Buzzby McMillan playing his Cittern NHHG Septembeer 2003
What a wonderful melody...this is a very old reel, but has been slowed down to crawl with a tempo around 90 on the metronome, and just a wee bit faster than an Air.. The first time I heard this tune was on the Old Blind Dog's album New Tricks. The performance featured Jonny Hardie on fiddle with Buzzby McMillan accompanying him on cittern. It only took one listen for this tune to become an instant favorite.
I later learned Jonny learned this tune from a version by Alasdair Fraser, an incredible fiddler (if you haven't attended one of his workshops DO) who I heard decided to slow this tune way down and let the beauty of the melody shine (alas, I've not heard Alasdair's version yet). When I heard the OBD version, I tirelessy played along until I was able to jot this skeleton (below) into my notebook -- alas this transcription is loosley based Jonny's cover version Alasdair's (give or take a couple notes here and there) -- Jim Malcolm, prior to his "Dog Years" too heard the Old Blind Dog's version and decided to put words to it and came up with the sad ballad Jimmy's Gone To Flanders (about his grandfather I believe). That is a wonderful tune, and the words were helpful in helping me memorize this tune and whenever I play it I still hear fragments of those lyrics in my head.
When played on the above New Tricks CD Jonny and Buzzby (and the original Dogs) paired this with a tune (most likely a pipe tune) called the Bonawe Highlander, which is a 6/8 march (I believe) and that tune is in the process of being transcribed... Jim used this pairing on his CD but played the latter on harmonica.
This tune is fun, but poses a bowing challenge when it comes to that E which
can be played either as an open string (bow aerobics) or with the fourth finger
on the A string... There's a couple alternating string passages at the end of
a "measure" (phrase in US music terminology) which will gie ya mickle
ado in the woodshed (practice room) for sure! This tune will challenge you,
but when you can play it, it's well worth the effort!
Here's two versions of the MIDI, slow with chords, and a second without chords and faster.
Note I didn't delineate any sections, however this is an AA BB binary form melody. I repeated the A but not the Bsection... You'll hear the contrast... Of course you can play the B just once (as you'll hear on the file) as this tune, like many Traditional folk tunes, are open for interpretation.
Note the last note (whole) was added to try to eliminate the abrupt stop that occured in the midi file and when I generated a picture, I forgot to take it out... Of course it didn't work in the MIDI file either... but I left it as is. Alas, this is the free version of this public domain melody and I'm not going to fix it, or add the repeats (I'm saving that for a book I'm working on which will include many of the tunes I've put here).
On the slower MIDI file, note there are a couple B chords which work on guitar (as they're voiced lower) but I'm not 100% sure if they're correct. The computer voices them in a higher register on the MIDI file than they sound on my guitar, and they worked when I played along to the MIDI file but they sound a little out. I may update the MIDI files but again, not the picture below.
I do know that on the recording I'm familiar with, the Cittern is tuned in GDGBD tuning and the chords are arpeggiated. I strummed along a few block chords on guitar so this can serve as a lead sheet. Cittern, abeit a relative to the guitar, has a very different and much more gentle timbre -- personally prefer the lesser used cittern much better than the more commonly used bouzouki (a cousin to the mandolin), and of course, if you play the chords on anything but a computer they really do sound much MUCH better... ;)
Enjoy... :)
Buzzby McMillan playing his Cittern NHHG Septembeer 2003
