Weary Cutters

At the moment my computer is playing 'Steeleye Span - The Chrysalis years' - a triple cd set that I bought many years ago and ripped several years ago. I'm very familar with the first two albums, "Below the salt" and 'A parcel of rogues'¹ as these were compulsory listening in the years 1971-3. I'm also familiar with their third album with Bob Johnson², 'Now we are six' (see the Tim Hart obituary linked previously) but the final two albums in this set, 'Commoners Crown' and 'All around my hat' are not familiar at all.

I have to admit that listening to the set all the way through leads to auditory fatigue, so I don't/can't normally listen closely to those last two. But this morning, by the time I came to sit at the computer, it was playing 'Commons Crown' and I was able to listen properly to this.

The first thing that my ears picked up was the following lyric

O the weary cutters and O the weary sea
O the weary cutters have taken my laddie from me
They've pressed him far away foreign
With Nelson beyond the salt sea

O the lousy cutters and O the weary sea
O the lousy cutters have stolen my laddie from me
They always come in the night
They never come in the day
They come at night and steal the laddies away

Those words seem very familiar to me, but the melody was hard to catch, with Maddy Prior singing harmony with herself. Then it struck me: this song, 'Weary Cutters', is sung at the beginning of 'Blue's Gaen Oot O' the Fashion' by Rachel Unthank and the Winterset (as it was then) on 'The Bairns³'!

Three cheers for the folk tradition that allows modern musicians to take old songs and bend them to their will.

Internal links
[1] 220
[2] 1695
[3] 353

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
24	11/02/2006	One small step	Programming, Psychology, Kaizen, The brain
451	11/02/2012	A change is gonna come	Films
1580	11/02/2023	This week's rant	Israel
1581	11/02/2023	Hot filling soup	Cooking, Weather
1719	11/02/2024	The good, the bad and the self-delusion	Guitars, Pedal board

Christmas update

My previous post was on Monday, 18 December. The morning after this, I began to feel unwell and soon developed a painful headache, an elevated temperature and a very sore throat that made it very difficult to swallow. I swiftly took to my bed. After a few days of these symptoms, along with heavy sweating, things finally began to ease slowly during Friday. A throat swab that was done on Thursday morning revealed yesterday that I had Strep throat; as opposed to my previous illness with an almost constantly runny nose, there was no cough and no phlegm this time around. Anyway, now I am diagnosed, I have started taking antibiotics, and the gross symptoms have disappeared. There is still a very small discomfort when swallowing, I still feel weak and unfocused and I have yet to regain my appetite. On the other hand, I've lost 2kg in body weight and if I continue eating the same way as I am now (i.e. barely eating), then I should lose some more weight.

As I've been unfocused for the past few days, there isn't much else to report. When I was feeling a bit better, I watched some YouTube videos, and one would have had me on the floor laughing, had I sufficient energy for this. This was a review (if it can be called that) of some of the goods available on the TEMU website; I had previously seen two other videos doing the same thing; these were normal reviews and fairly interesting.

Some of the goods shown in the amusing review were obviously rubbish, but some were worth a further look. I admit to being very favourably inclined towards the radio link for guitars, as opposed to a regular guitar lead; the price - a mere £7, or maybe a bit more - being less than the amount that I paid for a good lead a few weeks ago. But when I went to the Temu site to order, I discovered that the price was about 78-80 NIS, meaning that there is a ridiculous foreign currency exchange value, or more likely, the 'free delivery' has suddenly become much more expensive because of the Huthis and their terrorist activities against ships in the Persian Gulf area heading for the Suez Canal. So for now, I am dropping any ideas of purchasing items from the Internet. Incidentally, I saw that the same item can theoretically be ordered from Amazon for 'only' $16 (that would cost 64 NIS and might arrive in a few weeks). I wonder how much the same item would cost from an Israeli supplier, who presumably had already purchased the item.

---

Today I resumed my habit of checking obituaries over at the Guardian and was saddened to read the obituary of Bob Johnson, who was the guitarist in Steeleye Span Mark 3. Bob had already joined the group by the time of the Lacock festival, meaning that I had the pleasure of meeting him at the time. As I wrote several years ago, [a]t some stage Jonathan and I approached the group and informed them that we had appointed ourselves as their official groupies (lackeys would be a better term) for the duration of the festival. I don't recall now what this function consisted of besides buying them the occasional drink. We were too cool to take mutual photographs or even ask for autographs, so all that is left is my failing memory. By this time, Bob Johnson and Rick Kemp had replaced Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings, and Johnson certainly brought a more fun approach to the group's music.

