TOW#28: The Tailor's Shirt

[nigelgatherer]

The Tailor's Shirt



This is a jig which I used to play after last week's Tune of the Week, The Lady's Plaything. Like that one, this tune came from Matt Seattle's The Border Bagpipe Book, where he says the source was McFarlane's Manuscript (c1740).

• PDF with Standard Notation
• PDF with Standard Notation and Mandolin Tablature
• MP3 (The Lady's Plaything/The Tailor's Shirt)
  

[nigelgatherer]

Bump - just in case nobody noticed this tune, up since Sunday.

[Eric Renshaw]

I like the tune but wonder whether there is a non-bagpipe version? It's just that on playing around with it the tune also plays well if (for example) the first two C#s are diminished to Cs (likewise the first C# in bar 11). Sorry if this sounds totally left-field, but as you know, my comfort zone is more Baroque than folk!

Cheers,
Eric

[Trish Santer]

Can see where you're coming from, Eric: I even tried changing ALL the Cs to naturals and that seems to work too: but might be a bit of a mish-mash if playing with folk who know the original tune!!

[Tosh Marshall]

I'll have a bash tomorrow Nigel........

[Jack Campin]

The mode you use seems to make very little difference to the effect of the tune. Here it is in the Turkish/Arabic "hijaz" mode, which in this instance is the same as klezmer "freygish":


  Terzi.pdf (Size: 13.22 KB / Downloads: 9)

Much less difference than you'd expect.

[Tosh Marshall]

Here's my attempt at it, a bit slower than it should go but it's a fine tune. I played it as written above but Jack's Turkish version is AABB which is interesting........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYapW0Biy5s

[nigelgatherer]

Well done, Tosh, that captures the flavour of the tune.

[Jack Campin]

I was working from my ABC transcription of the version in the Macfarlan MS - you will of course have noticed that my title translates as "The Tailor and his Shirt", which is what the Macfarlan calls it. Repeats in 18th century sources are not always indicated unambiguously and I may have got it wrong (I did that a long time ago). If there's a set of original dance instructions around somewhere that would decide it.

Tosh plays it much like I prefer it. I seem to remember Johnny Cradden did it much faster.

[nigelgatherer]

Yup, we used to rattle through the tune!