Trouble in the Kitchen performed this set of jigs for us in their warehouse in Melbourne.
MP3 audio of The Road to Skye / Elaine Jeffreys’
Irish traditional tunes are commonly played in medleys known as sets. The following set of jigs comprises two tunes, The Road to Skye and Elaine Jeffreys’, although sometimes the band plays a third tune, Ellen O’Grady’s, in the middle.
Tip
The usual way to learn a traditional tune is by ear, from another player. Increasingly, though, traditional tunes are spreading through recordings and notation. If you're a beginner, or an experienced player who’s not used to learning by ear, you may find it useful to start with written notation — to get the basic ‘shape’ of the tune — then move on to a recording to get the ‘feel’.
If you don't read music, you may find abc notation useful. With the aid of abc player software, you can get your computer to play a tune at any speed — making it much easier to learn by playing along.
→ Download these tunes as a (printable) pdf file
→ Download these tunes as a (playable and printable) abc file. What is abc notation?
→ Play along with the audio
The Road to Skye
This traditional jig is heard in the Cape Breton region of Canada, and parts of Ireland, although the name suggests its origins may lie in Scotland (the Isle of Skye). Here is the tune ‘skeleton’, as played by Trouble in the Kitchen:
While the above version is in G major, the tune is sometimes played in A major, as in this variation which was collected in Cape Breton by Toronto fiddler Wil Macaulay:
Elaine Jeffreys’
This tune of unknown origin is named after a well-known Sydney-based flute player. It is quite common for Irish traditional tunes to bear the names of players who have come to be associated with the tune through playing it at sessions.
The naming of Irish tunes is a fascinating study in its own right. Tunes often have multiple names, and there seems to be at least two tunes called Elaine Jeffreys’ (the other is a reel). Because Irish tunes are usually transmitted at sessions, players often learn them without learning the name, so a new name gets invented. Sometimes these names are quite fanciful — Upstairs in a Tent, Bang Your Frog on the Sofa, The Floating Crowbar — but they almost always conform with a mysterious and complex set of rules, which Irish poet Ciaran Carson explores entertainingly in his 1996 book Last Night’s Fun.