I have to admit that I haven't listened to the records of this version of SS for many years; I know that I have a 3 cd set that contains their five albums, but I'm not sure exactly where it is. I shall have to look for it, rip the discs then renew my acquaintance with them.

I see that by a cruel coincidence, I wrote about the death of Tim Hart, fellow Steeleye Span member, on this day fourteen years ago.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
220	25/12/2009	Tim Hart, RIP	Obituary, Steeleye Span, 1972, Music festivals, Folktronix
788	25/12/2014	Interfacing with Priority from an external program	Programming, ERP
1101	25/12/2017	Sheet music	Yoni Rechter
1368	25/12/2020	Covid-19 vaccine (2)	Covid-19

Vinyl log 8 - 1 May

Day	Month	Year	Artist	Title
1	May	1972	Various artists	Clogs
1	May	1980	Peter Hammill	ph7

"Clogs" was a compilation of folk artists who recorded for the B&C label, notably the Steeleye Span 'family' - there were a few tracks by Steeleye as well as Tim Hart and Maddy Prior as a duo, and Martin Carthy. It also included the astounding "Murder of Maria Marten", which came from Shirley Collins' "No roses" album, which was one of the contenders for the "Son of Liege and Lief" title.

This record must have been bought in Bristol when I was fair and square in my early 'folkie' period. A friend bought the "No roses" album probably on the basis of this compilation (which is why such compilations exist) so I was familiar with it. Unfortunately, no other song reached the heights of "Maria", so I didn't purchase it myself. Many many years later I was to buy this album on cd.

The compilation also included "Rod's song", by Shelagh McDonald, who at the time was considered to be a possible successor to Sandy Denny. The song was interesting but not sufficiently so to investigate further. Shelagh McDonald disappeared from public view after a bad trip; she re-emerged in 2005.

---

I have no idea how I acquired Peter Hammill's last album for Charisma, "ph7" (which was actually his eighth solo album). The date corresponds with the first phase of my army service, which rules out any possibility of me having bought the record in a shop (either in Israel or even on a visit to Britain). I have a suspicion that I ordered it directly from PH, although I have no way of confirming this and I also have a counter-suspicion that his mail order service had yet to start. Either way, I have never liked this album very much.

It contains a version of "Mirror Images" which might be better than the one on the last VdGG album, "Vital", but which is curiously stilted. A typical VdGG song (if there is such a thing) which never received the recording it deserved.

Another month comes to an end

Another month comes to an end and there's little blogging to show for it. I've simply been too busy to devote time to writing here.

My economics course has come to an end and the exam is next Wednesday. I'm revising, but not that thoroughly. I think that I know the material well and much of it is common sense anyway (at least, common sense after having finished a course in the subject).

I saw the Tom Hanks film "That Thing You Do" the other day and thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course, the subject matter does talk to me. All the way through, I was waiting for the moment when the manager screws the band but that never happened. The entire financial scam element was missing from the film; the innocent band members enjoyed the largesse showered upon them, never realising that the costs would be borne from their earnings. Maybe then they would have been slightly more careful with their money.

The IMDB page has a very active discussion board for the film. There is even a thread discussing how the title song changes throughout the film. One thing missing from the discussion: the closing chord in the early versions is different from the closing chord in later versions.

I'm listening at the moment to "A parcel of Steeleye Span", a three cd compilation of "their first five Chrysalis albums". I thought that I knew some of this material quite well, but I haven't heard it for about 35 years and my memories have faded somewhat. To be honest, I prefer the two previous B&C albums (with Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings) - their starkness plays in their favour. The entire package cost only six pounds, and I hope that some of that money finds its way to the group as royalties - although maybe they still haven't paid off the advances for these records.

Reading material is yet another Eliyahu Goldratt book, "Necessary but not sufficient". This book is about a company which has developed and sold an ERP package, making it close to home. How much does such a program contribute to the bottom line? Fortunately, that's not a question which I've often been asked, although the book does provide a few answers.

The Fourteenth of May

On the fourteenth of May at the dawn of the day
With my gun of my shoulder to the woods I did stray
In search of some game if the weather proved fair
To see could I get a shot at the Bonny Black Hare

So begins the allegorical tale of a hunter - or more correctly, a poacher - who is not hunting a hare, a small creature that many mistake for a rabbit, but rather for a piece of feminine anatomy.

