July’s tune of the month has been a long time coming. I often feel inspired by a particular tune and so it’s an easy decision. But so far, no inspiration has slapped me upside the head. On another note, I often flip through the new arrangements of mostly Irish tunes that are published on thesession.org in search of new tunes that fit the highland pipe scale. I ran across one called the Curragh Races, which turned out to be a tune I already learned from Jerry O’Sullivan at the Spanish Peaks Piping Retreat workshop a couple of years ago but by a different name: Maid in the Cherry Tree. What is provided here is a collection of various arrangements to make 4 parts, mostly inspired by those arrangements found on thesession.org, with some spots wholly rewritten; and I hope you do the same: make the tune your own!

I hope to see you at the Spanish Peaks workshops and concerts in beautiful Colorado!

Maid in the Cherry Tree <- pdf of sheet music

Dusky Meadow is a strathspey that originates from Cape Breton, as I understand. Its range technically exceeds that of pipes that utilize highland fingering, but it is easy enough to move octaves around to make it fit on our standard scale. Unlike many strathspeys that utilize triplet runs, Dusky Meadow has quadruplet runs with each note having the same length instead of emphasizing the 2nd or 3rd note as common in many triplets. These quadruplets become very cumbersome if gracenotes are added to them, even just to start them off. The way I hear them, they come across as embellishments unto themselves with no further embellishment needed. However, if the rest of the tune is peppered with “standard” gracing the quadruplets stand out like a sore thumb. It turns out, less is more.

I play the tune on the smallpipes in the video below. It is often stated that highland pipe tunes played on the smallpipes could use some trimming to remove excess gracenotes. Smallpipes increase in volume going up the scale as opposed to highland pipes which decrease in volume. This increase in volume at the top of the scale results in lots of chirpy high G gracenotes on top of relatively quiet lower notes if highland tunes go unmodified which ultimately detracts from the melody. Thus, gracenotes must be used judiciously to accent and enhance the melody. The following arrangement has a total of 1 or 2 gracenotes per bar excepting birls (purposefully without preceding high G gracenotes) and high A half doublings. Additionally, those gracenotes accent the more interesting twists the tune takes. While I can’t say I’m going to purposefully rearrange every tune I know to use fewer gracenotes so that the ones I do play have more impact (less is more), this tune has certainly forced me to reevaluate why we use gracenotes and how they should be used.

Dusky Meadow – pdf file