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Clumsy Lover


darcybethd

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Hi! Just looking for the hornpipe tune "Clumsy Lover" it may go by a different name, but if it has any aliases, I dont know them :) Couldn't find it on the Tune-o-Tron and just wondering if anyone knew where I could find it, hopefully in C or G major, but Im not too picky. I'm going to try searching the internet but putting the word 'lover' into any search engine is risky buisness. ;) Anyway, if anyone can help I'd appreciate it, Thanks!

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Hi! Just looking for the hornpipe tune "Clumsy Lover" it may go by a different name, but if it has any aliases, I dont know them :) Couldn't find it on the Tune-o-Tron and just wondering if anyone knew where I could find it, hopefully in C or G major, but Im not too picky. I'm going to try searching the internet but putting the word 'lover' into any search engine is risky buisness.  ;) Anyway, if anyone can help I'd appreciate it, Thanks!

 

 

Hi.

 

If you go on the Internet to JC's ABC Tune Finder, you'll find the tune there. It's a great site.

Happy playing!

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Hi! Just looking for the hornpipe tune "Clumsy Lover" it may go by a different name, but if it has any aliases, I dont know them :)

With a clever title like "The Clumsy Lover", it's unlikely to pick up aliases (aside from dropping the "The")... except perhaps something that shouldn't be printed here. It's a modern tune, composed by Canadian bagpiper Neil Dickie. It's become so popular that many folks think it's just another "traditional" tune. It's also become quite thoroughly folk-processed. This version on thesession.org is noticeably different from the versions I've heard over the years, not least in having some G#'s, which aren't to be found on the highland pipes.

 

I first heard the tune from William Pint and Felicia Dale in a late night session at Mystic Seaport's annual Sea Music Festival, and that prompted me to buy their casette (now a CD?) "Port of Dreams", which I think is a wonderful recording all round, even without concertina. :) Their arrangement of "The Clumsy Lover" is so wonderful (IMO) that I didn't even realize it was a pipe tune until one night at a New Haven (Connecticut, USA) contra dance, when Dougie Pincock played it on the highland pipes. (Highland pipes for a contra dance?! I would have been dubious if I hadn't been there, but it was some of the best dancing music I've ever experienced! :)) Then I went back to the tune, and... yes, it's a myxolydian tune, with a range of just one note more than an octave.

 

I find that The Battlefield Band, with Dougie Pincock in the lineup has recorded "The Clumsy Lover" on their "ON THE RISE" album. I don't have that one, but now I think I should get it.

 

By the way, I think it's usually played in A-myxolydian in sessions, which is the perfect key for whistles and pipes in D, and Scots pipers would notate it in "A", but their A is essentially the same as a modern concert Bb, and I remember one Irish accordion player who played it in Bb, because she had learned it from a piper.

 

One closing comment: I think that "properly", the tune is a slow reel, not a hornpipe, though it is also a fine tune if played in a hornpipe's bouncy, dotted rhythm.

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