This bawdy tale came to my attention in 1971 when it was recorded by Fairport Convention for their sixth album, "Angel Delight", a rather mixed offering which suffered on the one hand by the loss of Richard Thompson but gained by the others trying their hardest. 

Around the same time, their cousin group, Steeleye Span, released a rather more sombre song which also mentions the 14th of May:

When I was on horseback, wasn't I pretty
When I was on horseback, wasn't I gay
Wasn't I pretty when I entered Cork City
To meet with my downfall on the fourteenth of May

This song, set to a chilling arrangement, was not about some flighty young girl, as the above words might hint, but rather about a young British soldier serving in Ireland.

In 1971, I was beginning to think that traditional folk was my kind of music, and I found it both strange and pleasing that two songs encountered within a few months should reference the same calendar date. As it happens, I can't recall any other song referencing any date at all, so this remains a coincidence. 

Today is, of course, the 14th of May, so the Fairport mailing list is full of wishes that our powder stays dry and that our ramrods never go limp.

Tim Hart, RIP

Christmas Day in the workhouse.

I heard today about the death of Tim Hart, who played guitar and sang in most of the lineups of Steeleye Span. Tim died at the age of 61 after a long battle with cancer. No doubt there are other tributes about him scattered elsewhere around the Web , but this is going to be a more personal memoir.

As one recalls, Steeleye was the band formed by Ashley Hutchings after he left Fairport Convention at the the end of 1969. A first lineup, including Tim Hart, made the 'Hark the village wait!' record, but this lineup split before the record was released. A second lineup, which added Martin Carthy and Peter Knight, was more long-lived, and it was this group that I saw in Bristol's Assembly Rooms in early 1971. All that I remember about this is Hutchings' blue Fender Mustang bass and Carthy playing a Telecaster. 

I knew quite well the two records released by this lineup, "Please to see the King" and "Ten man mop", although I never purchased them (a mistake rectified 35 years later when I bought a two cd compilation of their first three albums titled "The Early Years"). There was something about their sound which both attracted and repelled me. I used to call it "severe", but by chance I heard this morning a similar sounding adjective which seems more suitable - "austere". Maybe it was the lack of drums, maybe the lack of a distinguished instrumentalist (pace Richard Thompson), maybe it was a surmised lack of humour or fun. It wasn't too clear what Hart's instrumental function was, apart from the occasional turn on the electric dulcimer (the chilling "When I was on horseback").

My second meeting with the band was at the Lacock Festival, held in a small village "the other side" of Bath in May 1972. I went with my school friend Jonathan along with someone else whose name I can't recall (actually, I don't remember who the third person was at all, let alone his name). Maybe my mother or maybe one of Jonathan's parents took us to the village on the Friday afternoon, and I remember that we returned by bus. Steeleye were 'topping the bill', but arrived early at the village and hung out for a day before their show - it was an informal festival. There were singing and dancing workshops - I remember appearing at one of the open mic shows with my ratty acoustic guitar and spotting to my mortification Maddy Prior (lead singer with Steeleye) sitting in the front row. 

At some stage Jonathan and I approached the group and informed them that we had appointed ourselves as their official groupies (lackeys would be a better term) for the duration of the festival. I don't recall now what this function consisted of besides buying them the occasional drink. We were too cool to take mutual photographs or even ask for autographs, so all that is left is my failing memory. By this time, Bob Johnson and Rick Kemp had replaced Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings, and Johnson certainly brought a more fun approach to the group's music. 

This was when I first learnt how to Morris dance. At the time, I was fairly well versed (so I thought) in Israeli folk dancing, and had become aware of the fact that there was a vocabulary of dance moves; later on, dancing became a test of memory in which one had to recall the specific sequence of moves (I call them 'phonemes' for the moment, in imitation of spoken language) instead of letting the body react automatically. Anyway, I was sufficiently aware of the possibility of assigning a 'grammar' to the dance that I was able to distinguish the 'phonemes' of the Morris dance and catch on quite quickly. Let us not forget that this was maybe six or seven months after Ashley Hutchings' (again!) groundbreaking "Morris On" record, which taught polite public schoolboys like myself that there was a whole branch of English music out there of which we had never heard.

At the time I considered myself to be a folkie, what with the occasional visit to the Bristol Troubadour (mentioned elsewhere on this blog) and my connections to the Village Thing label. I vowed to find a Morris Dancing team in Bristol on my return; I did in fact find out where they met but never went. I did buy a concertina, though, and even learnt after a fashion how to play it, although tunes escaped me.

