|
Peggy
O'Neil
(1921)
Music and lyrics:
H.Pease, E.G.Nelson and G.Dodge
Arrangement: Ruth
Randle
Harry
Pease and Edward Nelson worked together as a team for
over twenty years while composing popular music, most of
which was intended for public performance on the
Broadway stage and in vaudeville. Peggy O’Neil
was such a tune. Although popularized as a song
performed by American-Irish tenors, it was equally
popular as a dance tune and parlor tune. Very little
biographical data are available except for the record of
their music. The one selected for this month was perhaps
their most successful.
♫♫♫
Peggy
O'Neil is one of those tunes that has a bouncy, uncomplicated
rhythm in combination with cheerful, spirited lyrics. It
quickly catches both the ear and the heart of the
listener. Musically, its melody requires only one or two
chromatic notes, and the accompaniment chords are mostly
of the I, IV, V and V7 variety, with a couple of minors.
It was chosen as an excellent example of what can be
done with a 1-3-5 tuning to simplify the fingering
patterns required, and also to transpose keys if
desired. For that purpose we have listed below the
music/tab and sound files for arrangements both in the
keys of D and G, using the familiar D-F#-A tuning. If
you were tuned to F-A-C instead, the playable keys would
be F and Bb.
You
will find that the arrangement in D can be played almost
entirely within the range between the open strings and
fret 4 (something like when we learned Bile Them
Cabbage Down as beginners, except that here we use
chord accompaniment). Likewise, the arrangement in G
falls between frets 4 and 7. This feature is a result of
the way the 1-3-5 tuning creates "barre
chords" vertically across each fret. We are
actually playing melody notes here across the
frets as well as up and down the fretboard. This means
much less finger movement and stretching. The ability to
change keys, of course, is the result of the abundance
of chromatic notes on the 1-3-5 fretboard.
Some
readers may recall that Peggy
O’Neil was one of the tunes listed some time ago
on our Bulletin Board, as a challenge to
those wishing to try their hand at arranging the chorus
of the music. Shown here are Ruth's arrangements of the
entire song, in the
keys of D and G. You can link the two versions with
a simple "walkup" progression on the melody
string. The D version ends with 0/0/3. Hold that for 3
beats, then, instead of the tied measure, play 0/0/3 - 4
- 5, leading right into the 3/3/6 chord that starts the
G version.
♫♫♫
Download
links to files:
Key of D:
Peggy O'Neil in D.pdf
Peggy O'Neil in D.tef
Peggy O'Neil in D.mid
Key of G:
Peggy O'Neil in G.pdf
Peggy O'Neil in G.tef
Peggy O'Neil in G.mid
|
|
This website is brought
to you by Merv Rowley,
Ruth Randle, Elizabeth DiPietri, Suzanne Campling and Gail West
Please email
gwest1955@aol.com with any website questions, broken
links, etc.
Copyright © 2006 GMW MarketingPLUS
|
|
