I forgot to publish a tune of the month at the beginning of March! That, combined with a request for sheet music and today being St. Patrick’s day, brings you a jig I associate with the Irish music tradition: Fraher’s Jig. What you’ll find below is a myriad of arrangements that I’ve collected or written myself.

The Tune of the Month series quickly stopped being a vehicle to promote competition tunes not long after it was started. What it turned into was, “Hey, look at this cool new session/kitchen piping tune I found!” So, while Fraher’s Jig isn’t new to me, it does give me the opportunity to point out the need for variability in our arrangements. Non-piping audiences need us to play through tunes as least twice/thrice! They need to be given the opportunity to get into the groove so as to understand the tune. It is then imperative for us to explore all the possible ways to play a tune and still be playing the same tune! It’s akin to composing a new tune, except that the theme is already set, we just need to find all the variations. What variations can you find in the music you already play?

Fraher’s Jig < PDF sheet music (you’ll see some harmony at the end that corresponds with some mucking about I did in Apple’s Garageband a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.)

Fraher’s Jig < Garageband

Audio that more closely resembles the variations (I start playing some reels afterwards):