What is this tune?

[Jody Kruskal]

It's been driving me nuts for weeks. I can't get this tune fragment out of my head. I'm pretty sure the tune is in D and all I remember is the B section. 

 

Sound familiar to you? Does this have a name?

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

Reminds me slightly of a trumpet tune by Henry Purcell or even Jeremiah Clarkl; but I do not suppose it is actually that.

Edited December 4, 2022 by SIMON GABRIELOW
Corrected info

[Little John]

It brought to mind The 29th of May, but on listening again they are rather different.

 

LJ

[Anglo-Irishman]

Could it be that you composed it without realising that you were doing so?

 

That happened to me once, when I was trying to remember a chorale tune that I'd sung in a choir a long time ago. I thought I had reconstructed properly, and sang it to an acquaintance who is a church organist, and knows her chorales. She didn't recognise it, but said it sounded a bit like "Brich an, du schönes Morgenlicht." So I looked up that tune, and found that it was, in fact, the one I'd been trying to remember!

 

Cheers,

John

[Jolly Hamster]

The last couple of bars remind me very much of Banbury Bill, the Bampton Morris tune.

[Clive Thorne]

I was going to say that it sounds quite Morrisy. Even got a bar or two of "Slows"

Edited December 4, 2022 by Clive Thorne

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

I think the tune should be considered an original Kruskal masterpiece! 😁😄🌝

[Jody Kruskal]

Thanks for your help fellow tunistas.

 

Yes, it does sound like one of mine, but no. After some sleuthing I can tell you that it's from the Hamblen collection and called "Drummer Boy of Waterloo." Here are the dots:

 

http://chriswig.com/hamblen/tune24.html

[David Barnert]

No wonder I didn’t recognize it.

[John Wild]

I have typed this up in ABC format if anyone uses that.

I hope I have read it all correctly.

 

X:407
T:Drummer boy of Waterloo
L:1/8
M:2/4
K:D
W:Arranged by A.Porter Hamblon
W:As played by David R.Hamblon
|:A/|A>A d>e|f>g ee|d/B/A G2|A2 DE/F/|AG/A/ de|fg ed/B/|A/B/c d2|d2z:||
e|f>d B>B|g>f e>e|d>d c/B/A|G2 A2|DE/F/ A>A|d>e f>g|e/d/B A/B/c|d2 d:||

[David Barnert]

4 hours ago, John Wild said:

I have typed this up in ABC format if anyone uses that.

I hope I have read it all correctly.

 

Nice job. All the notes appear to be correct, but a few things to point out...

 

For one thing, the source that Jody linked to has some issues. It starts with a 16th note (semiquaver) upbeat, but measure eight will be short by a 16 note on the repeat unless there is a 16th rest at the beginning or the upbeat is changed to an 8th note (quaver). Also, in the A section, the two dotted 8ths following the first one are missing their dots. You have appropriately added them in your abc.

 

I’ve never encountered this tune before, but I would be surprised if the original tune didn’t end similarly in the A and B sections. Whoever set this one down seems to have misplaced a half a measure in the A section so that it ends awkwardly a beat early. I suspect measure 6 should look like measure 2 (the two e’s are missing) and measures 7 & 8 should look like measures 15 & 16.

 

As for your abc, while :|| is tolerated by most abc interpreter software, the standard calls for a colon and a single | (which I cannot type here without it turning into an emoji, as we have discussed elsewhere. Here it is as code:

 

:|

 

And here is the standard (abc v2.1):

 

https://abcnotation.com/wiki/abc:standard:v2.1#repeat_bar_symbols

 

Finally, I would put:

 

Quote

W:Arranged by A.Porter Hamblon
W:As played by David R.Hamblon

 

as C lines, (again, if I type the colon after the C a smiley pops up, and maybe that’s why you didn’t) but I don’t think there’s any hard and fast rules about that.

 

It’s a good idea to get into the habit of posting abc here on concertina.net as data (the <> icon, above), as we discussed back in March to avoid the silliness with the smileys.

[David Barnert]

6 minutes ago, David Barnert said:

I suspect measure 6 should look like measure 2 (the two e’s are missing) and measures 7 & 8 should look like measures 15 & 16.

 

Looking at it again, I think the problem is in measure 2. I think the two e’s should be the downbeat of measure 3, putting the low D at the beginning of the 2nd line, and who knows what’s missing in the 2nd half of measure 2.

