Are there Celtic ukers out there?

brimmer

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 5, 2013
Messages
544
Reaction score
56
Location
Washington, DC
Just a quick survey of the uke world... How many of you have celtic/irish/scots tunes in your repertoire? Or american fiddle tunes?

I prefer campanella fingerstle, a la my all time uke hero, John King. I've worked thru all the celtic books/ebooks I can find (Rob MacKillop, Wilfried Welti, Ken Middleton, and a few others) but found myself hankering for more (and more challenging) tab arrangements. I've worked out about 40 tabs of tunes, mostly Irish, but now adding in some tunes from Scotland, Brittany, and Cape Breton & Prince Edward Islands.

So I am curious, is there an interest for this kind of music? I would like to offer my tabs but feel I should have a youtube or mp3 demo, and I'm still working on my recording techniques. If there's interest I'll create a website, but don't want to go to the trouble if the interest is lacking...

Also if you are a celtic fan, PM me for some great websites for OOP albums in MP3.
 
Last edited:
brimmer asked:
How many of you have celtic/irish/scots tunes in your repertoire?
If by "scots tunes" you include traditional highland bagpipe music, then, yes, several, if not many!

Highland bagpipe music is nominaly written in Amix (not Amin) which has two sharps, the instrument itself having a range of nine notes, a low G then the mixolydian scale A to A. These tunes can be easily transposed down to "one sharp" and played on a D scale with a low C ... on a ukulele from the open C string up to the fifth fret on the A string.

If you're interested, a zip file containing some 1400 bagpipe tunes in ABC format can be found here http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://membres.multimania.fr/corneymusers/dl/ABCTUNES.zip

As for American fiddle tunes, Barry Sholder's clawhammer ukulele book http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Clawhamme...-the-Old-Time-Uke-Barry-Sholder-/230857741246 does it for me :)
 
Last edited:
Similar to a celtic tune ( ish ).......anyone have a tab for " The Lampton Worm " ( D'Ampton Worm ) ??
 
Last edited:
Ma Cushla Ma Crea, Tis it Celtic Fiddle toons ye wish t' bae Tabbing? Try this site for one: O'Neill's Music Of Ireland
http://www.freesheetmusic.net/oneills8.html
Na pick yer gob off the floor. and get Craich'n.

brimmer: Are you daft? Surely you jest? Does anyone here not like Celtic, Scottish or American Fiddle Tunes? You do know The Tune to the Star Spangled Banner was written by O'Carolan? The Tune Soldiers Joy had a totally different name before Robert Burns penned this little ditty:

When the shrill trumpet sounds on high,
And wide the floating banners fly,
When the fierce foe with dire alarms,
Provoking, menaces to arms:
When glittering swords and cannons play,
And death in triumph guides the fray,
The foe to slaughter and destroy:
This is alone the soldier's joy.
I have communicated with several people on this site, this week, who are preparing Songs for Burns Night: http://www.mildenhall.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123377553

As I type this I'm gazing at a picture of the beautiful Natalie MacMaster, Queen of the Cape Breton Fiddlers. A Tab for " I'sa Boy" would be appreciated by me for one. Oh yeah that reminds me I need to work on "Old Ebenezer Scrooge" this week. Bill Monroe wrote that one.

I think it fair to say at least one person at UU is interested in this kind of music.
 
Are you using DGAD tuning or other version of DADGAD on the uke? This is a pretty common Celtic guitar tuning.
 
och ,More of a Rangers fan me-self yer ken..
 
Are you using DGAD tuning or other version of DADGAD on the uke? This is a pretty common Celtic guitar tuning.
I use Double C tuning on my banjo when I am playing fiddle tunes with a group that doesn't change key every tune. For the uke I find it much easier to use gCEA for fiddle tunes. The big advantage here is when playing D and A tunes your reentrant sounds an A drone anyway and if you are playing up the neck you can use another finger to drone an A on the first string.
 
Thanks for the responses! I have a bunch of books I work out of - O'neilll's 1001 and Music of Ireland, the Roche collection (online), Ceol Rince na Eireann, The Atholl collection, and a few excellent books from Cranford Publishing out of Cape Breton Island. The Schott world series has nice fiddle books of scots and welsh tunes with excellent recordings. Even Colin Tribe has two british isles uke books on Schott...nice arrangments of folk songs, but not many fiddle tunes. Plus I sometimes cross check with versions online on the session.org. So much music so little time.

