Sun Stations

This week's blog is an instrumental piece in the form of an anglo-irish melodeon tune called Sun Stations. I originally composed it for a duo project with the wonderful English folk fiddle player John Dipper and recorded it with him on an  album released back in 2012 call Sleeping Giants. This tune represents an attempt to write music for my meldeon that reflects my English background despite the many years I;ve spent playing Irish and Scottish music on the instrument. As you can imagine the result is kind of a hybrid between the two styles and whilst I would not claim to be a master of the left hand such as the like of John Spiers or Andy Cutting the music still relies on sound coming out from both sides!



The rows of buttons on my various boxes which are tuned to the major scales B/C C#/D and A/Bb tuned are all basically the same in that they've a semitone between. English players almost uniformly opt for an interval of 4th between (tuning such as D/G or C/F). Whilst these seem to through up more options for playing chords due to the notes common to both scales/rows they're not fully chromatic (unless doctored in some way). The main aspect of this wonderful instrument to bear in mind is that, like a mouth organ or harmonica the note changes on each button depending on whether you push or pull the bellows. 

The tunes title ws inspired by the title of a book The Stations of the Sun that served as great resource for the Dipper Daniels project as a whole which sought to create music that tracked the traditional folk festive cycle from Plough Monday to 12th Night.

I hope you enjoy this short clip of it. 

&mbsp;