FIDDLE TUNES
Dedicated to all at BFG, and especially for Prof. Peter Cope, Grand Wizard of the High Council of Elders.
These are mostly written for musicians playing session tunes in the Scottish/Irish tradition(s). The idea is that they should be played*. If you like any, try them at your local session (if you get thrown out on your ear that's nothing to do with me). There's nothing horrendously difficult here, just jigs, reels, waltzes and airs in various moods. Please let me know if you find anything interesting.
Tunes are provided as type-0 midi files. Just click on the title. How they play on your PC depends on your sound card, audio setting etc. Some have basic harmonisation or chords, but they are for the most part crude melody lines only - accompaniment and expression is your job. Right click on the title and select "save as" to download a midi tune file which can be imported into music software like Noteworthy Composer (free evaluation download) or Melody Assistant (shareware) to generate notation.
*Note: Although fair use is encouraged, I should add that copyright remains the property of Martin Shough and permission for republishing or any commercial use whatsoever must be sought in writing. Wilful plagiarists will be vigorously pursued, exposed, humiliated and prosecuted with the full farce of the law. Be warned!
Two cheeky characters - Louis the smoke-grey Persian, and (Flash) Gordon, the black-and-white - who live next to the kitchen stove.
Don't have any pet badgers, but if we did I fancy they might like this.
A Highland hill loch, some of which is presently in my coffee cup.
Obscure folkloric reference. Don't worry about it.
Self-explanatory I suppose, except that these high tops are really in the NW Highlands of Scotland, not the Peruvian Andes as the "pan-pipe" style midi version might suggest.
Written for the Blackford Fiddle Group (Perthshire), although they very wisely won't go near it with a long pole and protective clothing. At the time I wrote this (some time in 2003, influenced in part by a nameless Irish tune) I played occasional mandolin at BFG pub sessions. BFG are responsible for inspiring me to take up the fiddle too, so any complaints, noise abatement orders or actions for damages should be addressed to them.
The sound of summer on the high moors. Hard not to think of Vaughan Williams when combining larks and fiddles. But I found it surprisingly easy to avoid achieving anything as effective as The Lark Ascending in this tune!
A simple air, elegiac for a time that perhaps never was . . . A C minor chord under the G in bar# 39 is essential here.
This tune is lyrical but should be played over a driving "bum-titty-titty, bum-titty-titty" rhythm. For a non-equestrian like me this is evocative of galloping over the high country on a wild steed - without the spinal injury.
Why Tipsy Bride? Not sure. Possibly because the opening phrases sound a bit like a Bach organ melody played on a Swanee whistle! I have in mind two Sutherland friends whose wedding picture showed them leaning on one another like clothes props. "Tipsy" understates the case, but "pissed" doesn't scan so well.
For some reason this tune suggests to me the image of children skipping along the water's edge.
As one's own tunes always do, this fell under my fingers quite easily when I wrote it. Now it seems as difficult as a tune written by someone else! Dang.
A private pun.
A simple but urgent "travelling" tune written during an enforced period in level Lincolnshire. Caledonian exiles will understand
So called because the melody on which this is based was originally written to go with Robert Burns' Kenmuir's On and Awa (presumably there is a traditional one but I've never heard it). I like the "snap" (of the rhythm, hopefully not the strings) when playing this on the fiddle.
This is another tune originally written for a song, this time a self-penned one. It has a "rowing" rhythm and one should imagine oarsmen on the Viking longships pulling through heavy seas.
Kirkiboll - apparently from a mixture of Scots kirk (church) and Norse boll or poll (home) - was a name for the part of the village of Tongue, in NW Sutherland, where I lived for nearly 13 years.
This tune came from nothing, some almost random doodlings (no doubt all too plainly) that turned into an interesting thing with almost no conscious help from me at all.
An obvious title, from the bird call interval in the tune.
Kind of a "trumpet call" sequence in the first phrases gives rise to this title.
Another song tune, a walking (as opposed to waulking) tune conveying the idea of a wandering journeyman going eternally from place to place. The words turn this Wayman into a mythical figure.
The rhythm of raindrops and slapping wipers?
It used to seem that way. These days it's full of weather and RAF practice bombing!
Fair are there far and foreign fields and finer
Green are the groves and flowery fields and greener . . .
Mythical creature.
"If all is not lost, where is it?"
They had counterpanes when I was young. 'Moonlight on the Duvet' is somehow less evocative.
A morning song.
Megalithic circle on Orkney.
The following tunes don't yet have titles. Any polite suggestions will be considered . . .
tune00 tune01 tune1 tune2 tune3 tune4 tune7 tune08 tune09 tune10 tune11 tune12 tune13 tune17 tune18 tune20 tune23 tune24 tune25 tune29 tune31 tune34 tune35 tune39 tune42 tune43 tune46 tune51 tune55 tune56 tune58 tune59 tune60
Many more tunes to come. Please check back another time . . .
November 2006