Learn to Play the Seagull from Tony McManus
So that was the “Seagull” a very popular pipe jig and played in a very strange tuning, so this is our old favorite standard tuning. So in order to get into that weird position the first most important thing to do is take your D string and tune it all the way down to this unison the A string. So we have 2 A’s then your G string was down to E. The B string was done to A and you will be glad to hear your top E strings stays to where it is.
And then bottom of the E string I tuned down to D. Dick Goken had a version of this tuning which he played some pipe tunes in and some years ago in the mid 70’s and he and the bottom string tuned to E and let’s just find if it works a bit better. If you have it in the D available at the bottom and also if we’re going to play bag pipe tunes accurately then you should Capo up to be in B flat. The pipes are pitched to semi tone sharp. The music is always notated on the key of A but the picture of the instrument is actually a semi tone sharp with that, so they’re in B flat.
So here we are, so the tuning without the Capo goes D- A- A- E- A- E which is a strange as it gets and in my world of acoustic guitar. So like the C tuning you have the bag pipe scale setting in your fingers and that low G is like crucial note that goes below the drone. And obviously the whole point of having the two A is in unison as to keep that bag pipe drawing going. So this tuning is useful for evoking some kind of atmosphere of the pipes, it’s not—I don’t find it versatile enough to do much in terms of moving bass lines and for fill on minor seventh chords and things like that. The accompaniment in this tuning is basically the open strings, so you are generally just alternate between the A’s and the open D at the bottom and then the melody is happening on the top two strings plus that lower G.
So to play the “Seagull”, we keep the drone going with the thumb and the melody with lots of shifting to kind of imitate the way of piper would ornament the melody and that’s all happening with the three fingers on the top, top 2 strings. So there are four parts on the tune but are not quite independent parts like the 1st and 3rd and the 2nd and 4th are variations and there’s lots of repetition within the 4 parts so let’s slow it down, split the screen and we’ll try and play it together.
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