Week #441 ~ Penny Hill

This week's winner is Penny Hill, which was submitted as a Cape Breton tune. I'm still posting from my phone, so I'd appreciate any help with this, as far as links!

The Penny Hill Jig was recorded on Carl MacKenzie's first LP, Welcome To Your Feet Again (1976, now out of print). The composer is Carl's brother Hector, another fine fiddler. He lives in Washabuck, Victoria County.


X:28
T:Penny Hill
C:Hector MacKenzie
R:jig
S:Tune of the Month, Dec. 2001, Sivler Apple News 8
B:The Cape Breton Fiddler, Alistair MacGillivray
Z:Paul Stewart Cranford (P.S.C.), <http://www.cranfordpub.com>
Q:300
L:1/8
M:6/8
K:EAeo
E2 e dBA|BEF G2 F|E2 e dB^c|dAG FED|
E2 e dBA|BEF G2 F|Eee e2 f|1edB AFD:|2edB def||
|:b2 e efe|bef g2 e|b2 e efg|fag fed|b2 e efe|
bef g2 e|1bef edB|AdA FED:|2bea gfe|dAG FED|]

Found the dots, a midi player and this abc at The Folk Tune Finder, but haven't found a performance yet.

X:1
T:Penny Hill
C:Hector MacKenzie
R:jig
L:1/8
M:6/8
K:Em
"Em"E2 e dBA|"Em"BEF "D"G2 F|"Em"E2 e dBA|"D"dAG "Bm"FED|
"Em"E2 e dBA|"Em"BEF "D"G2 F|"Em"Eee e2 f|1"D"edB "Bm"AFD:|2"Bm"edB dea||
|:"Em"b2 e efe|"Em"bef "D"g3 |"Em"b2 e efe|"D"fag "Bm"fga|
"Em"b2 e efe|"Em"bef "D"g3|"Em"bef edB|"D"dAG "Bm"FED:|"Em (last time)"E6|]

There may be some performances out there but they are hard to find. I bought the vinyl album, Welcome To Your Feet Again, by Carl MacKenzie way back in 1977. I'd never heard anything played before like what was on this album (although unknown to me this style of playing is common). It's dance music, played by Carl on fiddle and backed up by piano. This clip from the album is the Penny Hill Jig. It's the last song on a set which included Owny's Best Jig, Wilfred's Fiddle Jig and Penny Hill Jig. This tune should translate well on a mandolin... sorry for the rather large picture of my face, but SoundCloud did that on it's own!

Really love hearing Carl play that, thanks!

Thanks for that clip Michael - indeed tune arrangements with piano are often found, e.g. in Scotland.
That's a nice picture of you, too. Apparently, you're sitting on the Golden Gate bridge, dangling your feet in the water

Thanks for the cranfordpub link, Michael. For some reason my computer is not able to get your Soundcloud audio. I'll say it right here one time: the real reason I voted for Penny Hill Jig twice is because it sounds like Benny Hill. Lame, I know, but I get my chuckles when and where I can.

Well this is odd, yesterday I could see and hear Michael's soundcloud file just fine (thank you for that, by the way), but today it doesn't show up at all - no pic, no sound, nothing clickable. Same result on both our computers plus my Android phone. Wonder what happened?

Kay Kirkpatrick wrote: "... the real reason I voted for Penny Hill Jig twice is because it sounds like Benny Hill. Lame, I know, but I get my chuckles when and where I can."

Lol! I like that, that's funny.

Vanished from my screen too! Hope Michael's still around somewhere.

I can still hear it.

Nice tune; I’d never heard it before.

It struck me that it might pair well with “The White Petticoat.”



Bob Michel
Near Philly

You're right Bob, that's a nice pair. The next after that might be The Cook in the Kitchen.

Nice work, Bob, I love the sound of your mandolin and enjoyed the listen.

Lovely stuff Bob! I'll have to find time to give this one a go - great wee tune so it is!

Great job Bob Michel!

Here's my Penny Hill Jig recorded on a Kentucky KM600 mandolin and backed up with a Simon & Patrick guitar tuned DADGBD and capoed at the 2nd fret. The pictures are from my vacation in the Eastern Sierras this summer near Mono Lake. In fact this stream empties into the lake.

Bob and Michael, these are great versions! Very nice.

Oh, and I can once again see Michael's earlier SoundCloud tune, it had mysteriously vanished for a while but is now viewable again.

Michael, very nice playing and production.

Nice one Michael - lovely visuals as well!

This tune is harder to play than I thought it would be - I figured 15 minutes practice and I'd be ready to record. Ha! I'd been listening to the tune for a while, I had the tune in memory, and I'd studied the notation (it looked easy enough on paper/screen), but the fingers didn't behave as expected. Numerous flaws, including in the 2nd measure where I was trying to fret 2 strings with one finger, would've been ok except I can see from looking at the video that the index finger wasn't held sufficiently flat enough to cleanly fret both strings, and so there's string buzz there. Oh well. And those 'variations', those aren't intentional variations, they're my fingers getting off-course and trying to just keep playing something until a correct melody note shows up. Not one of my better examples of playing but I figured I'd post it anyway, "work in progress" kinda thing. Also the audio/video sync is off by a few frames - not sure if that's my fault or something YouTube did when I uploaded the video.


(or direct link)
(mandolin plugged in, Roland Micro Cube)

Bob and Michael, I enjoy your vids. Great!

JL277z, your "work in progress" kinda thing sounds a lot more fluent as every submission I ever did. After listening to the Carl MacKenzie’s fiddle I thought I never can do this. And that’s true, of course. But meanwhile I built up some hope to play it at least recognizable.

Thanks Frithjof. Yeah I usually start out trying to play tunes in a recognizable manner, but things sometimes take a different turn. Particularly when it comes to chords, and style/genre of backing tracks. I seldom post my too outlandish franken-variations (the Trad Police would be after me for sure) but tune variations are fun to mess around with.

Jl227z, your version sounded pretty good to me... and I'll echo your feeling that this song is harder to play than it looks on paper. In fact, most of the songs are harder to play than those little dots on the paper seem to indicate at first glance. And if a tune has an easy A part, it almost seems a given that the B part will twist your brain and fingers into knots...

JL227z, I like a tune played in the tradition it belongs to. But I also like the idea of taking the music, playing with it and make your own thing far away from the tradition. Not that I could do that.

BTW: With “at least recognizable” I referred to my own abilities not to your playing. Hope there was no mistake! My English is as delicate as my music.

Michael Pastucha wrote: "... if a tune has an easy A part, it almost seems a given that the B part will twist your brain and fingers into knots..."

Yeah that's true, lots of times.

Frithjof wrote: "... Hope there was no mistake! My English is as delicate as my music."

Understood, no worries! And I think your English *and* your music are just fine.

JL277z I like what you did with it, it's very good. In fact, in my imagination, I can hear the strings of an orchestra coming in on the second repetition, and the orchestra building up to a fine crescendo.

What a lovely tune this is, and good renditions all

I had a hard time to activate my pinky to perform the required task in the bewitched B-part. The first days I had to be very careful because I really could feel a tension in the triceps of my left arm.

Finally I can submit this:

Works for me, Frithjof, it looks like you've got that pinky going just fine. Good go!

Thanks Mark!

Frithjof, sounding good! And good solid 7th-fret notes too.

Thanks for the nice words, JL and Mark.