Welcome back all! Hope you gorged yourselves on Chocolate eggs! Just one date to work towards this term – 27th June is the 3º festival at More Music, and we have some extra prep to do…
20/04/26
Here’s a gorgeous couple of Langdans from Sweden to get us started. Hope you agree! I know the first harmony’s quite weird, but so’s the first tune…
MIDI FILE: Langdans från SollerönTreble
Guitar
Banjo
Ukulele
Mandolin
Eb
Bb
Cello
Treble
Guitar
Banjo
Ukulele
Mandolin
Eb
Bb
Cello
27/04/26
Here’s a truly joyful sounding Bulgar from Moldova/ The Klezmer tradition – check out the recording! Many musicians don’t bother with the last part for some reason, but I’ve left it in… If there’s time we’ll re-visit Odessa Bulgar too.
MIDI FILE: Kishinever BulgarTreble
Guitar
Banjo
Ukulele
Mandolin
Eb
Bb
Cello
04/05/2026
Bank Holiday – back next week!
11/05/26
Here are a couple of swinging, but quirky Scottish reels. The Road to Eroggie was written by fiddler Adam Sutherland of the band Session A9, for his home village in the Highlands and is a popular session and concert tune North of the border.
Another popular tune is The Ale is Dear, a version of which, Lady Margaret Stewart, can be found in the The Second Collection of Niel Gow’s Reels, 1788. The focus is speed and accuracy over harmony with tunes like this, but there’s still a cello part for each.
Treble
Guitar
Banjo
Ukulele
Mando
Eb
Bb
Cello/Bass
Treble
Guitar
Banjo
Ukulele
Mandolin
Eb
Bb
Cello/Bass
18/05/2026
The priority will be to start working on some composition ideas for the pylons picture we agreed on last week around the concept of Terry Reilly’s “In C”, see below video – I’ll explain more at the session.
…But it might still be nice to learn/revisit some slip-jigs from the North East too… Both of these slip-jigs have multiple parts depending on the version, but all the parts are variations on the original (this is especially obvious in the harmony part I added for Jockey, where I’ve basically just copied the previous part over the current one, which works because all the parts are essentially just variations of the first!)
Treble
Guitar
Banjo
Ukulele
Mandolin
Eb
Bb
Cello/Bass
Treble
Guitar
Banjo
Ukulele
Mandolin
Eb
Bb
Cello/Bass
Guitar
Banjo
Ukulele
Mandolin
Eb
Bb
Cello/Bass