Just wondering how you guys and gals tend to do your octave folding when the tune goes below D. I’m struggling right now with the best way to do the A part in Sean Ryan’s jig. This one:
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/273
If you were playing, would you
Right now, I’m playing it more or less like:
For this particular tune I do ‘option 1’ as kicking the whole part up an octave just sounds off when you go to the second part which has its own low Gs in it. Well I lie actually because for this tune I usually don’t bother playing it on flute or whistle and just do it on bouzouki or sometimes mandolin. Personally as a general rule of thumb I just put the offending notes up an octave; there are few tunes where you can take the whole thing up an octave and without going way up into the third octave. If you just put one part up an octave to me that just sounds wrong when you get to the next part. Other options would be to play it on a different key whistle for this tune if you fingered it in E min on a G whistle it would come out in the right key but you would have to go up to a third octave ‘F#’ to get the high B in the second part. Probably easier to just play it on a D whistle and jump the below D notes up an octave but if it comes up often in your local sessions if might be worth learning to transpose it if you have a G whistle.
There are a few tunes which I sometimes do this on usually just by myself at home though. Like ‘Tonra’s’ jig which goes to low A sometimes I play the tune in G instead of D and the low A becomes a low D if I was playing that way with others I’d need an A whistle or flute for that to be in the right key though, unless they were playing in Eb and I could use my Bb flute or whistle.
After all that though the easiest thing to do is put the low notes up an octave; it doesn’t always sound right but it doesn’t really matter if you are playing with instruments that can go down there.
I would normally switch to bouzouki, too, but it has become a crutch for me, so I’ve set it aside for now. It had become something to play when I wasn’t comfortable playing melody.
So Unseen, is option 1 your pov for most tunes? Do you ever find yourseld using 2 or 3?
Why not just take the whole first part up an octave? You paid for a top C sharp, why not get some use out of it?
Yikes ! 2 octaves plus 2 whole tones !
I actually meant I play the tune itself on the bouzouki I find it sounds nice on it.
I don’t really use option 2 or 3 simply because I don’t like the sound of playing it up an octave unless I’m playing the whole tune up an octave which is rarely possible with these tunes that may require messing with. To be honest I don’t think I’ve heard anyone take a whole phrase up an octave just because a few notes are below D. Makes more sense to me to just play a few notes up an octave from where they should be rather than take a whole phrase up an octave just so those notes are below the others. Just playing the notes up an octave has less altering of the tune and in a session context you are likely to be playing with fiddlers or box players etc etc. who have those low notes anyway.
c2A BAG|AGE dBG|~A3 EGE|DEG AGE|
cBA BAG|AGE dBG|~A3 e/f/ge|dBG A3:|
That has my vote and I recently had to come clean and admit, “Just because I can play a lot of instruments, doesn’t mean I can play every song on every instrument.” That hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind, they just assumed I was choosing the instrument that sounded the best, which I was, but not how they were thinking.
Because one of the key elements of the tune is the contrast between the low, dark, brooding A-part and the the high, brighter B-part. Taking the entire A-part up an octave wrecks the architecture of the tune.
The tune works very well on whistle in Em (start on high g) - for solo playing, or if you can persuade others to join you in changing the key. You will still need to fold a couple of notes at the very end of the tune, but this can be fairly unobtrusive, and you will get the entire important downward sweep of the first part. Joe Cooley played it this way, if precedents are important to you 
If you have a low G whistle, when you play the tune with Em fingering it will come out in the original key.
On the flute and uilleann pipes it’s most usual to keep as much of the tune in the normal octave as possible, just bumping up the notes you must.
We get so used to the flute and pipe versions sometimes that we’re not even aware that we’re playing notes in the “wrong” octave until we hear a fiddler or whatnot play the tune.
Listen to Matt Molloy play Pull the Knife and Stick it Again. Of course on the flute you can get away with more than on the pipes. There are a number of tunes featuring Molloy as a duet with a fiddler and you can hear him sticking in the low octave with just the neccessary notes going up.
The guy that really stood out in this way was Paddy Carty. There are several tunes he played that had a Bottom D - C# - Bottom D or Bottom D - C - Bottom D passage in them, and that C# or C pops out an octave up! I myself would have used the low C# or C key, but he didn’t seem to like doing that. A piper would normally cran that Bottom D in that situation because that leap of a seventh would sound a bit odd.
On the other hand there are many tunes that go Bottom D - B - Bottom D and it sounds “normal” to us wind players to play that B an octave up.
I play Highland pipes too, and on them these octave issues play a much bigger part, because the pipes only have one octave. So on tunes such as Fields of Athenry that have a big fat High B in them, I put the preceeding High A down an octave to smooth out the tune, likewise in the second part of For Ireland I’d Not Tell Her Name.
Ironically, ever since I posted this thread, I’ve run across several tunes that go all the way down to a low A. I’ve been wanting to get a mandolin anyway… I may very well do that rather than deal with the folding issue.
On that note, anyone have a nice oval hole mandolin they’d want to trade for a nice tenor banjo? 