Well, the first session of the ‘new term’ is tomorrow, and I promise that we are going to play tunes slowly in the first half. If people start speeding up they will be Suppressed. No new tunes for the tunebook this month I’m afraid. Instead, I offer you a list of some of the tunes that have been either played at our session, or played at Simon Care’s ‘dead easy English tunes’ session at Towersey. Most of these are readily available online.

Common Time tunes (Polkas, Marches, Reels)

Amoco Stomp
Bear Dance
Bobby Shaftoe
Brighton Camp/ The Girl I left Behind Me
Buttered Peas
Dark Girl Dressed in Blue
Donkey Riding
Jack Robinson
Jenny Lind
Jimmy Allen
Lads a Bunchum
La Russe
The Lass of Richmond Hill
Maggie in the Wood
Oh, Joe, the Boat is Going Over
Princess Royal (major version)
Rakes of Mallow
The Rochdale Coconut Dance
Rogue’s March
Roxburgh Castle
Salmon Tails Up the Water
Speed the Plough
Three Around Three
Three Jolly Sheepskins
Tip Top Polka
Tralee Gaol
Uncle Bernard’s Polka
Willafjord
Winster Gallop
Young Collins

Jigs

Black Joak
Cock of the North
Dingle Regatta
New Rigged Ship
Oats and Beans and Barley Grow
Oscar Woods’ Jig (Tiger Smith’s)
Oyster Girl
Plane Tree
Seven Stars

Waltzes/Mazurkas

En Avant Blonde
La Valse de Noel (Bruno Le Tron) (known in England as Bruno’s Waltz or the Metro Waltz)
Michael Turner’s Waltz
Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be
Rose of Raby
The Man in the Moon

Hornpipes

Kafoozalum
The Keel Row
Lemmy Brazil’s No. 2
Off to California
Soldier’s Joy
Sportsman’s Hornpipe
The Trumpet Hornpipe (Cap’n Pugwash)

Tune Resources

http://www.lewesarmsfolkclub.org/LAFC/Lewesfav.html (The Lewes Favourites, 200 or so tunes with abc)
http://folkmusicnotes.wordpress.com/ (Eclectic choice of tunes with sources, mostly English and French, playable sheet music)
http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/ (rescuing old tune books, abc)
http://www.thesession.org/ (loads of tunes, Irish emphasis, sheet music and abc)
http://www.ceilidhsoc.org/ (Sheffield Ceilidh society, print your own tunebooks or first line cheat-sheets)
http://abcnotation.com/ (What is this abc thing anyway? Links to abc readers for all platforms)

The next in our popular series of Traditional Tune Sessions is this coming Tuesday the 8th of September.

Admission is free and you can find out all about it here http://www.walthamstowfolk.co.uk/sessions.htm

Last nights session proved to be a bit of an adventure!

Everybody turned up to find that The Plough has unexpectedly shut.

I couldn’t make the it because I was doing the sound for Dave Ferrard’s gig as part of the Leytonstone Festival however things I found out by text half way through Dave’s first set which was a bit of a shock!

Our sessioneers being resourceful people immediately relocated to the Pig & Whistle and played in the garden.

As the pic shows it seems to have gone very well.

Our current information is that the problem with the Plough is a cleaning issue and it will be re-open again by the weekend but I’ll post any further information I get here.

The chaps also arranged an informal summer session for August 11th. I’ll post more about this later.

The next in our popular series of English Tune Sessions is this Tuesday the 9th June kicking off at around 8:00pm.

As always admission is free and the first part of the evening will be slow and easy for beginners and the less confident.

And there’s a raffle too!

More details on our Session Page

The next session is this Tuesday from 8:00pm

As always it’s slow and easy to start with and speeds up a bit later if anyone wants too!

And we have an updated tune book with some of the pieces that have proved popular so far – you can download it from here -walthamstow-folk-tune-book

Just a reminder that our next tune session is this Tuesday the 10th March kicking off at around 8:00pm.

Who knows which famous celebrities may turn up this time..?

Steven Cain writes…

Well, this was my first time at the Walthamstow session, and I really enjoyed it. Seventeen or so came along with fiddles, melodeons, concertinas, guitars, a bodhran and miscellaneous other instruments.

We were led gently through 16 or so core tunes by ‘the management’, while others took us into Sheperd’s Hey, Bobby Shaftoe, Hesleyside, the Sportsman’s Hornpipe, Blue Eyed Stranger, Jack of the Green, Rusty Gulley, Enrico, and Buttered Peas. We slipped in Belgian tune Bear Dance, and Shetland fiddle tunes Willafjord and Margaret’s Waltz. A mysterious stranger amazed us with the modern French composition L’Inconnu de Limoise and the older La Cinq-Cent. We played Irish classic Tobin’s Favourite in local Chingford style, Barrack Hill and Dribbles of Brandy.

I’m new to the session thing, but could play along with two or three of the easy tunes, and bits and pieces of other tunes I knew. Sometimes I was happy to pick out odd notes, and otherwise I just relaxed, drank nice beer and soaked up the music. There looked to be a number of beginners like me, some more experienced players, and some very capable indeed. The mysterious stranger turned out to be Dave Shepherd, fiddler from Blowzabella, who popped in after giving someone a lift: I don’t think we can hope for such a stellar attendance every month, but it was lovely to have him along.

Walthamstow tune sessions are held on the 2nd Tuesday of the month. Dates have now been confirmed for 10th March, 14th April, 12th May, 9th June, 14th July. From 8pm we start on tunes suitable for beginners at a relaxed pace. The later part of the evening from about 9.30 will be for everyone including those looking for something a bit more challenging. The focus is on the English repertoire, interpreted widely.

The next in our new regular tune  sessions is tomorrow – the 10th Feb.

We’ll start a 8:00pm this time and we have a raffle too!

The last one was a great success so do come along.

We’ll be putting a proper page on the website shortly (I meant to do it over Christmas but I’ve been laid low by the lurgy) but in the meantime here is an early version of our tunebook.

Click here for the tunebook (to download right-click and “Save Target As…” or similar)

This is a ‘first beta’ of these tunes; there may be obvious errors and faults in them; please let us know if you think we’ve got them wrong. More tunes will follow, too.