I try to retain the original keys but often transpose down to F or C - which aren't session keys. I can't think of the uke as a session instrument unless amplified. Even mandolins can be hard to hear in a session! Instead, I play them as solo arrangements, as many great trad musicians used to, or with a guitar backing. I tried sticking with original keys but found myself taking too many trips up to fret 14, and I want the tabs to be accessible to ukers with only 12 frets.

Also I didn't think of alternate tunings for the uke, thanks for the tip. I do play this music on guitar, sometimes in DADGAD but usually in standard or dropped D. I am afraid the alternate tuning would bust my brain wokring out new campanella scales. Also, I'll check out the pipe site. I love pipes and have a few pipe tunes completed. I still haven't figured out how to render the scots snap on the uke. Straspeys will have to wait.

I'll try and polish a few arrangements up and get them posted on UU, with or without a demo, within a few weeks! Thanks again for the feedback...
 
Last edited:
Don't forget there are loads of trad English tunes out there too. Good punchy, dancy tunes they are as well.
Here's a page from our Toronto session book. I put all the tunes together......this is one of our favourite sets.
I would like to see you put a web site up with your sheet music/ tabs.
I too like the campanella style ( early days for me though) but my main music thing is trad. English music with concertina/button accordion so I would be fascinated to hear what the ukulele can bring to these traditional folk areas. Go for it....do it and people will come.
View attachment 40_Belltower & Dave Shepherd's.compressed.pdf
 
This'll be no help to anyone at all, but I play Celtic music a lot. However, I play it on my flutes and whistles and not on my Ukes. I really like to play Irish slow Airs and Scottish songs. For faster pieces I use my fifes or piccolos. If there was a group for Ukes, I might sign up, though I'm kinda disappointed with the groups--not much action.

See? No help at all. :eek:ld:
 
Thanks! I could work those out and keep them in the original key. I'll let you know if I get a decent result...

I suppose by tuning up a whole step one could play C and F arrangements in their original key. The brighter sound from a higher tuning might cut thru the fiddles a bit more.
 
Brimmer, Please reconsider the notion of transposing to F and C. I really like playing in C and I can transpose C or F on the fly but not at sessiun tempo.. The Old Time crowd will be upset with F and a lot of fiddlers and mandolinists really don't like C for some reason. The uke is very accessible to D,A and G tunes. If we want to get the ukers more involved in the types of music you are endorsing they might as well learn it in the Keys they will encounter in the reel world of sessiuns. You and I know how tetchy some of the Irish and OT crowd can be and how easy it is for enthusiasm to get crushed by snarkiness and overawed by Fleadh Cheoil caliber playing. Nuff said.

Do you have a Tab for "Johnny I hardly knew you"? Heard a woman from a Polish Chanty Group do it once. It was in polish but there wasn't a dry eye in the German club where the after hours Ceilli was held for the Mystic Sea Music Festival.
 
Last edited:
iamnoman, what do you think about tuning up a whole step, whick would put the tune back in the right key. I always try to preserve the original key but only succeed about a third of the time. Later I'll post the bag of potatoes, which I kept in a key with 2 sharps.
 
If i'm playing the banjo - no problem
If I'm playing a diatonic accordion no way. A german accordion is just as appropriate here as a uke.
On the uke it is problematic.

If I am wandering around and encounter a sessiun with my uke I probably don't have a capo. This frequently happens with banjo too but I can deal with it. Most of the uke crowd I play with don't even know what a capo is. There is an additional problem. A lot of older ukers have rheumatiz or big hands or other issues. The sudden shift in scale length is not going to make their playing easier or better. Since I play by ear I can probably transpose on the fly, right about by the time somebodies foot goes up. For BlueGrass or Irish fiddle tunes I have enough difficulty keeping up to tempo already.
 
If you tuned the uke ADF#B (once a standard uke tuning) then a tune arranged in F would be in G, and a tune in C would be in D. No need to transpose, no capo needed.

I'll look up Johnny I Hardly Knew you and see if I can tab it.
 
OK, four tunes posted in the tabs section. Sorry, no demos yet. Feedback always appreciated, but please be gentle - this is a hobby, not a career for me!

Gotta to get a hornpipe uploaded to round out the set...
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom