Number three in the virtual tune book is a very Scottish tune that heads up a very Scottish set. The Arran Boat Song is an air or a slow jig with an extra skip in the rhythm which will join Highland Pibroch and Glenlivet in the Arran Boat Set. The first thing to note about this tune is that I've been spelling it wrong for the past ten years, I know, shocking. I really can't remember where I came across this tune first, whether I was taught it or found it in a tune book but whenever that was, my stupid english brain obviously wrote down the name Aaron, who as we all know, was the elder brother of Moses, a jewish prophet who famously lived to the ripe old age of 123! (thanks wiki!). It is not inconceivable that Aaron had a boat, or that he visited Scotland but it is unlikely that they wrote a tune for him that early on. The traditional tune is of course spelled Arran, as in the Isle of Arran off the west coast of Scotland. I look forward to this becoming one of the 'a human was here' moments in the future, when historians in two hundred years time are researching the folk music of Scotland, uncover an encrusted copy of The Folk Orc Open Session Book Vol.2 and come across that one time a stupid Englishman mistook an island in the north of Britain for a biblical prophet. It is worth mentioning that there is also Aran, in Ireland, where they make the sweaters, but this is a Scottish tune rather than Irish so we don't need to go there right now.
The word Arran means ‘island dweller’. Meaning the Isle of Arran translates as 'Island of Island Dwellers.' Which follows a common occurrence in the translation of old English and Celtic places names of stating the bleeding obvious. Hence the amount of geographical features that translate as River River, Mountain Mountain and Hill Hill.
The Arran Boat Song is traditionally played as an air. We don’t really do airs in Folk Orc, for reasons that I shall likely set out in a future post entitled ‘you can’t be delicate if there are thirty of you hammering at once,’ so we have tended to play it as a slow jig or you could even look at it as a waltz feel if you are so inclined. Above is the demo from 2021 and below is the notation and mandolin tab.
The tune is in the key of A Dorian, which without going not too much detail means that it is using the notes of G Major but starting and finishing on an A note. If you want to play around with the idea then here is a backing track to play over, lead instruments shut up at around 3:50 if you would prefer an un-distracted jam but it is good practice to improvise around the tune and lead melodies too.
Arran Boat Song - Folk-Rock Version
Here's a bit of a throwback to pandemic days when my inner monologue mused the idea of 'what if Hendrix had joined Fairport Convention?' It's a lovely chord sequence to jam over using either the A Dorian modal scale (note: thats just a fancy way of say G Major) or a the A Blues Scale (A C D Eb E G).
Here is the A Dorian Modal Scale in notation, as well as mandolin and guitar tab. It often infuriates me how complicated some teachers make learning modes. The word Dorian is just a name, it is important to remember that, it may as well be called Bob or Jim, just because it has a fancy Italian or Latin name doesn't make it any more complicated than a standard major scale. Here is the scale:
Try playing the scale over the backing track below and then once you can play it without reading it from the music you can start improvising with it (just the play the notes in a different order to that which you learnt it in). Remember that this is still just a G Major scale, so if you already know a G Major scale then try playing that over the backing track.
Folk On People.
Chris.
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