I have always like this tune, and one day while playing around with a friend, came up with this. Does it work?
https://soundcloud.com/arbo-2/jenny-picking-cockles-as-air
It works for me as I like anything slow. The B whistle sounds nice and mellow with a full/dense tone. Sindt, yummy.
For better response here maybe not use the title and just submit the tune, when someone inquires for the name you might get more feedback.
It is summer so everybody cannot be away on holiday… hmm. Where are the whistlers?
Thanks for sharing. I enjoy your playing anyway its done. 
In their books Breandan Breathnach and Tomas O Canainn discuss the way that old melodies were reworked over the centuries to create airs, jigs, reels, and what have you.
So, a modern player might take a reel and turn it into an air, not realizing that they’re reversing a process that happened a few hundred years ago.
Doesn’t seem like it can be known what speed or meter the original was.
A Scottish example that comes to mind is Cutting Bracken. I’ve heard it as an air, march, strathspey, reel, jig, and hornpipe.
The Blackbird comes to mind as an Irish example; played variously as an air, set dance, hornpipe, and reel.
Thank you so much!
It’s called “playing a tune the piece way”.
Delighted you have done this, it’s one of my hobby-horses that people nowadays only do it with a handful of tunes which have been recorded by older pipers in this way.
Any tune is amenable to the treatment, and it provides an opportunity for personal interpretation and a degree of improvisation.
Wow! Thank you so much. I clearly had no idea what I was doing… just liked the sound of it!
Yes–I dig it.
Who knew? Actually, this sounds vaguely familiar, but if I did ever know, I’d since forgotten. But now I’m inspired to give it a go myself.
Not quite the same thing, but I’ve always liked when John Skelton changes the meter of tunes, particularly jigs to reels and vice-versa. That’s fun to try, too.
Yes The Bothy Band worked up a slow air version of the set-dance, but in reality it’s older and deeper than that.
In Tradtional Music In Ireland, Tomas O Canainn writes:
“The well-known set-dance The Blackbird, in hornpipe time, is clearly related to the sean-nos song A Spailpin, A Ruin.”
Another example he gives is the jig Tuirne Mhaire and the song An Brianach Og.
He writes:
“In the past, and even yet, original composition as such is not the norm. One finds old material being reworked to provide the setting for a quite new song, perhaps.”
In The Melodic Tradition of Ireland Cathal McConnell’s version of The Blackbird as a slow air is just beautiful. I play it very slow and hang on long notes. Longer than should be.
Funny you should mention that, as I tend to do the same thing in slow airs. Sometimes you just can’t help it, when you get a beautiful expressive tone from the chanter that resonates perfectly with the drones, you just have to hold it and let the beauty hang there and saturate. Thank goodness the timing and playing of slow airs is amenable to individual interpretation.
And I thought that I was the only one…
I love playing tunes differently than they’re usually heard. Fast tunes played slowly, slow tunes played fast, 4/4 tunes “jiggified” into 6/8, etc. It’s fun and sometimes it gives me new insight into the tune.
I liked it! It didn’t have quite the same cadence and flow as a slow air seems to, on account of it being a dance tune and not, properly speaking, an air; but it’s by no means a failure!
Whistle Collector,
Yes. You are correct… more of a slow reel than an air. I will work on trying to create a proper air.
Arbo
I like doing it too !
I was part of an informal group once, and we did that to the fiddle tune “Liberty”. We played it as a jig and then transitioned to the original 4/4 time. Here’s a sample:
http://www.cs341.x10.mx/jiggerty/jiggerty-Liberty.mp3
True, in the above sample, the underlying tempo jumps from about 115 to 120, but there’s also a “lift” that comes from the increased note-rate of the original 4/4 score.
It was 9 years ago, but it was fun !
trill
There are traditional tunes like that, the reel The Bucks Of Oranmore being the same tune as the jig The Lark In The Morning. I’m sure there are many others.
In the Highland piping scene it’s very common to move tunes from 4/4 (reel/hornpipe) to 6/8 (jig) or the other way round.
Since the fad is to march into the competition circle with an uptempo 4/4 reel/hornpipey thing, several jigs have been modified for that purpose.
Here’s a band playing The Strutting Jig as a 4/4 march-in tune. At 1:06 they slip back into jig time for a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCvWAFmwFUY
Here’s the common 6/8 jig/march The Atholl Highlanders in 4/4 time