Schottische a Bethanie

 

A brilliant French tune - I'm just uploading the music for now, more to follow.

Speed the Plough - Embellishments and Variation

Speed the Plough is probably the most widely known English session tune, but unfortunately gets played in a very basic style. There are lots of really good versions in different manuscripts and on recordings, and this tries to pull together some of them to give some possible variations on the tune.

The Music

The most important point for playing this tune is keeping your 4 right hand fingers in position on buttons G3, G4, G5, & G6. This allows the slightly tricky descending patterns such as bar 7 to be played fairly easily, without your fingers falling over themselves. The E played on D3' should use finger 1, allowing finger 2 to play the two A notes on G3' in bar 4. The lowest notes G2' in the turnaround bars should be played with finger 1.

The Video

The Seven Stars

This lesson is for playing the English tune 'The Seven Stars' also know as 'The Moon & The Seven Stars'. It is played on the D row of a DG melodeon, the push/pull pattern giving it a good rhythmic base.

The Music

 

Here is the score for the piece. As it involves up and down playing on the row it is important to practice the piece slowly so that you have time to move you fingers around.

One possible fingering pattern would be to start with your 3rd finger on D6, and use finger 2 on D5 and finger 1 on D4 for the first two bars.

Where the tune begins its ascent up the D scale in bar 3, switch to finger 1 on button D5 allowing each consecutive finger to play the next button along, finger 4 playing the high D8' note at the end of bar 3.

Stick with this finger position until the start of bar 5 where it reverts to the original position of finger 4 playing button D6.

The same thing happens again with the same finger shift occurring in bar 7 as in bar 3. Keep this finger position until bar 5 of the B part which involves using fingers 1 and 2 on the repeated D 4 and D5 notes. Finish the tune with finger 1 on D5 again, allowing finger 4 to play the D8'.

The Video