuff always gets off to a good start. I've got courgettes that have turned from cucumber shaped to pumpkin shaped over the last few years. Must be cross pollination, despite the scarcity of bees this year.

This year , as an experiment, I planted some old Jeffries' reeds (Juncus sp.) and they are flourishing and multiplying in the damper patches. ready to harvest and dry out for next Bradfield Weekend . I may try to cross them with the offspring those newfangled Suttner's F1 Hybrids and take them down to the metallurgy lab at Sheffield University for spectrographic analysis of their mineral content.

Yours

Monty 'River' Don

yeah!
Like Bob O'Malley played! His folks went to Trenchtown Jamaica from Mayo via Manchester, after The Famine of 1845.

That's why he sang

'No rum and no pies
No rum and no pies!'

You can grow reeds for Jeffries, cool. This means we can get more english reeded concertinas.

Alan

Not really. "Before long I was messing around with it and had come up with jigs, hornpipes and reggae versions!" works really well for me. Another way to put it is that after you've learned the tune, there's a period of playing around with it where you get to know it really well, and how you like to play it. Now multiply that by n+1 (there's always one more...) tunes and you're away.

The "trick" is finding some reason to sit down and really enjoy the tune, whether it's making a reggae version, or trying it as a hornpipe (that's what works for me, although 6 & 7/8 versions can be fun), or whatever.

Thank you, Michael. I'm no theorist at all, hence my question.