A Tune A Week

A nice pair from Martin Hayes’ album Under the Moon. He plays these beautifully, and slowly enough that they’re easy to pick up. This particular record is a good place to go for learning by ear for that reason.

As I’ve mentioned, a nice follow-up to Winnie Hayes’. It falls pretty nicely into my standard base fingering for the D scale, except for the last phrase of the B part where there’s a bellows switch that still throws me sometimes. (The scale, from low to high: Left ring finger push D; L middle push E; L ring draw F#; L index push G on the C row; L index draw A on the C row; L index or middle push B; R index push C#; L index/middle push D; L index/middle draw E; R index draw F#; R middle draw G on the third row; R ring draw A on the G row; R ring push B. I often use R middle push A on the third row and R index push G on the G row also.) Yes, fingering can be complex on this instrument.

This jig goes nicely before The Lonesome Jig, and that’s the setting I heard it in the other night. Conveniently, I have the pair on a John Williams recording, played on concertina no less, so I can listen to them over and over until the neighbors come by with big sticks. And guess what: I have conquered that issue with my pinky that I was blaming on my box a couple weeks ago…

This week it’s not a Christmas tune, not in honor of Christmas. I’ve heard this jig played a good bit at the Dan McGuinness session here in Nashville, and it caught my ear. So I tracked it down on “Bucks of Oranmore” by Joe Burke and Charlie Lennon, bought the CD, and got it in my brain. These days I can keep a fairly steady beat without a metronome, which is a great improvement, let me tell you.