Jody Kruskal Posted June 29, 2007 Share Posted June 29, 2007 I’ve just put up the July offering on my Tune of the Month blog page. Go HERE, select Tune of the Month/July/ and click on the tune to hear the MP3 file. Here is the text: This tune popped into my fingers a few months ago and I immediately recognized it as a morris tune. Dance tunes always fit the movement of the dancers, and as I played Lilies of the Valley it reminded me of my first years in New York City dancing with the Greenwich Village Morris Men and playing all those great Fieldtown and Bledington tunes. I learned to watch the dancers and make my tempo and articulation match their movements. These were good lessons that I learned with the help of Paul Friedman who still plays for the Greenwich Men. So I asked Paul to play Lilies with me last week and as we played, we imagined the surge and falling back of a morris side and let the rhythm and accent of the music get in sync with our internal dancers. I’m curious what you make of this tune. Is there a village tradition that it seems to fit best to? Let me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d.elliott Posted June 30, 2007 Share Posted June 30, 2007 Jody, very hankie flapping if I may say so! I tried to print the dots, as I am not an ear'ole learner. unfortunately I can only print the page which makes the dots too small for practical use. Dave E Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spindizzy Posted June 30, 2007 Share Posted June 30, 2007 I tried to print the dots, as I am not an ear'ole learner. unfortunately I can only print the page which makes the dots too small for practical use. /quote] DAve, Right click on the dots and you can go several ways. Save the image ... then you can open it and print it with some graphics program ... larger! or Open the image, then you can fiddle with page setup (firefox lets you scale things ... don't know if Explorer does then same), print preview and print Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Besser Posted June 30, 2007 Share Posted June 30, 2007 So I asked Paul to play Lilies with me last week and as we played, we imagined the surge and falling back of a morris side and let the rhythm and accent of the music get in sync with our internal dancers. I’m curious what you make of this tune. Is there a village tradition that it seems to fit best to? Let me know. Great tune, really easy to chord and a nice Morrisy bounce. Thanks, Jody! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Morse Posted June 30, 2007 Share Posted June 30, 2007 I’m curious what you make of this tune. Is there a village tradition that it seems to fit best to? Let me know.Just diddling through it made me think immediately of Bucknell. On the box it seems to fit the tradition very well. Maybe it's because of the note sequence style (not to mention that Bucknell is mostly jigs) and that it seems so conducive to stressing and clipping the first note of each bar? I wasn't until today that I heard you playing it (thanks to explaining how to get beyond the first image), and it sounds Sherborneish? I'm glad I played it before I heard it. Try With Bucknell cadence - a little faster overall, stressing/clipping the first beat... standard figures... the DF part just calls out to Bucknell's typical SS, HH though in such a way that you wind up progressed (as in ECD?). Or maybe done as corner crossings with a different return so that it doesn't wind up being a Queens' Delight clone? -- Rich -- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Besser Posted June 30, 2007 Share Posted June 30, 2007 I wasn't until today that I heard you playing it (thanks to explaining how to get beyond the first image), and it sounds Sherborneish? I'm glad I played it before I heard it. Try With Bucknell cadence - a little faster overall, stressing/clipping the first beat... standard figures... the DF part just calls out to Bucknell's typical SS, HH though in such a way that you wind up progressed (as in ECD?). Or maybe done as corner crossings with a different return so that it doesn't wind up being a Queens' Delight clone? After playing it for a while, seems to me the tune has a feel very much like Bledington "Over the Water to Charlie," without the little hitch in the B part. No wonder I like Jody's tune; Over the Water is one of my favorite Morris tunes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Brook Posted June 30, 2007 Share Posted June 30, 2007 Lovely tune, I love the flow of it, as for traditions definitely not adderbury, bampton or fieldtown in my opinion. I do agree that it would work as a nice corner dance though, with flowing hankies, or perhaps a banks of the dee "show" of hankies (which I know is a fieldtown dance just to contradict myself). Some cross-atlantic translation cultural confusion going on here though, Lillies of the valley (the name) conjures up images of old ladies with zimmer frames swaying away, as it is a "fragrance" often associated with older ladies on this side of the pond! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Barnert Posted July 1, 2007 Share Posted July 1, 2007 I agree with Bucknell. It's right there with "The Willow Tree" and "Room for the Cuckolds" ("Rabbits in Australia"). