Here is a traditional Scottish fiddle tune, from the Shetlands, I believe, and a great favourite with so many fiddle players here in Scotland. Taking my lead from some of the other posters here recently I include my face in this one! I think the tune suits the mandolin well as we can exploit the lack of sustain and the very sharp attack of the instrument. I recorded this on my Sanyo camcorder and Tascam DR-05 and then just loaded the files from both into my video-editing program, lined up the Tascam track with the video sound track (hence opening chord again), then deleted the video sound. I am catching this "keep it simple" vibe - not even a backing track this time!
Another nice tune John. So you have the sea at the end of the garden?
Thanks for this video, John. I like the rhythm you perform.
Very nice, John! I learned this many years ago from the playing of Dave Swarbrick -- have to try whether I still remember how to play it. I like the onomatopoeic sound effects of the chicken picking at the midden in this tune. Martin
Good to see you in one piece again, John. Extraordinary slides! With so much hen's clucking, there should be eggs by now
As promised, here is a quick recording of how I have learned this tune, based on the Dave Swarbrick/Fairport Convention version, which combined the tune with another that uses a sound effect: "The Four-Poster Bed" includes tapping the four corners of the instrument to indicate the four posts (I'm tapping the scratchplate instead). By request from Frithjof, I'm playing this on my c. 1930s Rene Gerome mandolin, which uses the Gelas double-top system which was popular with French luthiers at the time but never quite made it outside France. It sounds rather different from my Gibson and Mid-Mo! Martin
Two nice contributions John and Martin! BTW, I like the sound of the Gerome-mandolin.
Thanks for comments, everyone. It is a bright wee tune and does somehow create the effect of the strutting hens. Simon, That is indeed the sea you have spotted, or in fact The Holy Loch, an inlet of the Firth of Clyde, and I live about five minutes from the shoreline. The Firth of Clyde has several long, narrow sea lochs running off it, making it a great anchorage and the Holy Loch you see here was, for many years, the home of the US Navy's Nuclear Submarine base here in Scotland! Martin, the family of a friend of mine have just posted a fiddle video of the tune along with the Four-poster Bed on YouTube earlier. The Andersons come from rural Deeside, and Paul, the one on the left of the video, is one of Scotland's very finest professional fiddlers. Here is a link to their version of the set you have just played here. Strong-sounding mandolin, that one you are playing here! https://youtu.be/YTDjM_4CqoU
Martin – thanks for the favour. The Gerome looks interesting and delivers a very clear sound. Great!
Cute little tune! John, that's an interesting observation about keeping it simple. I always enjoy your arrangements, but it's definitely nice to see your face! Like Bertram, I especially enjoyed the effective and well-executed slides. Martin, that's another lovely instrument in your collection. The four-poster bed tune has a French flair to it, or perhaps I'm just projecting the notion of Frenchness from your mandolin.
Nice shirt too John, and nice tee shirt Martin, and I like the combination of tunes.
Thanks, all! I don't play this mandolin very often, mainly because I never quite got into the habit of it. It needed as lot of setup when I bought it and having spent several years on-and-off trying to make it playable, I now know why they became extinct: they're virtually impossible to work on because of the highly peculiar way the bridge functions. Unlike every other type of mandolin or guitar, in Gelas instruments the string tension pulls the bridge up, away from the soundboard, rather than presses it into the soundboard and there is an upward string break angle at the bridge which is at the lowest point of the string path from nut to tailpiece. Don't think too much about it, it makes the head hurt! John: thanks for the link to the Andersons playing the Hen's March/Four Poster Bed set. When I hear "Deeside" I have a bit of cognitive dissonance, as for me this refers to the conurbation along the stretch of the River Dee in Flintshire, downriver from Chester -- just a couple of miles downhill from where I live. I presume you're talking about the rather larger and more remote part of the Cairngorms around Balmoral... Glad to see they're playing The Four-Poster Bed at a reasonably civilised tempo. Much in contrast to Dave Swarbrick and Simon Nicol playing this set on Pebble Mill At One in the early 80s - check out the chicken sound effects and the poster bed knocks: Link. Martin
Martin, you are right about Deeside. It is the Scottish one, so beloved of Queen Victoria, and ever since saddled with the label Royal Deeside. The Royals have one of their favourite Scottish holiday homes here, in Balmoral Castle, and the world-famous Braemar Gathering (a 6/8 pipe march I recently posted in the group here commemorates it) is attended by members of the current Royal family each year. Im sure the Welsh Deeside would be just as likely to merit royal patronage. O God, this lockdown certainly makes me more effusive than normal!
I've been thinking about Martin's set of "tunes with sound effects" all day. It sounds so much fun that we should make it an official song of the week!
John, times of crisis tend to bring forward our hidden true personality, and if it is a good one (effusive, if you like) we should be grateful. I've been reading and thinking about this Gelas system, which seems to mimic the way strings pull at a harp's top. One look at the complicated interior construction of the body with two tops explains why it is not more common - it would require a whole luthier's section of its own here at the Cafe, with a plethora of fancy names for all the different angles alone.
Bertram: "I've been reading and thinking about this Gelas system, which seems to mimic the way strings pull at a harp's top. One look at the complicated interior construction of the body with two tops explains why it is not more common - it would require a whole luthier's section of its own here at the Cafe, with a plethora of fancy names for all the different angles alone" You mean like this: These are photos I found on an archived Rene Gerome website, of a model left unfinished for promotional purposes and cut in half to show the complicated interior that Bertram has mentioned. So, this is a close match of my mandolin -- other French makers using the Gelas system were a bit different in the details. Unfortunately, this doesn't show the bridge setup, so here is a photo of the bridge on mine, taken befre and after a lot of work on setup to bring the action down and correct intonation: For the luthiers among us, if anybody asks you to do a setup on one of these, decline politely and then run away as fast as possible! Martin
yes, that's what I meant. And I would run first and decline later
Thanks for the informative pictures, Martin.
