Different versions of the same tune?

Whistle
1

Sally gardens, I got an ‘Instant Irish tin whistle’ book from my library, the book version of sally gardens starts on A.

But i have a leaflet of tunes that came with my whistle & the leaflet version starts on D.

I find the leaflet D version sounds nicer and plays much easier, without so many higher octave notes.

is there a standard played version to this tune?

which version do most people here play? A or D…?

:slight_smile:

2

There are two tunes, one very common reel called “Sally Gardens,” which is in G major (starts G - DGB - GB dBeB AB d ).

There is also a song air, “Down by the Sally Gardens,” which is commonly played in D major (starts DE F# - ED E- F# A B - - A). It’s not unheard of to play this song in session, but the reel “Sally Gardens” is a session standard that gets played in many many sessions, often back to back with the “Silver Spear” reel.

–James

3

Gotcha! that explains it perfectly, :sunglasses: the leaflet tune IS ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’ and the other one… I don’t even know how the tune goes and i thought it was the same tune, no wonder it sounded so weird !:D!

its a pity the library book didn’t have the CD or cassette with it, I asked but it was missing.

4

You can find versions of both at “The Session”. Here’s the link to the reel.

http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/98

5

I’d never known Down by The Sally Gardens as an Air until I started playing the tin whistle. I’d always known is as Maids of the Mourne Shore… :confused:

6

There are no fixed “keys” for much of ITM.
The key was the persons voice or the range
of whatever instrument was available at the
time.

ITM was not a written form of music, even
O’Carolan’s music was not written down. But
for collectors like Bunting, we would have no
record of the early music.

You just play or sing in whatever key sounds
right at the time.

7

This is the same tune. Fact is, I believe “Maids of the Mourne Shore” is how it’s listed in O’Niell’s 1800.

–James

8

I have both versions of the song in question, from various tin whistle books both are great songs, on a different note does anyone know a tune called exile, it is on the clips and snips played on a low g whistle its also on the Mac Hoover web site same version same player, I was just wondering if this was known to anyone out there as I have had no luck tracking down the notation for it.

all the best Sponge