Hi. Can anyone help with the notation for ‘The Green Fields Of Canada’ please. I cant find it on The Session.
Thanks
Tim
Are you referring to the slow air?
Hi. Yes the slow air. Patrick D’Arcy is playing it on the Great Northern Irish Pipers Club site from the 2008 Tionol. http://www.gnipc.org/tunes/tunes.html The link for the session tune doesnt seem to match what Patrick is playing but it may be me misinterpreting the notes. It does seem to have an accidental a couple of bars in that really makes the tune have feeling.
Thanks
Tim
Hi Tim!
I really enjoy that air but I never could find any notation that matched the versions I wanted to play. In the end I used the “Amazing slowdowner” on Bill Hanemans recording of the tune to get it by ear.
Very nice playing Bill 
http://billhaneman.ie/soundfiles/GreenFieldsOfCanada_D.mp3
If you dont have the slowdowner you can use “Best practice”, its free.
I couldn’t get the vids to work on GNIPC web site
But there is also this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vphVICb8I-E
/MarcusR
I like the way Mick O’Brien plays this slow air .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcRXOxzo-yk and also on the CD William Kennedy Festival LIVE RECORDINGS
http://store.pipers.ie/store/product/1223/William-Kennedy-Festival------/
Joe Burke on Button Accordion plays the slow air also that I liked also http://www.joeburkemusic.com/albums.html CD “The Morning Mist” http://www.musicforaccordion.com/inform/jburke/mp3/track9.mp3
Planxty also recorded The Green Fields of America From the Album Cold Blow And The Rainy Night.
I learned the air my ear and the best way for me by listening to Mick O’Brien and Joe Burke.
Cheers
Ferg
I agree that learning it by ear is the best way. MO’B version is very nice. There’s a YouTube clip of Kevin Rowsome playing it too. There are also YouTube clips of the song, including one nice version by Cara Dillon and another sung by Paul Brady.
I think that the Green Fields of Canada and the Green Fields of America are two different tunes.
No, PJ.
The air that Mick O’Brien plays is called the Green Fields of Canada and sometimes America… While the song does describe Canada (depending on the version), since the last line of many of the verses is green fields of america, it is often called the Green Fields of America.
There is also a reel called the Green Fields of America.
The link posted to thesession.org is wrong. That is not the green fields of canada or america.
Here is a good version of the song and music (however you’ll have to bump the music up to G from D) http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiGRNFLDA3;ttGRNFLDA3.html and here is another version of the same song with slightly different lyrics with the title as the Green Fields of Canada http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiGRNCANA2.html
Ronan Browne plays a slow air called Green Fields of America on the CD the Wynd You Know, and if memory serves the melody is different from the Green Fields of Canada. I don’t have my copy of The Wynd You Know close to hand so I can’t confirm it. This is why I thought that they were 2 different tunes.
Hawai’i?
I think the versions I learned it from are Andy Irvine singing it with Planxty as well as Paddy Tunney’s singing of it.
I also love Mick O’Brien, Kevin Rowsome and Ronan Browne’s versions.
Moustache,
Patrick.
Nice version here by Kevin Rowsome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vphVICb8I-E
Also, Jerry O’Sullivan does a nice job, I have it on a Green Linnet CD.
Correction, the Jerry O’Sullivan recording is from one of the Gaelic Roots programs at Boston College.
Might you be referring to the same tune as played by Michael Cooney on his A Stone’s Throw album? There he calls it “Green Fields Of Canada” and so for that, at least, the confusion continues.
The way O’Brien and the other piperes are doing it above is the way I have the tune now. But I first learned it differently, and the difference was mainly in phrasing, for the other way pretty much goes in the same general directions, but doesn’t say quite the same things at the same spots, enough so that to me it sounds like a different tune altogether. I thought I’d learned a bad version of it when I’d heard the above, and also heard a singer who had the same; not having heard the setting I had anywhere else - no one else I knew other than the one I learned from played the tune, so I had no other comparisons to draw from - I promptly dropped and forgot it for the “new”, thinking it prudent to do so. Some time after, I heard A Stone’s Throw, and lo and behold, Cooney was playing the version I first learned, so maybe that’s what you are referring to?
Googling about, I finally found a clip of Ronan Browne’s playing, but it was too partial for me to compare to the first way I learned it; nevertheless I have to say that I think it may have had some familiar-seeming goings-on going on.