My try at making a written transcription of the melody, based on half-speed analysis of Daniel's YouTube video. I'm guessing at the chords, might be wrong. Since Musescore doesn't have any decent mandoliny sounds, I assigned the lead/melody to nylon 'harp' and 'flute' (first time through the tune) and 'cello' (second time through tune). MuseScore MIDI playback:
Or if the above MP3 player doesn't work for some reason, here's a direct download link to the MP3:
Attachment 193560
John Kelly wrote: "...notation..."
I will try to send a PM to Daniel, to check if it's ok to post a PDF of the above melody transcription.
Rando7 wrote: "I've tried to get something together with this three or four times, and while there is a base melody Mr. Nestlerode improvises and riffs off of it with almost every verse. I was thinking of putting together a basic AABB for it but am still unsuccessful. It's actually kind of a fun tune but it's not going to be as structured as most here."
After getting the melody notes put into my notation app where I could look at them onscreen, I could see that there is a logical and well-formed structure to the tune. Whereas just listening, it sounds more ethereal and mysterious.
It is, however, a 'crooked' tune, meaning that it has an unusual number of bars - Part A has 15 bars, whereas Part B has a more customary 16 bars. Then parts A and B repeat (with the same number of bars as the first time through), and then after that there's a short 'outro' of 5 bars. At least that's how the tune presents to me when looking at it onscreen. (Of course, the lead-in partial bar is never included when adding up how many bars there are.) 'Crooked' tunes are a time-honored tradition in oldtime fiddling for instance, although not nearly as common as regular 32-bar dance tunes.
Hopefully I can get permission from the composer to post the written notes. Once you see how the notes lay out on the screen or printed paper, it's easier to understand the phrasing/structure because you can literally see how the various parts fit together. It has a nice form to it.