[John Wild]

52 minutes ago, David Barnert said:

 

Nice job. All the notes appear to be correct, but a few things to point out...

 

As for your abc, while :|| is tolerated by most abc interpreter software, the standard calls for a colon and a single | (which I cannot type here without it turning into an emoji, as we have discussed elsewhere. Here it is as code:

 

:|

 

And here is the standard (abc v2.1):

 

https://abcnotation.com/wiki/abc:standard:v2.1#repeat_bar_symbols

 

 

It’s a good idea to get into the habit of posting abc here on concertina.net as data (the <> icon, above), as we discussed back in March to avoid the silliness with the smileys.

Thank you David. My error on the repeat :||   I should have known that. Sorry.

Looking back at the earlier thread, I did note what you said then on avoiding smilies, but have obviously it has got lost somewhere between then and now. Again, my apologies.

I don't post ABC very often.

[Jody Kruskal]

The Hamblin collection is notorious for mistakes in notation and more than other transcriptions is open to editorial interpretation. That said, it is a rare glimpse at a very old fiddling style and long forgotten tunes. Here is the late Christian Wig playing Drummer Boy of Waterloo on his album Chadwell's Station: Fiddling on the Frontier. Highly recommended.

 

Christian did not read music. He recorded this album with his fiddle tuned way flat because he liked that slack sound. I've tuned this version to be in D.

[David Barnert]

2 hours ago, Jody Kruskal said:

Here is the late Christian Wig playing Drummer Boy of Waterloo on his album Chadwell's Station: Fiddling on the Frontier.

 

So he plays it basically as written, but leaves off the 2nd half of bar 8, making it a crooked tune with only 15 counts in the A section.

 

4 hours ago, John Wild said:

Sorry.

4 hours ago, John Wild said:

Again, my apologies.

 

No need tp apologize. Didn’t hurt a bit. 🙂 

[Don Taylor]

2 hours ago, Jody Kruskal said:

Christian did not read music. He recorded this album with his fiddle tuned way flat because he liked that slack sound. I've tuned this version to be in D.

Reminds me of 'Died for Love'

 

[Roger Hare]

10 hours ago, Jody Kruskal said:

The Hamblin collection is notorious for mistakes in notation and more than other transcriptions is open to editorial interpretation, etc...

 

I'm always on the look-out for 'tunes I never heard of before' and I downloaded that collection to investigate further, so thanks for the heads-up about the possible errors in the scores.

 

I spotted the under-full bar in the featured tune when I ABC'd it, and did what I usually do in such circumstances - which is to either stick in a rest, or double (or halve) the duration of a note (usually at the start/end of the relevant 'part' of the music). I also spotted and fixed the missing dots. It's encouraging to know that the real experts do the same sort of thing as a numptie like me.

 

I see lots of such 'errors', sometimes in the score (as in this instance) but more often in 'legacy' ABC files. I have learned to recognise a long list of what I see as ABC transcription errors which may have been present in the original score, but which I speculate are usually transcription errors. Sometimes, the errors are so 'obvious' that I can spot different copies of the same transcription in different downloaded ABC files because they have exactly the same errors.[1]

 

A general question: How does one decide what the error is, and what are the 'forensic' skills needed to fix them? Is it a purely mechanical process, or does one need an extensive knowledge of musical theory to fix stuff like this in an 'authoritative' way?

 

How does one decide (for instance) that in this case, bars 7 and 8 should look like bars 15 and 16?

 

Thanks

_____________________________

[1] I've seen as many as seven copies of exactly the same transcription (with errors) in different places...

Edited December 9, 2022 by lachenal74693

[David Barnert]

1 hour ago, lachenal74693 said:

A general question: How does one decide what the error is, and what are the 'forensic' skills needed to fix them? Is it a purely mechanical process, or does one need an extensive knowledge of musical theory to fix stuff like this in an 'authoritative' way?

 

How does one decide (for instance) that in this case, bars 7 and 8 should look like bars 15 and 16?

 

Only a guess. That’s a common way for tunes to be built, and listening to it, it seemed like a reasonable way to make it consistent with more familiar tunes. There’s no algorithm, and it’s not impossible there might be a tune out there (maybe even this one) that actually is built as awkwardly as this one is presented. What’s needed to try to make sense of something like this is not music theory, but exposure to a wealth of tunes in the genre and an awareness of patterns.