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Besser Posted July 1, 2007 Share Posted July 1, 2007 (edited) I agree with Bucknell. It's right there with "The Willow Tree" and "Room for the Cuckolds" ("Rabbits in Australia"). Rabbits: a nice tune that gets tiresome after about the 10th verse, loathsome after the 20th. Edited July 1, 2007 by Jim Besser Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Barnert Posted July 1, 2007 Share Posted July 1, 2007 I should also mention that Jody and Paul's recording/performance/arrangement is an excellent example of why I think Fiddle and Concertina make a particularly effective combination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Besser Posted July 1, 2007 Share Posted July 1, 2007 I should also mention that Jody and Paul's recording/performance/arrangement is an excellent example of why I think Fiddle and Concertina make a particularly effective combination. Jim Morrison + Tom Kruskal is the duo that got me interested in playing Morris music for just that reason. I don't know the fiddler with Jody, but he sounds remarkably like Morrison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Barnert Posted July 1, 2007 Share Posted July 1, 2007 (edited) Jim Morrison + Tom Kruskal is the duo that got me interested in playing Morris music for just that reason. I don't know the fiddler with Jody, but he sounds remarkably like Morrison. Paul Friedman and Jim Morrison have both been fiddlers for the Greenwich Morris Men in New York. They know each other well. The Kruskal/Morrison recording (Round Pond Relics) was one of the examples I was thinking of when I submitted my previous post. Another was the moment on the original "Swallowtail" album when Ron Grosslein (Fiddle) and George Marshall (English Concertina) launch into "Bay of Fundy." Edited for spelling. Edited July 1, 2007 by David Barnert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Besser Posted July 1, 2007 Share Posted July 1, 2007 Paul Friedman and Jim Morrison have both been fiddlers for the Greenwich Morris Men in New York. They know each other well. The Kruskal/Morrison recording (Round Pond Relics) was one of the examples I was thinking of when I submitted my previous post. Another was the moment on the original "Swallowtail" album when Ron Grosslein (Fiddle) and George Marshall (English Concertina) launch into "Bay of Fundy." I must have encountered Paul at the Half Moon Sword Ale, but i'm bad with names. Round Pond Relics is a seminal concertina/Morris recording. I pleaded with Jim to find a way to re-release it on CD; my vinyl copy is mostly scratches and pops. All these years later, I still learn a lot about concertina listening to Tom. And watching Jim interact with dancers is a real education. He is the consummate dance musician, IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jody Kruskal Posted July 2, 2007 Author Share Posted July 2, 2007 Interesting. Jim and Paul do have much in common in their fiddle styles. They are both experienced and comfortable with English as well as American tunes. Both love playing jigs. Both love playing slow. Both have the dancers in mind as they play and give a solid rhythmic bounce that I love, even when there are no dancers around. So Lilies of the Valley sounds like the smell of old ladies. Hmmm.... I thought it sounded like a corner crossing dance to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimLucas Posted July 2, 2007 Share Posted July 2, 2007 Some cross-atlantic translation cultural confusion going on here though, Lillies of the valley (the name) conjures up images of old ladies with zimmer frames swaying away, as it is a "fragrance" often associated with older ladies on this side of the pond! Though Lily of the Valley may be a favorite scent of "old ladies", it was also my mother's favorite when she was still a young lady. But I really pity anyone who isn't familiar with the real thing. Lily of the valley is a lovely little flower with a wonderful scent. The plants tend to grow in clusters, and the flower stalks are small enough to find a variety of uses when cut, from table decorations to corsages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Evans Posted July 2, 2007 Share Posted July 2, 2007 (edited) But I really pity anyone who isn't familiar with the real thing. Lily of the valley is a lovely little flower with a wonderful scent. The plants tend to grow in clusters, and the flower stalks are small enough to find a variety of uses when cut, from table decorations to corsages. It is indeed a wonderfully scented flower. The left side of our cottage and backside of our Koi pond are blanketed with them in spring. Dominique cuts fresh ones as long as the season lasts and it starts my morning off on the right foot to come downstairs to that lovely aroma. The tune while lovely seems more like the forward, almost brassy scent of the little wild white roses proclaiming their presence at the moment. Edited July 2, 2007 by Mark Evans Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spindizzy Posted July 2, 2007 Share Posted July 2, 2007 ...It is indeed a wonderfully scented flower.... But very invasive (!) - still who cares with that scent :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jody Kruskal Posted July 2, 2007 Author Share Posted July 2, 2007 Actually, the naming of tunes is an odd thing. Sometimes the first name that pops into my mind just seems right. Other times nothing I think of seems to work. For some tunes the name stems from an emotion I get from it’s performance or refers to the story I think the tune tells. A silly tune should have a silly name and a serious tune should have a serious name. If I get stuck I like to use place names around where I live or wrote the tune. A few times it has been a reference to the date that I wrote the tune that becomes the name. A Fresh Start was written on New Years day. Old Glory was written not long after the 9/11 disaster when everyone was flying the flag everywhere I looked. Often I think a tune sounds a little like some other tune I know and I try to refer to that as a sort of tribute and acknowledgment. In this case I thought the endings in the A section were very like Lillibulero... so Lily of the Valley seemed appropriate, don’t you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now