Hey all! Rob has reinitiated the Tune of the Month and I will be posting here each month with a tune. Down the road (suitably vague time reference) somebody else will step in and take it over.
My approach will generally be to present a tune as played by myself and then contrast it with at least one other version, often an instrument other than banjo for balance and perspective. I will begin this month by raiding my old stockpile and posting two popular hornpipes. The alternate versions are linked to youtube, as I am not sure how to embed them directly here (anyone know how to do that?). My version with my fellow musician, Mike Fischman, is embedded at the bottom. Have fun and hope to see some of your own versions here!
Here is the great Irish fiddler, Kevin Burke playing Boys of Bluehill:
I play Rights Of Man on the 5-string banjo in the clawhammer style. I play in two keys, E-minor and D-minor, each with its own arrangement or fingering. In both cases a capo at the second fret is used. The regular length strings are tuned the same, DADE. For the D-minor arrangement the 5th string is tuned high a (tacked under the railroad spike capo), and for the E-minor arrangement it is tuned to high g (removed from under the 5-string railroad spike capo). The tunings are gDADE, and aDADE. I just uploaded to youtube a year 2005 videos of my playing in both keys. However, the banjo I was using, a bakelite pot, "broomstick" neck Harmony, would not sound good when capoed. Not using a capo, the pitches of the videos are a hole tone down, C-minor, and D-minor.
Here is my very simple version of Boys of Bluehill, which is basically how I play it now. This is played on my Gold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor, with resonator removed as I don't need any more volume in my house. I am also experimenting with lighter gauge strings than I typically play on this.
My real hope is that a bunch of people post their versions. I would really like to be able to take something from these posts and post an updated and improved version at the end of the month. So, I am throwing that out to the rest of the members here in the Irish Trad section, let's hear what you got and get this Tune of the Month going again!
I just uploaded my transcription of Robin Williamson's rendition of Rights Of Man which contains a 3rd part. (The 3rd part might have been composed by Robin, I'm not sure.) I had learned about the 3rd part a few years after the videos I posted earlier were recorded. The direct url to the transcription is,
In preparing this post I found that the "Add attachments" function works only with the Photos page of members home pages, not with the TABS page. I found also that the PHOTOS page accepts only entries in the jpg format. For some reason the gif format is not kosher. I didn't have the inclination to convert the gif file containing the transcription to a jpg file, then to upload it to the PHOTOS page, etc., and opted for entering the direct url to the TABS page, instead.
Further, it appears as if the Log In page at banjohangout.org is not accessible. Clicking the Log In button (which supposes to load the url,
adds an s after the p in http, and replaces the / that appears after login by ?. The browser displays the following error message,
"Could not connect to remote server
You tried to access the address banjohangout.org/login/, which is currently unavailable. Please make sure that the web address (URL) is correctly spelled and punctuated, then try reloading the page.
No, the notes are not a transcription of either a video or an audio file. They are "based" on or are "after" the notes of Rights Of Man appearing on page 59 of Robin Williamson's book, English, Welsh, Scottish & Irish Fiddle Tunes. Your note encouraged me to search and finally find the book at my house. According to Robin, the tune's name is in honor so to speak, of the book The Rights Of Man that was written by Tom Pine, the first part of which was published in 1791. In his book, Robin gives the tune in three parts, in the key of D-minor, and says "This is a Scots setting." The book includes a small plastic LP, so it is very probable that I heard Robin's rendition of the tune on the fiddle. I didn't see a point in transcribing Robin's playing because the notes in the book represent his playing well enough. Because everyone I knew or know play the tune in E-minor. I punched Robin's notes into my music editing program (MusicEase Professional For Windows), and then transposed them up to E-minor. Because the E-minor notes no longer correspond to Robin's in a one-to-one fashion, I used the word "after" in the title.
If by "I can't seem to find any video of his version anywhere." you mean that you couldn't find a playing of a 3rd part in all the videos in which the tune is played, you could find, I am with you. I also couldn't find any rendition, video or audio, of Rights Of Man which play the 3rd part. At the moment I know only a few persons playing the 3rd part (if the jammers are willing to wait), Gary Papenhagen who brought the 3rd part to my attention, myself, and a few that were interested enough to learn it from me.
I popped in for the first time in months, and there's not one tune of the month, but two! Nice to see everyone's approaches to these standards. Here's a version of both tunes: youtu.be/rnepMVK5Rsg
I had it in my head that these were both British in origin, but I can't think where I got that from. And doing a quick search just now, it seems that no-one is sure about the origin of either of them. Do any of you know the history of these pieces?
From a bit more digging it seems that the Rights of Man has been tentatively attributed to James Hill, a Scottish born composer who lived on Tyneside in northern England. He was a pioneer of the 'Newcastle style' of hornpipes, of which the Boys of Bluehill is one. It does seem, however, that both tunes have uncertain origins, possibly from Ireland, Scotland, or America.
)