I saw Steeleye for the third and final time in 1973 at the Colston Hall; I have somewhere a cassette tape of this performance. This was the time between "Below the Salt" and "Parcel of rogues"; the music was much less austere than it was before - but still I didn't buy the records. 

When I came back to Britain in 1974 and went to live in London as a student, I bought Steeleye's "Now we are six" album as a raffle prize for an unsuccessful folk club which I was helping to run. I listened to it, probably taped it, and forgot about it. Maybe my tastes had changed (I certainly didn't consider myself an English folkie after spending a year in Israel!); whatever the reasons, Steeleye and I parted company.

It's interesting to note how much the repertoire of the early Steeleye stayed with me, and for that I have to thank Tim, Maddy, Ashley, Martin and Peter. When I came to record my 'Folktronics' disc a few years ago, I was surprised how many Steeleye tunes came to mind, even though at the time I hadn't heard the records for years (I should point out that all the tunes were traditional; I should have written "how many traditional tunes that Steeleye had brought to my attention").

Captain Coulston (even more Folktronix)

I want to devote this column to the genesis and execution of another Folktronix track, "Captain Coulston". I learnt this song from Steeleye Span; their version appeared on a sampler called "Clogs" which I bought in 1971. This track was taken from their 1971 album "Ten man mop", but I never had a copy of this and was not really aware that it was an album track.

Anyway, it's a simple, winding tune which I've played for years on the guitar and so thought that it was suitable for the treatment. One evening a few weeks ago, I laid down the tune in the MIDI sequencer and promptly forgot about it. The tune is only eight bars long and doesn't have much variation.

In the mean time, I completed a few other tracks, including the amazing and weird "Famous Flower of Serving Men". This tune was used as the riff for the second half of the Liege and Lief version of "Matty Groves", but is a song in its own right (and come to think of it, Martin Carthy's version is also on that "Clogs" sampler, not that I've heard it in years [Correction: this was on a different sampler, "Collectively and Individually", all tracks by Steeleye, as opposed to the Various Artists on "Clogs"]). I worked out the riff, which seems to be 19 beats long, which is an asymmetric number however one looks at it. I'm not sure how Fairport play it - something like 4, 2, 4, 3, 6 - but decided to add an extra beat at the end to round the tune up to 20 beats and so occupy four bars of 5/4 rhythm. The result was something like free-form jazz with virtually no harmonic movement at all, something unusual for me.

Anyway, after this extravaganza, I was looking for more tunes and remembered "Captain Coulston". The tune basically goes up and down the scale of A minor, and so with a little stretching of the harmony, the chords go (one per bar) Am G F Em Dm C Dm (half bar) Em (half bar) Am. Of course, I couldn't leave things like that and so changed the C to Cm (which sounded very weird) and replaced the closing Am with D7/9. The second time round, the final chord was replaced by Bm7, and then I tacked on a little reprise: first a time buying chord (BbMaj9) and then F, G and A major.

I decided to start the track with two instruments on opposing sides of the stereo playing the first two bars of the tune, one after the other, as a form of introduction. Once this was done, the tune logically had to be played by a third instrument, placed in the centre. Sequencing the tune was fairly straightforward, solos and all, and the little reprise tickled my fancy. As always, I listened to the arrangement a day later and decided that it was slightly unbalanced and so added a pair of verses with the tune emphasized, thus delaying the solos until a bit later. Another day later and I decided to replace all the Cm chords (which sounded too strange) with C or CMaj7.

When I was satisfied with the arrangement, I imported the MIDI file into Reason. I have discovered lately how to make instruments played via the NN-XT sampler sound more ethereal and have longer sustain; as a result, the track has slightly unusual sounding flute and french horn. The work in Reason went reasonably quickly and soon I was able to export a wav file for listening. This was Saturday's work.

During Sunday, I decided that the track was too "polite" and even too amateurish, especially the percussion. The whole thing needed beefing up and made more professional/extravagant/confident (I don't how to express this exactly). So:

1. I changed the acoustic bass for a synthesized bass which has an 'edge'
2. I changed the slightly weird sounding synth playing the main tune for something more ethereal (actually a pad setting, but it sounds ok). I played around with dynamically modulating the synth's sound but this didn't seem to make much difference and so I dropped it.
3. I replaced most of the drums (which as usual were going through an NN-XT drum set) for three different Dr Rex drum loops, changing the loops at specific points during the song. But for a change, I decided to keep the percussion parts of the original drum work (which was very Phil Spector-ish); the tambourine adds depth (maybe width?) to the drum loops and makes the track come even more alive.

