Dispute at the Crossroads & The Blackbird (The Sunny Ban

Trad Irish Music
1

Two tunes I love, and am making an effort to get down properly, but I have a query about a couple of notes.

In Dispute (aka Dr Gilbert’s Fancy), there are two bars I play differently from the version I have (from 110 Best Irish Fiddle Tunes).

In bar five of the A part, the book and CD gives GEED EF#GA
while I play F#EED EF#GA, because that’s how I first heard it played. I prefer the F#E interval somehow.

In the final bar of each part, I’ve heard it played two ways, af#df# ef#gf#
or af#d#f# ef#gf#, in other words, sharpen that d. I like the second, it feels edgier. I got that note from Malarchy Bourke’s debut CD. Lunasa use the normal d.


In The Blackbird, a gorgeous hornpipe, the seventh bar is written AdCA GBAG, but I prefer AdCA GCAG. The Cnatural-A interval seems more, well, Irish, somehow.

Does anyone play these regularly, and if so, which notes do you employ?

I’m wondering if my ear is being affected by all the blunt notes I’ve been employing lately.

2

In the Blackbird your preference would be the one that is played as a standard (Sean Potts, De Dannan, Donncha</a](http://www.rogermillington.com/tunetoc/blackbird.html">Donncha</a)> and Mick O Briain).

Am too lazy too think what i do on the Dispute at the Crossroads, although i have recorded that on a thankfully very obscure CD :roll:

3

You are asking for an “official” version of a tune. There is no such thing for any tune in ITM. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of it. I would play each of these tunes including each of these variations you mention plus many more. I do my best to never repeat myself in each iteration of a tune.

djm

4

No, I’m not really asking for an official version of the tune, djm. I’m asking what other people play. I know what I like, and that’s undoubtedly the way I’ll be playing it, I’m just interested in the way these tunes diverge over time, and in gathering data from many different sources. I usually find that when I don’t like a particular tune, it’s just the way it was played I dislike, not the tune itself. Hear it from a different source and I fall in love with it.

Thanks for the link Peter, the Donncha clip is played the way I am trying to learn it, using the Cnat, not a B. It just sounds much better to my ears that way. Cheers!

5

On a nearby thread there’s an interview with Matt Molloy, who says he never just copies someone else’s version, but changes the tune to suit his own tastes. The point I was trying to make is that you could throw in bits of these different versions as variations, so that you end up including many people’s versions as you choose.

djm

6

Oh, fair do’s, that’s what I tend to do!

Today I’ve been listening to a set of Calliope House/The Stool of Repentance, got the dots off The Session just to check, and the way I ended up playing it was somewhere in between.

cheers!