I’ve just been given a pretty little old band flute (? Six holes plus one keyed hole) which appears to be in Eb. It sounds lovely, very loud, but unfortunately none of the tunes I play with other musicians are in Eb or Ab. Does anyone know of any suitable tunes that I could propose for my old English session?
Tune the fiddles sharp.
Unfortunately (at the sessions i attend) people are very unwilling to re-tune..
Play a tune in B or Eb and you’re on your own, save for maybe guitar or bouzouki accompaniment..
The session I go to is a bit different as there’s sheet music (a lot of the musicians come from a classical background), most instruments are chromatically rather than diatonically inclined, and there are tunes in a range of keys including a fair few in Bb. It’s been a great excuse for acquiring lots of whistles (I still need an F…)
If I had a good piece in Eb or Ab, I could pass it on to the Person In Charge Of Choosing Tunes, but I feel it needs to be genuine, not just some old G trad transposed!
If you’re talking about playing from sheet music in any case, then get the Kerr’s Merrie Melodies series of tune books. Loads of flat keys in there. At one time it appears that some publishers thought it essential to provide tunes in a variety of keys.
Thanks, Ben - have found a copy on Ebay!
You’re welcome. IMHO, they’re brilliant books in any case. Hope they do the trick!
There are 4 volumes of Kerr’s, BTW.
Of course, if you find tunes in those keys, you’ll need to transpose them to play them (read them readily) on your Eb flute, and they may not fit the tessitura well - you may have to do some 8ve folding too.
Post us a photo or three of your flute find!
Huh? Why will she have to transpose the tunes which are in those flat keys already, Jem? There are a few, as I’m sure you remember.
Here we go again… ‘what do we mean by transpose?’ 
Ooh! Can we have another argument, Peter? I’ve enjoyed the last couple. 
???
Yes, I remember - have copies.
Surely I don’t have (to try) to explain the transposition thing to you, Ben, of all people?
The Eb flute is pitched a semitone higher than a standard concert flute, so to play the music at the same actual pitch as other (non-transposing) instruments but preserving normal notation/fingering correlations for the fluter, the flute part needs to be transposed down a semitone. No need to transpose if you play in Eb on a D flute, clearly, but if you play the same notation on an Eb flute it will sound in E.
Right, right. But this is where Peter came in. I know what he means because it’s the way I think too. I don’t think of an Eb flute as ‘transposing’. I simply think you use different fingers to read the concert pitch notes. I find that the easiest approach. So, for instance, when I pick up an Eb whistle to play a tune in Eb, I do not find any issue with it at all. I just play it as written.
Great, if you have the mental facility to do it, but most folk haven’t. That’s a major part of the rationale of transposing instruments, including all the orchestral ones, as you well know. For most players it is far more practical to learn one, standard set of notation symbol - note name - fingering associations and stick to them whatever the native tonality of the instrument in hand, and to adjust the notation to suit.
Thought the Scots fiddle repertoire might be the place to go for this with numerous flat-keyed tunes, but those in Eb tend to be awkwardly wide-ranging for flute (eg from open G to leger lines up top) and the Ab key signature a rare bird indeed. However, I give you Hatton of Buchromb’s Reel by William Marshall (see p104 of Alastair Hardie’s The Caledonian Companion or Google sites I’m currently not getting to) for a modal tune with minor inflections (think F minor/Eb major centres), perfect range and some E naturals for the note I’m assuming your solitary key to give you!
There are a very few old multiple-flat tunes meant to be played on a normal D flute - I have at least one in my “Old Scottish Flute Music” site, I think it was “Here’s to All Around Ardmillan” in one of Cameron’s flute collections. Why, I have no idea.
I think some of these old flat-key tunes were meant for the harp - harps sound most resonant with their levers out, which (for simpler types) puts them in three flats. Many Scottish collections from 1780-1820 list the harp on the title page as the primary instrument they were meant for. A lot of the flat-key tunes of that period (whatever the key) have a range of precisely two octaves from B flat below middle C. No idea about that one - it rules out the flute, but both fiddle and harp have wider ranges.
The oddest key selection I have ever seen for a folk tune was a version of the 18th century English “Brick Layers Reel” in a 19th century Scottish collection, probably for the fiddle. In G sharp minor. I figured the idea was probably that a pianist would be the one to use that copy, on a piano tuned a semitone flat, along with a fiddler playing by ear in G minor - it made sense as a G minor tune.
OK, so, I came in from work last night (this-morning) at 01:00 after a 13-hour shift… and poured myself a pint of (proper farm) cider and grabbed a couple of bags of crisps… what to do to amuse myself while I enjoyed them and unwound ready for bed? Ah…
So, I pulled out my 4 volumes of Kerr’s and conducted a swift flat-key-tune census. There are 1782 tunes across the 4 volumes, and of those 188 are in flat key-signatures. I didn’t count the others, but a subjective impression is that 3#s dominate significantly, (Scottish fiddle-orientated books, see!), followed fairly evenly by 2#s and 1# and 0#s/0bs quite well represented. Only 2 tunes, in Vol 3, have 3bs (both “composed”) and none have 4 or more bs.
The breakdown is as follows:
Vol 1 1b - 8; 2bs - 12
Vol 2 1b - 41; 2bs - 35
Vol 3 1b - 22; 2bs - 28; 3bs - 2
Vol 4 1b - 27; 2bs - 15
FWIW, most tunes in 1 or 2 bs will not fit very happily (for traddy players) on an Eb instrument, even a fully keyed one - they will be equivalent to playing on a normal concert D instrument in 4#s and 3#s respectively. So, I fear Kerr’s Merry Melodies are in this respect a less helpful resource than Ben recalled.
A quick perusal of Edward Jones’ Musical and Poetic Relicks of the Welsh Bards Vol 1, 3rd edn of 1808, of which I have a pdf (available online here - Vol 1 only, alas) shows a preponderance of flat key signatures, most 1 or 2 bs but quite a few 3bs (no 4+bs at all). This is perhaps no surprise from a (I presume triple) harper. More info about him here.
More Welsh tunes selected from early sources stored in ABC online can be found here - I haven’t surveyed them for key signatures, but I know from experience the flat key sigs crop up more in the Welsh repertory than in other traditions.
Well, that makes me very happy, Jem - I’ve been quite obsessed with Welsh music since buying the Blodaur Grug book in Aberystwyth in August, and also thanks to your Welsh-music-to-listen-to recommendations.
re transposing, Jem, I know exactly what you mean as I have to do it all the time. My music folder is nearly twice as thick as everybody else’s, and mostly useless for anyone but me…
I’m sure I’ll find a use for the Scottish books anyway.
Found Hatton of Buchrombs online, but it looks like all the Db’s and Eb’s have been naturalised [consults fingering chart] - now D is fine (like C# on a D whistle), but half-holing the Eb to an E… not sure. Will give it a try.
Will get a photo of the little flute when the sun is back in the sky.
So what’s your one key? Eb equivalent (which I’d assumed and would give E) or G# equivalent (which would give A)?
With my head a little less fuddled… it occurs to me (pending evidence) that what you have is most likely a High Pitch D piccolo, but it may conceivably be an Eb at 440 one… often there’s no definitive way to tell as there’s rather little practical (pitch) difference! Off-hand I can’t recall seeing any (low) Eb band flutes with less than 4 keys.
Investing in Kerr’s is by no means a bad thing - they’re a great (and these days not too well known/used) resource, even if not all that helpful here.