|
|
Details of Grand Union's 'short' CD are included here, with excerpts from the tracks. To obtain your copy of the CD at £6 GBP each, including UK postage and packing, please send a cheque payable to 'B.Tarry' for £6 to:
All tunes trad. arranged Grand Union except where indicated. Click on
the tune titles to hear an approx. 30 seconds preview.
(
Depending on your media player, they should start playing reasonably quickly,
but play may be intermittent until all the file is downloaded, when they should
replay continously. Note that to minimise download file size the quality of
these clips are not as good as the CD itself.)
Clare's Dragoons/Southdown Quickstep (Marches)
The first of these marches can be found in Volume 1 of the excellent, but now out of print, English Country Dance Tune Books compiled and arranged by Dave Townsend, probably one of the first printed collections of English dance tunes of the revival. We are not sure where we found SouthDown Quickstep, but we like it!
El Paso Schottische/Lemmy Brazil's No 2 (Schottisches)
Taz came across the first schottische in an American collection, The Old Time Fiddler's Repertory, compiled by R.P. Christeson. Untitled in that collection but quoted as being 'played regularly at square dances in El Paso in the 1940s', it has been given this obvious working title. The second schottische of this set is one of many cracking tunes collected from the Gloucestershire traveller Lemmy Brazil, played here in the traditional one-row key of C.
Little Red Wagon (Part 2)/Art Wooten's Quadrille (Jigs)
Two more tunes that can be found in Christeson's Old Time Fiddler's Repertory, although Roger has known Art Wooten's Quadrille long before we found it in that collection. Little Red Wagon was found when looking for a tune to go with Art Wooten's. In the collection it appears as a four part tune. We weren't that keen on the other two parts, and also wanted a 32 bar jig, hence the Part 2 suffix.
Queen of the May/Watson's Hornpipe (Hornpipes)
Queen of May was discovered by Roger, whilst Watson's Hornpipe was discovered by Taz when transcribing a manuscript collection into ABC for the Village Music Project. This collection of a Norfolk musician, G.H. Watson, was uncovered by George Frampton and contains some excellent tunes. The hornpipe played here is untitled in the manuscript so in time-honoured tradition we've bestowed it with the name of the source musician (unless someone knows another name for the tune).
Deed Polka (B.Tarry)/Double Figure Eight (Polkas)
Deed Polka was written by Taz - the title is a pun on Deed Poll, for reasons too lengthy to go into here. Buy him a pint and he'll tell you. Double Figure Eight has been played in English sessions for more years then the band care to remember, brought into prominence by the Old Swan Band when they featured it on one of their early LPs.
Portabello/Out to Lunch (B.Tarry) (Hornpipes)
Two of the bands favourite hornpipes. Portabello is another great traditional tune which has never fallen out of favour in English music sessions. Out to Lunch is another of Taz's compositions, written during one lunch hour...
Great North Run '86(R.Whitehead)/Whither (B.Tarry) (Reels)
Two newer tunes again. The first reel was written by Robert Whitehead in celebration of the Great North Run marathon, and won the Morpeth Gathering tune competition. It has now firmly established itself in the tradition and can be heard in sessions all over the UK. Whither? is again by Taz, which apparantly was supposed to be a slow air, but ended up as this fast reel.
Postscript: All of Taz's compositions can be found in ABC
format at http://home.clara.net/gmatkin/tunes.htm
(along with Gavin Atkin's tunes, whose site this is). We would be very
pleased if you want to play these tunes, but due credit would be appreciated.
If any of these tunes are to be included in any published collection or
recording, then please contact Taz or
Gavin Atkin first.
For more on the
ABC notation, which has is becoming the standard for storing traditional tunes
on computer and for exchanging them via the Internet, and for software for
converting it to printable sheet music, midi files, etc. more information can
be found on the abc homepage at
http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/.