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Month: September 2020

Turel’s Hornpipe / Philippe Bruneau’s

2 tunes, one of which I’ve just learned, one of which I’ve known for goodness knows how many years but never played in ‘public’ before.

I learned the first in the traditional way, off youtube (Will Allen’s channel), and the second from a Folkworks workshop when I was just starting playing 30 years ago or so. I can’t promise to be playing Philippe Bruneau’s with anything like the Quebecois punch of the master, and to be honest, I’m not particularly trying to put a Quebec spin on it. I’m just playing a tune I thought would go nicely with Turel’s.

Played for the Vaults Bar virtual session, during the Covid 19 2020 lockdown. The melodeon is a D/G/Accidentals conversion of a Hohner Lucia CBA, though I’m only playing on the D row. It is a blazingly fast box, and great at stuff like this.

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Michael Turner’s Waltz – Session Set

A tune played for the 41st anniversary of the Vaults Bar session; we’re currently on lockdown, so this is published on the Vaults Bar online session group which has been running since lockdown on the 23rd March. As of 13 Sep 2020, it looks like it’ll be a while yet before the session returns fully. Until then, this is a favourite of mine, Michael Turner’s Waltz which I play frequently in the real session.

Played on a Castagnari Giasco I in D/G, in the key of G.

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The Gooseberry Bush played on Toy Melodeon

This is Melodeon.net’s tune of the month for September 2020, The Gooseberry Bush, written very much in the traditional style by John Spiers. I’m playing this (twice, through the magic of video editing of course) on a Hero UC100 toy melodeon. This is a bit better to play than the normal Hero toy 7 key melodeons you’ll see quite often, but not much! It has 9 rectangular shaped keys, a bit like a piano keyboard, but it is a diatonic instrument in C.

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The Rights of Man

Learned for Melodeon.net’s theme for September 2020, ‘Tunes of the Wyper Brothers’. Peter Wyper, early pioneer of the melodeon and one of the first people ever to be recorded died 100 years ago this month. This is one of the tunes featured in the Wyper Melodeon Tutor book, which you can find in the Catalogues and Tutors section of Melodeon.net – the Rights of Man. I’ve “known” this tune for a while; i.e. never learned to play it properly. Gosh, it’s hard. Great tune though, and there’s some lovely subtleties in the Wyper version, some of which I’ve incorporated, and some of which I will have to work on.

Played on a Castagnari Giasco I in D/G, mostly in the key of Em.

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