Hi everyone,

Was wondering if I could have some advice please? I'm currently trying to learn The Rochdale Coconut dance and am unsure about bowing. I can see one or two slurs in the music one or two bars in, but my ear kind of wants me to play the EFGE part as two further slurs (being as it sounds so Russian for some reason). I'm attending a folk session, but I think it's fair to say that while extremely talented (I was so jealous!), my colleagues are reasonably new to fiddling too, and I want to try and get the bowing as 'authentic' as possible. I've tried looking on youtube to see the arm movements, but am not having much luck.

Thanks

Can't answer your question - but I love that title!

W

this isn't a tune i play, but looking at the dots... i'd probably avoid slurring all four quavers for this sort of tune. perhaps try slurring the middle two, so you get F | E F-G F E D. (i guess i have a slightly different version here, i don't have an EFGE part in mine.) i might also slur the two quavers after that, C A-C B G A...

okay, played around with it, and this is what i ended up with, slurs included:

X:1
T:Rochdale Coconut Dance
M:4/4
L:1/4
K:G
z | G B G B | A/G/(F/G/) A B | G B G B | A/G/(F/E/) D2 |
G B G B | A/(G/F/)G/ A (d/c/) | B B (A/B/c/)A/ | G B G :|
E | E/F/G/(F/ E) B | E/F/G/(F/ E) B | c (A/c/) B G/A/- | A/G/ F E D |
E/F/G/(F/ E) B | E/F/G/(F/ E) B | c (A/c/) B G/A/- | A/G/ F E :|

(that's ABC notation; you can paste it into this tool to convert it into dots.)

this feels a lot like an English tune to me (probably country dance, i don't think it's a Morris tune), so that's how i played it. this is, of course, only a suggestion, and you should feel free to play it however you think it sounds best ;-)

Thanks so much for this. Am working on it now.