Now I have a much better track. I also noticed that the track sounds more alive when played via Winamp that it does when played via Goldwave. This seems to be due to eq settings on Winamp, which may mean that I should eq the finished master in order to get a better sound on cd. I'm going to check this out, because it's not something I've ever done before. Actually, the best place to do this would be in Reason but I haven't committed myself to anything yet.

So: four evenings of work on one tune have produced a good result.

All in all, I have about 37 minutes of music ready, which means at least one more tune has to be prepared. I am considering doing a very ambient version of "My Lagan Love", with little harmonic work, but the tune seems to be metrically odd. Sandy Denny did a beautiful acapella version of this on the "Sandy" album, where she set the tune to words written by Richard Farina ("Quiet joys of brotherhood"). I have noted that tunes have a fermentation period, during which nothing seems to happen, and then an implementation period, in which the tune gets finished quite quickly.

... Although not quickly enough - I was reading an article which describes how to arrange a piece of music, sequence it, realise it and master it all within 60 minutes! The steps are very similar to the ones which I take, but run at a pace which seems to allow no time for thought.

More folktronik

I wrote last time about working on a folktronik version of "Lark in the morning". I worked on the tune the other day and completed it to my satisfaction. Of the first half (in 9/8), I kept about 80% of what I had originally done, only renewing the 'solos', verses 4 and 5. This latter verse sports a spectacular blue note, C over an F#m chord (ie a diminished fifth); it would sound even better if I did a little note bending, but that's not something with which I've had much experience. I also played around with the final chord in each verse: originally this would have been A major, but due to my warped sense of harmony, such an obvious resolution could not stand, so sometimes the tune ends on FMaj7 and sometimes on D7, leading to G7 (and as the note in the tune is A, this becomes a G9 chord).

The 4/4 section, however, had an almost complete rewrite. From one of my computer science books (probably "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick Brooks), I read the sage advice "write one's first system in order to throw it away". This doesn't happen much to me when I write programs, but it's certainly true about music. I kept only the tune with its new rhythmic basis and added a completely new accompaniment. After two verses of the tune, I thought it time for some variation, and as the chords were now approaching a semi-doo wop form, I looked for a suitable tune. I settled on a quote from 'Blue Moon', which sort of fits - it turns out that the changes in BM are twice as fast as they are in LITM. Once more around the tune, and then I found a new wrinkle for the coda - playing the final lick a few times, first ending on D7, then on F7 and finally on A7 - with a heavenly synth playing the opening phrase of the tune. The inspiration for this probably came from 'Adiemus' - the final notes of the final track are the opening theme from the opening track.

At the back of my mind, I had the idea to arrange Fairport's seminal "A sailor's life": a somewhat different kettle of fish to LITM or any of the skip jig material. I remembered that I had in fact sequenced this several years ago for a disc of Fairport covers. I dragged this out of the archive and listened; the music (both in its concepts and conceits) is fine, but the vocals are somewhat lacking. The only part of ASL which caught my attention was ironically the coda; I took this and played the tune over it. It sort of fitted, but wasn't very good. As Frederick Brooks says, write the first version in order to throw it away, so I wasn't too bothered.

At the same time ... I had downloaded a MIDI arrangement of a song by Canadian group Rush; I've never heard any of their material but I remember reading somewhere quoting the drummer to the effect that "7/8 is our favourite meter". I often download MIDI files just to see how someone implemented such and such a musical effect, in the same way that I look at computer source files. This tune had an interesting section of 7/8 and 5/8 bars leading into a 4/4 section with an odd chord (who knows, this might have been inspired in turn by King Crimson's "Red"). I borrowed this part, but it didn't work as an intro to ASL, although the odd chord at the beginning of the 4/4 part sounded promising.

Once I transposed it into approximately the correct key (I don't remember the exact notes, but it's not a classic triad, more like D6/7/9/no 3rd, so it could work in many keys) and slotted the tune in over it, the chord worked very well. Of course, I had to modify it to accompany the miniscule chord changes in the tune (D/C/D/C/D/G/D/C), but now it sounded even better. The beginning reminds me of "Walking on the moon" by The Police: a sort of out of time, crashing multichord.

Sequencing the tune became fairly straightforward, although a few of my ideas became discarded when the MIDI was imported into Reason. Here a certain amount of serendipity played its part and I was able to get a very 'hip' sounding file. The fact that the tune is in 4/4 helped no end as I could finally use a Dr Rex drum loop, which always adds to the seeming sophistication of the arrangement.

