Learning "Sally Gardens" by Ear

Hey friends - in this video we are learning the common Irish reel "Sally Gardens" by ear! This lesson is suitable for anyone who wants to learn the tune, regardless of instrument. We will work mostly with our voices, but at the end I also do a quick demo of the tune on the zouk, tuned GDAD.

[@FBrigdon]

Good stuff! Thank you, sir!

[@JulieKGardner]

I found this very helpful. Thank you. I look forward to applying these ideas and thought patterns. You do address the pentatonic a lot. What are your thoughts on the Dorian and mixolydian modes in Irish music? I feel like I hear it a lot, or is some of it just pentatonic because it skips the 7th altogether? (Of course, this tune has a major 7th note so it isn't Mixo).

[@KevinElamMusic]

You're totally onto something. Irish music uses four "full" (seven-tone or "heptatonic") modes - Ionian (major), Aeolian (natural minor), Dorian, and Mixolydian. However, as you hint at, many tunes are missing either one or two of the seven tones, rendering them either Hexatonic (six tones) or Pentatonic (five tones). But as you might imagine, there are different modes of these two classes as well - technically there are six hexatonic modes and five pentatonic modes, one for each potential starting note. The fun thing is that when you're dealing with one of the partial modes, technically, you can choose your own adventure when it comes to how to fill in the "missing" notes. For example, if we are dealing with the "major" pentatonic mode 12356, we often assume that it has to be Ionian major, but technically it could also be Lydian or Mixolydian, depending on how you fill in the 4th and 7th. (There is also always a technical fourth option which is not a church mode - meaning it's not a transposition of the others - in this case with the raised fourth and lowered seventh, which is called lydian dominant. It's the mode you hear in the Simpsons theme song!) The same thing is true for the second mode of pentatonic - 1245 b7. It can be Aeolian, Dorian or Mixolydian depending on whether you choose major or minor for the third & sixth. (And similarly, if you want to get really wild, you could even generate the non-church fourth mode [12345 b6 b7] but you might get kicked out of the session.) Fun!