Alexander's Hornpipe Tune Library Tutorial

Welcome to another Tune Library tutorial.

This one is for Alexander's Hornpipe, which is a great classic hornpipe in D.

It's very likely kicking off our section of hornpipes here in the Tune Library because I go in alphabetical order, so can't think of a whole lot that go before Alexander's.

I'm sure there's some out there, and maybe there'll be one by the time you're watching this video anyway, but we'll go ahead and dive right in.

So this is your first ever Tune Library video that you're watching.

Maybe you're seeing it on the information, page for this resource here.

I will walk you through what I'm doing.

So I start off playing the tune up to speed, and in this case I'll play it three times through.

So it's kind of like you're sitting with me at a session and playing along with me.

You don't have to play it with me up to speed right away.

That's the whole point of this video, is to learn the tune.

But we're just giving you some context on where we're going and, maybe just how fast we're aiming to play this tune anyway.

And then we'll go through and do a phrase by phrase breakdown.

So you're learning the tune by ear.

I'm playing each phrase through twice and once we'll do, the whole call and response sort of thing, which I'll walk you through once we get there.

Then we'll go to play it through nice and slow and then at about a medium pace.

Now, hornpipes aren't super fast the way that I play them.

So this is kind of going to be a fast medium to start and then a slow medium later on in the video.

So you've got three different speeds to play along with me.

So let's go ahead and dive right in.

This hornpipe is great for practicing string crossing.

It's also great for the characteristic, triplet in a hornpipe.

And usually with these triplets, you're playing them with separate bows.

So it's a little bit trickier than slurring them together.

You can, of course, slur them as you're building up speed.

And you can work into actually doing the separate bow technique later.

But just wanted to throw that out there.

This is a great tune to practice that separate bow technique with.

So we're in D major.

I'll start off playing it up to speed.

Here we go.

Sa.

So let's Go ahead and break this tune down now into about two bar phrases each.

So I'm going to play each phrase through twice.

First time, just listen, try and get all the notes in your head.

Be thinking of intervals, what note you're going to be starting on, and don't worry if you don't have it all.

just the first time through.

We're playing this bunch of times throughout the video, so you'll really be ingraining it.

And you can always go back to any section that you need to revisit.

Second time through the tune or second time through the phrase.

Go ahead and play along with me.

Try and catch as many of the notes well as possible.

Again, we'll be repeating them a lot, so you'll have lots of chances to go through.

And don't worry about, perfection the first time.

And don't worry about perfection ever, because there's no such thing as perfect.

So, we'll go ahead and dive right in now, phrase by phrase, starting with our A part.

With me.

Phrase.

Next phrase, Last phrase.

And that's our whole A part.

So let's go ahead and play all those phrases together again.

You can always revisit any phrase you need, but we're going to go ahead and play it now twice through our A.

Sa.

Okay, moving on to B.

Phrase by phrase.

With me.

Play it one more time because I think I played a, different note the first time through.

All right, moving on.

Sorry.

Next phrase, Last phrase.

Okay, now let's do the B part twice.

Okay, so we've gone through the whole tune now, and you'll notice that when you're listening to my up to speed version versus the one I just taught here, I did do a couple of variations in the up to speed, and that was intentional because I'm trying to show you as many possible things that you can do with that tune.

But I'm only going to teach it one way specifically, just so you're not like, okay, wait, what's the note here?

And what do I have to do here?

So if you're noticing that I'm not doing some things that I was doing in the fast version here in the slower version.

That's why I'm trying not to overwhelm you.

But I will show you a couple of things that you can do with the B part.

I think I'll do maybe partway between, the slow and the medium version here.

So we'll go ahead and do slow now.

So A and B together, nice and slow.

One, two, one and two.

Sa.

Sam Okay, so I'll show you just a couple things.

So if you need to go back through and do the slow version again a few times, that's great.

I'll have a timestamp below the video in the lesson.

I don't think I'll have it on the, the main page, but I'll have the timestamp there for you to go back and do the slow version with me.

And if you're ready to move on to a little bit of a faster version and maybe throw in a couple of variations, then let's go ahead and walk through those now.

So one thing that I really have been enjoying doing lately is throwing in a G sharp in the B part.

So you'll notice in the fast version I do, I just think it has this nice little lift in the tune.

So what I'm doing there.

So just playing 1G sharp at that little.

Also really great exercise for intonation with your third finger because you have to move it right back down to a D natural.

So you're doing this little kind of back and forth with your third finger.

So that's just a fun variation you can throw in.

I'll put it in a couple times in the B part here in the medium version so you can see if you can catch those.

And the more you watch it, the more you can anticipate what I'm doing there.

and then there's a couple other triplet patterns that I might throw in as well.

So I think you'll be able to hear those in the fast version.

And I might throw a couple in here too.

So let's go a little bit faster now.

1, 2, 1 and 2.

Sam.

Okay, if you have any questions on this tune, let me know.

Be happy to answer.

I'll see you in the next video.