I'll probably upload the two new tunes in SoundClick in a few days, when it becomes apparent that the plays for the current tunes are decreasing.

Soundclick pages

At the end of last month, I thought that it was time that I created a new SoundClick page in order to separate different types of music which I create. If someone likes the 'folktronik' sound enough to check my music page, then that person won't be too happy to encounter all the singer/songwriter material stored there. I don't know whether the opposite is necessarily true.

After casting around for names, I decided on YMMV - an Internet acronym for 'Your Mileage May Vary', which is exactly the response that I have been receiving. SoundClick enables one to create several 'band' pages which can be administered via the same user, so creating the page was easy. I transferred over to the page 'all' the folktronik files which I had created: all of two! Unfortunately, the chart history didn't get transferred; as far as SoundClick was concerned, the instrumental called "Killarney Boys of Pleasure" by No'am Newman which had got to position 22 (or thereabouts) in the Irish traditional charts is a different recording to the instrumental called "Killarney Boys of Pleasure" by YMMV.

Once that administrative task had been done, I started looking around for new material. I had been toying around with the idea of arranging Steeleye Span's "When I was on horseback", but hadn't got very far past transcribing the tune. The 'trouble' with many of these instrumental tunes is that there is only a 'verse' tune with no contrasting section, and that there are many notes within a bar, whereas the spaced out electronic sound is better served by long notes.

The first piece which I successfully arranged was "Mist Covered Mountain"; my arrangement was based on the tune as played by Mark Knopfler in the film "Local Hero". I didn't reference the soundtrack but instead played the tune and chords as my mind remembered them. I know that in one place I slightly changed the notes in order to fit in with what I thought should be the harmony. This arrangement closes with what might be termed a 'petite reprise' in order to add some interest.

Next up was a piece which I had started sequencing years ago, called "Sheriff's ride", which I learnt from the Albion Country Band's "Battle of the field" record. As the tune is fairly limited, I could only repeat it a few times before getting bored, so I decided to follow it with "Princess Royal", the first and only Morris tune which I ever learnt to dance. SR is in a minor key and PR is a major, so the transition sounds pretty good. The original MIDI file had been titled "Heavy Morris" (in fact, I had to look up the Albion disc in order to discover what the tune was actually called), and in honour of this, I put a heavy drumbeat and throbbing bass into the arrangement. Instead of having the ending peter out, I used a fairly typical finale sequence F ->  G -> A.

After listening to these two tunes and my other dreamy stuff, I was aware that the folktronik arrangements were missing the mark: they tended to start with the tune, follow the tune throughout the piece and end with the tune. Apart from second, harmony voices, they were too closely based on the original tune.

So for my final (so far) published piece, "Flowers of the Forest", I thought that a change was in order. This one starts with my heavily altered chords of the verse played on a pad, before the tune enters (played on a synthesizer unconsciously imitating bagpipes). After going once round the tune, I then played improvisations on the chord sequence, ignoring the tune and its structure, before playing a closing verse or two.

One extra complication is that many of these traditional tunes are in 9/8 time, making them slip jigs. One probably hears the waltz time, but also each beat is broken down into triplets (although only two notes are actually played per beat, the first is twice as long as the second, specifically a crotchet followed by a quaver, as opposed to two notes each the same length in 'normal' rhythm). There aren't many drum patterns that I'm aware of which have this time signature, so I frequently omit the drums.

I'm working now on Steeleye's "Lark in the morning" (Please to see the king), as opposed to Fairport's "Lark in the morning" (Liege and Lief medley). This too is in 9/8 and has a very short melody. After playing it a few times along with different harmonies, the tune moves into 4/4 time and the tune is played again, although of course now its internal structure and accents have been changed. As things stand at the moment, the tune gets played maybe eight times over the course of only two minutes; the track is too short as it stands but I can't keep on repeating the tune, even though I have changed the rhythm.

So I'm at a dead end at the moment and don't know how to lengthen the track. I may tack on another tune to make a medley (I have been considering Fairport's tune of the same name, but they don't seem to fit together, even though the track is now in 4/4 and Fairport's version is 12/8) or do some weird restructuring to any combination of tune/harmony/rhythm.

Response in terms of page hits, listens and downloads has been very encouraging but there's been no written feedback. Someone did write (via private mail, the comment isn't on SoundClick) that my music was fantastic, electronic with soul, which goes to show that the music is finally reaching its audience.