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Mrs.Belle's Square set; Newfoundland tunes


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Hope you like these tunes........................... Mrs.Belle's Square set ......a set of  four Newfoundland dance tunes.

     Bill (Nesbitt) has a deep connection to Newfoundland. He is able to spend a small part of the year in Harbour Grace and is  embedded in the rich session scene there.

           I worked for three years in Harbour Breton, Nfld, and both my children were born there.

Here is the source collection of these tunes, compiled by Christina Smith.......we play them at about 75% the speed that they dance them in kitchens etc but we like it at this tempo and feel the tunes breathe a little more freely.

                      https://inshorepublications.ca/wp/like-the-bird 

I've attached the sheet music.........interesting time signature changes..................it took me many dozens of times listening to the set until I felt able to try it on the anglo.

              Bill and I have determined that our next practice together we will work on more chording and additional smiles !

Thanks for listening !

 

Mrs. Belle's Square set.pdf

Edited by Robin Harrison
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Not tune names exactly, but they are referred to by the name of the part of the dance that each was played for: Run Through, Advance, Chain and Close-in.  Mrs. Belle also called them "Bill Jones' Square Dance tunes", as she learned them from an older musician from Aquaforte, on the South Shore of the Avalon Peninsula.  To give a timeline, Mrs. Belle was born in 1919, and began playing accordion for dances as a young child. She moved away from Aquaforte n 1933, so probably learned them before then.

Edited by Bill N
clarification
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2 hours ago, Bill N said:

Not tune names exactly, etc...

Good enough for me! I just wondered. Thanks!

 

Supplementary question: The 1st play in the  A music of 'Advance' has only two notes (quavers). As a crude 1st approximation, I would expect to see 4 notes there to make a full bar. Is that an omission, or am I being dumb, and it's supposed to be that way? I couldn't tell from listening to the recording (terminal 'tin ear' 😊). Ta.

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55 minutes ago, Robin Harrison said:

Roger..............pm sent.

Robin, thank you for that. I don't seem to be able to load an image into a PM, so I just downloaded the score again and did a partial screenshot of the relevant part:

 

 

screenshot_01.jpg.d158c2fb71e80fd36a2cc218c536e4b4.jpg

 

That image shows what I'm seeing - the 1st play in the A music looks like two (barred) quavers when I would expect to see four for a complete bar of 2/4 music? I'm a little puzzled... Am I being unbelievably dense, and completely missing the point (I'm quite prepared to find that that is the case😊)?

 

Roger

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Looks and sounds to me like one note (what we call a quarter note and you call a crotchet) D was inadvertently omitted from the beginning of what we would call the “first ending” and you call the “first play”  of the A music. They’re certainly playing it that way.

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5 hours ago, Robin Harrison said:

[1] Thanks Roger for picking this up........( & David for confirming)

...

[2] You can proof read the same mistake a dozen times.............. !!

[1] My pleasure! I looked at this backwards, forwards, upside-down, right-to-left, and even in a bloody mirror, and couldn't convince myself that there wasn't something wrong. I wrote the ABC out and stuffed a simple 'd2' into that first ending, to get it to look/play right. I'll be interested to see the amended version, because coming back to your OP, you said:

 

> Hope you like these tunes...

 

I do, I do - which is why I spent a little time on it to try and make sure I got it right(-ish)...

 

[2] Tell me about it! Someone once told me that proof-readers for books pick up errors by reading the book backwards. The idea apparently is that the unfamiliar 'direction' helps make the errors jump off the page. I don't know if that's true, or if it would work with music, but it sounds sort-of feasible...

Edited by lachenal74693
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37 minutes ago, lachenal74693 said:

I looked at this backwards, forwards, upside-down, right-to-left, and even in a bloody mirror...

37 minutes ago, lachenal74693 said:

Someone once told me that proof-readers for books pick up errors by reading the book backwards.

 

Paul is dead. Miss him, miss him, miss him.

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