Tunes You Won't Play?

[John Wild]

...Spootiskerry (aka Fateful Head

 

 

Try listening to Spootiskerry on the (I think only recording) by Syncopace, featuring Alistair Anderson, Ian Carr, Penny Callow, Martin Dunn, and Chuck Fleming. It appears on track 1 coupled with The Trip to Windsor.

 

The notes state it is written by Shetlander Ian Burns, and was named after his great aunt's croft.

 

- John Wild

[JimLucas]

Try listening to Spootiskerry on the (I think only recording) by Syncopace,...

The notes state it is written by Shetlander Ian Burns, and was named after his great aunt's croft.

'S funny. I'm sure I have a copy, but at the moment I can't find it.

 

Well, I've googled a second reference that says "Spootiskerry" is copyright 1980 by Ian Burns. But it differs from "The Fateful Head" in only two quavers (8th-notes) out of 64 in the A part (4 of 128, including the repeat), and 21 of 128 quavers in the B part, and none of these differences changes the general feel of the tune. As I noted, "The Fateful Head" was recorded (both in "dots" and on an accompanying LP) in 1974. Is it the same tune by the same author, but with the name changed and simply not registered for copyright until some years after it was composed? It seems unlikely that such a distinctive tune would be composed independently more than once and both versions recorded by Alistair Anderson within the same decade without there having been some comment about the coincidence.

 

I'm curious.

Edited November 18, 2004 by JimLucas

[bill_mchale]

I would expect that playing the tune on a 5th-tuned 2-row would be much different than on a ½-step-tuned 2-row box. I tried it on both a D/G melodeon and a 30-button anglo (actually 38, but I didn't use the extras). Not terribly easy on the melodeon, but probably not too hard for somebody who can actually play melodeon.

They can be very different. You have only two notes that exist in both positions on 1/2 step boxes; on the B/C it is B and E, indeed they are the only notes that exist at all on both rows. As a result with the exception of the E and B, your bellows direction and button are predetermined before you even play the tune. While I have never played regular melodian, just B/C, I can see several advantages of the melodeon system (gained at the expense of being chromatic); its easier to plan bellows changes for parts of the tune where they will accent the rhytem and you usually can go to the outside or inside row when you have a fairly large jump between two different notes.

[anniemcu]

Try listening to Spootiskerry on the (I think only recording) by Syncopace,...

The notes state it is written by Shetlander Ian Burns, and was named after his great aunt's croft.

'S funny. I'm sure I have a copy, but at the moment I can't find it.

 

Well, I've googled a second reference that says "Spootiskerry" is copyright 1980 by Ian Burns. But it differs from "The Fateful Head" in only two quavers (8th-notes) out of 64 in the A part (4 of 128, including the repeat), and 21 of 128 quavers in the B part, and none of these differences changes the general feel of the tune. As I noted, "The Fateful Head" was recorded (both in "dots" and on an accompanying LP) in 1974. Is it the same tune by the same author, but with the name changed and simply not registered for copyright until some years after it was composed? It seems unlikely that such a distinctive tune would be composed independently more than once and both versions recorded by Alistair Anderson within the same decade without there having been some comment about the coincidence.

 

I'm curious.

 

Resurrecting this old thread as I have only recently become acquainted with the tune, which is now quite popular with our area session folk. I have a copy of the double CD that contains about 100 of Mr. Burns' tunes, and in the notes, it states that the name Spootskerry (eventually with the added 'a', 'i' or 'o' in the middle was the name he gave his first composition. Seems likely it was only copyrighted when the collection entitled by the same name was first published. In his notes for that, he says that "These thirty compositions have happened at the oddest times over the last twenty years." which allows for it to have been heard and played quite a bit earlier than the 1980 date.