Some day, try this: play “You are my Sunshine” in a minor key.
Try it also with “Are You Sleeping.”
For a while I used to do that a fair bit with Irish tunes. Depending on the tune, good results were not always easy to arrive at, but The Rakes of Kildare’s fingering shifted down a step into G major worked very well. Started into it at a session and everybody found themselves playing along, looking at each other and wondering how the heck they knew it at all. That was fun. I called it The Lawnmowers of Kildare, but found out later it had already been done and was a song called Thank God We’re Surrounded by Water.
Aye. A minor change… no pun intended, that thoroughly alters the mood of a tune.
Try playing Flop Eared Mule up one full step and in the same key signature as the original. PRESTO a nice dorian tune.
Even a key change of major to major or minor to minor can be cool.
The most popular example would be the glasgow reel. I don’t like it but cheap trick of shifting it up a major key is really cool. you get a nice lift out of it.
If you like other keys and modes, check out the Ahava Raba whistle by Chiff member Daniel Bingamon. Ahava Raba is a scale used in a lot of middle eastern music. Think Havah Nagila. Play your favorite tune with usual fingering and it comes out sounding like it belongs in Fiddler On The Roof.
Back in 2006 a bunch of my friends took to playing “Julia Delaney” in D major. I don’t know where they got the idea from – yes, it’s in O’Neill’s in D major, but that version is almost a different tune, this one is very close to what I think of as the standard D minor setting, just in D major. I recently dug out a recording I made of them back then and have been listening to it a lot, it’s really nice.
Then there’s the modulation into
D Minor the saddest of all keys.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NgViOqGJEvM
Our old-time group plays a nice version of The Girl I Left Behind in a minor key, or sort of minor-ish because part of it is in a major key liked you’d expect and then suddenly it goes sad and confuses everybody.