A New Musical Project

I have been playing more these days, learning new tunes... sometimes I do not practice for weeks, but these days I am learning a new repertoire for concertina, Scottish small pipes, Northumbrian Small pipes and Spanish gaita. This increase in playing could be because of a new project I have started with a Spanish fiddler called Alba. She lives in Madrid and we have decided to play together and start performing in public. We have known each other now for a few years and have a repertoire already, so it is a case of finalizing it and practicing. 

We are playing familiar and unfamiliar tunes from Northern Spain and the Scottish and English Borders... some from Ireland too. But we hope we are “highlighting” our musical “accents” not copying a style but interpreting the music in our own way...  using our musical culture and nationality/s to change the melody... to add and take away something.

I am playing Spanish melodies in a Border/Northumbria style... (we are limiting ourselves to areas such as Galicia, Zamora, Asturias, Basque, Catalonia, Mallorca...) and Alba is playing Northumbrian/Scottish Border melodies in a Spanish style... so a jig is not really a jig and a jota is not really a jota... the Irish melodies are not played in an “Irish style”, but something “foreign” to both of us!

It is an interesting project, finding a name, exploring the music and trying to practicing while we are in our own countries and meeting when we can... but we hope by spring 2015 we will be ready and performing live.

We have a set list worked out and it is an interesting mix of music, this list will probably change as time progresses so it is interesting to record it for now:

Zontzico / Morfa Rhuddlan (Basque/Welsh)

Old Drops of Brandy (Borders)

O’Carolyn Set (Irish)

Alloa House / Romances (Scottish/Zamora)

Mr. Prestons Hornpipe (Borders)

Sir John Fenwicks (Northumbrian)

Newmarket Races (Northumbrian)

Jackey Layton (Northumbrian)

Ann Thou Were My Ain Thing (Borders)

Autumn Child / Rights of Man / Proudlock’s Hornpipe (Irish)

Morigana in Spain / Welcome to Vigo / The Spanish Cloak (Northumbrian/Scottish/Irish)

Redondela / Saddle the Pony (Galician/Irish)

Noble Squire Dacre / Go to Bewick Johnny (Northumbrian)

Basque melody / Roxburgh Castle / Hesleyside Reel (Basque/Northumbrian)

Bollero de St. Maria / Zamora Melody (Mallorca/Zamora)

Galician Melody / Frisky (Galicia/Northumbria)

Highland Laddie (Borders)

Loch Ryan / Bonny Millar (Scottish Highland/Borders)

This probably needs more Spanish melodies... or to take away a few UK melodies ... early days yet !!

The instruments will vary also, Alba plays violin and a Baroque violin, this depends if I am playing concertina (440c) or Northumbrian Small pipes (415c)...

New Pipe/Concertina CD

It has been nearly 5 years since I made my last CD on the Bagpipes, but I have begun to make another one quite recently, not surprisingly it is made up from the environment I have been living in for the past 3 years...Spain and Sweden and of course the Scottish Borders. I became aware that a lot of the melodies I have been learning, listening too and practicing have not been melodies from my own region (I guess this is why I made a effort to learn new Border Pipe melodies - see "New Melodies for the Border Pipes" blog post below).

This new CD are mainly melodies from Northern Spain (Catalonia, Sanabria, Galicia) and these reflect the contacts I have had during my time there, they are not only notes or notation, but memories and people, places and times.

Another group of melodies are from Sweden, a country I like very much and have spent time kayaking and enjoying the nature, Their music fits very well into the Northumbrian Small Pipe fingering and scale range. Some of these melodies I learned from a harpist I play with in the UK, we play only 'non-British' melodies from France, Sweden and Spain and these will also be included on the CD mainly Scottisches and bourrées.

A few Belgium/Nederland tunes will be there too, I got these melodies when I lived in Amsterdam in the 1980s and I remember my time there through these tunes.
And of course there will be a few Northumbrian melodies with a 2nd voice/harmony to accompany the pipes. I will also include the English concertina  on some of the melodies either to accompany the leading melody or to add a 2nd harmony. Since the Northumbrian Small Pipes are 'somewhere' between a F and a F# I have to correct the pitch of the concertina!

The Cd is enjoyable to do but it takes many hours work, and this is only with the recordings...not to mention the mixing, production, CD design and printing...

Ney and Sanabresa Melodies

Turkish Mansur Ney

There are tunes which are made for instruments, I mean the fingering of an instrument is easy with certain melodies. Whether it is in certain keys, or uses small intervals...its works well.

The music of Sanbaresa/Aliste and Zamora, as I begin to learn about it, lends itself just easy to the Gaita Sanabresa/Aliste as well as to the Turkish Ney....I do not know why, it just does.

There are hypothesis for this: one being the old melodies of Zamora region have a small interval range (mainly in a 5th or 6th)

It is more modal in style (Medieval perhaps?) and seldom jumps intervals (fast use of arpeggios) like  "Celtic music" (I hate that term) often does...
all of which makes the fingering on the ney easier and more natural, as in Ottoman ney music.

Whether there is a historical connection between the East and Sanabresan/Alistan melodies, I do not say, but "Aksak rhythms" are also found in Ottoman Turkish music as well as in the region of Zamora. Who knows...?

Further research needs to be done into the music of Zamora/aliste/Sanabresa and its surrounding regions including northern Portugal (Tras-o- Montes) to deduce other similar characteristics.