Thursday, May 27, 2010

One of Those Bird Jigs

If you're into pipe music, have you ever noticed how many jigs are named after birds? Donald MacPherson's "The Curlew," is a classic, of course, and there's always Donald MacLeod's "The Duck" (though if I remember aright, that was about a man who had a distinctive gait, rather than an actual bird). Donald MacLeod is also responsible for "The Seagull," which is presented in the sample video below from Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop. The demo of the tune only takes up the first 1:05 minutes, but the following explanation by guitarist Tony McManus is quite interesting, especially the bit where he goes to the trouble to capo so that the guitar is in bagpipe range.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

One of my favorite "bird jigs" is The Wren's hornpipe. I've only found it on a Celtic CD from Target.

Molly said...

Is it the same as this tune? If so, I agree, it's pretty nifty!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9MTMDLm3e8
This one reminds me a bit of "The Rights of Man" (which has nothing to do with birds that I can think of).

Katrina said...

That was something else, really!