Chiff and Fipple Forums

Mr.Gumby wrote:Here is a simple example of the tune on the whistle (I'll leave it up for a day, or two) that may or may not give you an idea, or two, on a possible approach : Julia Delaney

Thanks! Listened to it and downloaded it, hope that's OK.

To get back to that little clip, first instance it takes fAdf bdaf rather than fdad bdad which I think , makes it a lot more plausible on the whistle, arguably you could stay even closer and go fdAf bdaf but somehow the first one is more of a piper's movement so it feels like a natural choice to me but both work equally well.

I was going to ask what the notes were. It sounded like a triad, but with a quick couple listens I had trouble placing it.

And thanks to you both for pointing out that there's more than one way to play a song. Easy under the fingers, that's a great saying.

chill wrote: playing Julia Delaney's reel, I am having trouble with the 31516151 (ecgcacgc) in the B part in the upper octave. How do you navigate a part like that with high-low-high-low breath pressure?

Just now I went back and played over the whole part- before I was just doing that one phrase- and in the flow of the context of the tune this is what my fingers came up with.

The top line is the "tune as written" perhaps, with the leaps from high A and high B down to Middle D.

With many tunes I put in more rolls that the way I received them, and in some cases a roll can make passages more fluent and easier to play.

So first I played the middle line, rolling on F#, which is well enough. On further playing I ended up doing the bottom line, rolling on A, which seems more satisfactory.

I will say that the most natural-feeling thing to me is to play the top line, probably because I've played that tune that way for 35 years.

Nice little ways with it, Richard. I have a few others, one of my favourites being to play fd-~d2 at the start of the second bar.

benhall.1 wrote:Nice little ways with it, Richard. I have a few others, one of my favourites being to play fd~d2 at the start of the second bar.

Yes I was working with that a bit too, it's the way what you do in one phrase can influence what you do in the next- the "call and response" thing, here because the first bar gives a phrase in E minor and the second bar responds to that phrase one step down, in D Major.

I tried to not have the big d to b leap so I ended up with

| ge~e2 gbag | fdda bgaf |

or

| geef gbag | fdda bgaf |

The moral of the story is that you're not locked in to playing the received setting.

pancelticpiper wrote:I tried to not have the big d to b leap

Yes, I get that. Actually, thought, sometimes I like that big leap.

Me too, the most "natural" way for me to play the second part of Julia Delaney and Big John McNeil is with all the fiddle leaps, because that's how I've always played them.

It's never a bad thing to have an arsenal of variations handy.

As John Kelly said (and I paraphrase to en extend): when I listen to a man playing a tune, I don't listen to the tune, I listen to what he does with it. The lasting joy of Irish music is the freedom it gives any player and the joy that comes from listening to how any player find a way through the tune. The smallest of things that can change your perception of the tune.

I have known Julia Delaney since probably 1976 or so, when first stumbling into the Bothy Band. I haven't played it much and when I did it was mostly during my occasional excursions onto the fiddle, nothing worth mentioning really. I mostly felt this was one that belonged to the Bothies. And Tommy Potts, obviously. I think it sufferers a bit from endless rehashing of the Bothy version.

Martin Rochford's version on the fiddle is a standout one for me though. Martin's version owed nothing to the Bothies and I don't think it owed much to Potts either although some of the Bothies owed a lot to their visits to Martin and Martin will have been present for Potts' visits to East Clare. We spent a few days at Rochford's in Bodyke in 1989, the weather was extraordinary, Ireland was warmer than Spain. martin had the hay done when we arrived and we put up the tent beside the house, overlooking Lough Bridget and spend the days tuning Martin's pipes, coaxing him to play the fiddle, travelling the backroads of East Clare, going to the Black Sticks and playing overall a lot of music. They were magical days and transformed the way I think about music. After a few days it was time to move on, we got ready and sat down for a last cup of tea, Martin picked up the fiddle and played for another while. After three days he had gone through his safe tunes and party pieces and was digging deeper into the repertoire. The Walls of Enniscorthy, Steampacket, Porthole of the Kelp, Cashmere Shawl, I was I never saw you, Julia Delaney. He wove his magic, dancing through the first part with lovely rhythmic and melodic twists and surprised with a completely different second part. I have yet to hear anyone to play it like that but I know some East Clare fiddlers who would do anything to get their hands on the recording. Perhaps that's the other joy of this music, the link to the memories and the people that have left us.

Anyway, carry on, just drifting away in thoughts over morning coffee there. I enjoyed revisiting the tune.