Yesterday I spent the afternoon playing music. My fellow session player and concertinaist (sp?) wanted to record a few tunes for his family. My favorite was the Gravel Walk. And here it is:
Charlie is playing concertina, and I am experimenting with the Octave Mandolin.
Two nights ago, at the White Horse in Black Mountain, NC, we played these two tunes together. The Old Bush and The Maple Leaf.
(Ye) Old Bush <–tab
The Maple Leaf <–tab
For you guitar flatpickers, here are those same tunes tabbed out in standard tuning and DADGAD.
(Ye) Old Bush Standard Guitar The Maple Leaf Guitar
(Ye) Old BushDADGAD The Maple Leaf DADGAD
While I’ve always found the “chopped off head” youtube videos kind of strange, this is the best one I could find at the time for The Maple Leaf.
In the Mandolin II class at Celtic week, with David Surette, we learned a few tunes by ear, a few by tab, and also focused on how to make accompaniment with the mandolin interesting. I had to leave “the gathering” earlier today, to visit the in-laws, and so have had some time in the car to tab a few of the tunes for you. Click on the links below for the mandolin tablature for the irish tunes of (reel) Devanney’s Goat, (reel) Poor Old Woman, and (slip jig) Hardiman the fiddler.
Dorm Room at Celtic Week 2011 - Guitar, Mandolins and Kettlebells, what else do you need?
Mandolin (tab) tablature & standard notation
Now that I’ve found myself exploring the guitar again, I’ve also created flat picking tablature for the tunes above. Here they are:
Guitar (tab) tablature and Standard Notation for Flat picking
Devanney’s Goat in Standard Tuning
Poor Old Woman in Standard Tuning
Hardiman the Fiddler in Standard Tuning
We also learned a great tune called The Reverend Brother’s Jig (called the Monk’s Jig on thesession.org) and a number of Breton Tunes. Great class, good teacher, learned a lot.
This week I’m at the Swannanoa Gathering near Asheville, NC. It’s my third year. Year one, I volunteered, and took some great classes. Year two, I just showed up for the late night jams. Year three, this year, I was gifted a full package of classes, food and lodging. Each year, the experience gets even richer.
Today is Wednesday. The atmosphere here is heaven for musicians. Walking through the halls you hear whistles, guitars, fiddles, etc playing tunes older than anyone here.
At night, moving through the campus, the sound of cicadas, crickets, irish and scottish sessions float in the damp air. I’d like to get my recorder out, and just walk through the campus one evening, and record the sounds as they move in and out of focus while strolling down the road.
More to come…
Last week our local piper at the early session at the Jack of the Wood, encouraged me to back him up on a jig and a slip jig. They are great tunes, so I spent some time researching and creating a chord arrangement to for rhythmic backing.
Here are the chords I found from VCP Sheet Music for “the Choice Wife”. They work nicely.
Next up are some chords I’m playing around with for “Muireann’s Jig”.
A
Bm- BmEm BmEm BmEm B- BmEm Bm- BmEm
B
Em- F#m- G- Am Em- F#m- G- Am
C
Bm- D- D- DEm Bm- D- D- DEm
D
DBm DA D- DEm DBm DA BmA DEm
I feel it can still use some tweaking, but it works well enough at the moment.
If you’d like to play along, use the videos below.
The Choice Wife is also called O’Farrell’s Welcome to Limerick
Here’s a great PDF from a fellow MandolinCafe member, Michael Pilgrim. Some of these songs are individually on the tunes and tab page, but
Tune List from Michael Pilgrim’s Irish Tune Booklet
there are a number of them which are not.
Enjoy adding these common irish session tunes to your repertoire. I look forward to seeing you at the Jack of the Wood some time here in Asheville!
25 Irish Fiddle Tunes in Standard Notation and Mandolin Tablature
Click the Link above to view or Download this file.
See below for a great book full of Mandolin tab, standard notation and chords for the Celtic/Irish mandolin, octave mandolin or tenor banjo player.
20% of all profits go towards the Swannanoa Gathering Scholarship Fund.
Asheville Celtic Mandolin Collection
The Eastern Coast of Inisheer
According to Wikipedia, “Inisheer (Irish: Inis Oírr, the island’s official name, Inis Oirthir, meaning “east island”, and traditionally Inis Thiar, meaning “rear island”) is the smallest and most eastern of the three Aran Islands in Galway Bay, Ireland.”
Here is the mandolin tablature, standard notation, and chords to this lovely waltz.
While I was tabbing and chording Inisheer, I had The Merry Blacksmith right in front of me, so I went ahead and tabbed that one too.
Here it is!
I tried to find a way to upload music to go along with these, but to no avail through wordpress. Luckily I found these two great videos on youtube from the same folks. Looks like a father daughter combo! Great playing.
Inisheer
The Merry Blacksmith
Enjoy! Their timing seems good, so play along.
Here’s the newest tune converted to Tablature and Standard Notation for the Mandolin.
Standard Notation and Tablature for the Celtic Irish Tune, the Floating Crowbar. Arranged for Mandolin.
A clearer version can be downloaded in .pdf format on the tunes page of this blog.
It’s been tabbed out fairly accurately. If I recall there are a number of ghost notes indicated on the sheet music on TheSession.org. But this will get you through. Also, please disregard the way the notes are tied together in the B part. Neither I nor my computer program caught these errors until it had already been converted.
However, all the tab works just fine, so enjoy!
Maybe you’ll come out and play it with us at the Jack of the Wood on Sunday afternoon?
See you then.
Asheville Mandolin 