Fiddle or Pipe Music?

[Dick Glasgow]

Do you play mostly Fiddle or mostly Pipe Tunes?

Reading an old thread on C.net this morning, about Irish & Scottish styles of playing, made me wonder what sort of music Concertina players in Scotland mostly play.

Being a Fiddle player myself for over 30 years I naturally have a head full of Fiddle tunes. However, I play regularly with Scottish Smallpipes & Northumbrian Pipes & quite naturally have learned lots of their tunes too, so I play a mixture, although I would have to say I play mostly Fiddle tunes.

However, I must say that I do feel that Pipe Tunes suit the Concertina oh so well, that I fully intend to concentrate more & more on Pipe Tunes in future.

So if anyone here can suggest good Pipe Tues to learn on the EC, I'd be very grateful.

Cheers
Dick

[ishtar]

I am many years behind you in concertina experience, so I can't answer with authority.

I started on the concertina playing from my fiddle books, and there are some wonderful tunes, but when I tried a couple of pipe tunes from pipe partitions, they just click into place, and they could have been written for the concertina.

I'm doing a painful version of Christ Church at the moment, it's on a Dubliners CD somewhere, and Ian McDonald played it at the piping class here in Montpellier a few weeks ago. The melody is easy enough, but I'm trying now to make the grace notes sound natural.

[Dick Glasgow]

and Ian McDonald played it at the piping class here in Montpellier a few weeks ago

Hey, nothing but the best for you folks over there, eh!

[pcarr]

"Do you play mostly Fiddle or mostly Pipe Tunes?" (and BTW. how do I get quotes to come out as quotes?)

I play anything I can play, from anywhere!

I think pipe marches seem to sit well on the EC, as do particularly waltzes and slow airs.

P

[Dick Glasgow]

Jan 7, 2009 14:18:25 GMT pcarr said:

(and BTW. how do I get quotes to come out as quotes?)

Pamela, just press the 'Quote' button, instead of the 'Reply' one .... & Bob's yer Uncle!

Good Luck

[David Corner]

Jan 6, 2009 11:17:17 GMT Dick Glasgow said:

So if anyone here can suggest good Pipe Tunes to learn on the EC, I'd be very grateful.

Here's a few that I play:
2/4 Marches
The Conundrum
Tam Bain's Lum
Mrs McDonald of Dunach
Lochaber Gathering
Pipe Major Jim Christie of Wick
The Balmoral Highlanders
The Highland Wedding
6/8 Marches
Sweet Maid of Mull
Macleod of Mull
The McNeills of Ugadale
Bengullion
Glen Striven
4/4 Marches
79th's Farewell to Gibraltar
Dornoch Links
The Barren Rocks of Aden
Campbell's Farewell to Redcastle
Lord Lovat's Lament
3/4 Marches
Lochanside
The Bloody Fields of Flanders
The Green Hills of Tyrol
9/8 Marches
The Battle of the Somme
The Heights of Dargai
Hornpipes
Crossing the Minch
The Train Journey North
Reels
Mrs. McPherson of Inveran
The Rejected Suitor

I've mainly sourced the tunes from pipe books, including the 2 volumes of the Scots Guards collections, but many of these can be found in Christine Martin's books.

[Dick Glasgow]

WOW! What a great collection to get my teeth into. Thanks David.

Funny thing, over here they think a March is just a March & most musicians at an Irish Session would simply LAUGH, if you suggested playing a March!

Luckily for me, in mid & North Co Antrim, they do know the value of Marches & you do hear Marches played often at sessions up here.

Looking down the list, I realise I already play most of them on the Fiddle, the others I don't know yet.

Mind you, that Crossing the Minch must surely require lots of triplets to pull it off & although I've been trying them, they're dreadful little so & so's on the English Concertina, aren't they.
Maybe I'll have to try holdng my Concertina crooked, the way Simon does!

Just for the record, here's a link to those Ceilidh Collection Books:

Ceilidh Collections for Fiddlers

Hmmm I wonder how many Pipe Tunes are in those Ceilidh Collections for Fiddlers?
i.e. the Christine Martin's books that David recommended above. ;D

Thanks for the list David.

Cheers
Dick