Ducks on the Pond (Red Clay Ramblers)
There is a little drainage pond in my neighborhood, a spot where it must have been too marshy to put any houses when the area was developed. Now that I have kids, we visit it a lot and we watch for when the ducks come back in the spring. This year when noting the arrival of the ducks, I remembered hearing of a tune with this title and decided to learn it.
Here is some background. Many people learned the tune from the Henry Reed field recording, which was made by Alan Jabbour in 1966 (just two years before Reed’s death). The tapes were made at Jabbour’s own expense (a labor of love it seems) and he took them to the Library of Congress where they were added to what is now the Folklife Center collection. On the Folklife website I also came across a mini-lecture by Jabbour on Reed’s bowing style and what he feels is unique about the fiddling of the upper South. It is just 5 minutes and you can really see how deeply Jabbour has studied Old-Time music. I was especially interested to learn that he considers both syncopated slur patterns and anticipating the down beat to be key features of the area. Another Folklife article I found states that syncopated slurring may have originated in that area in the early 1800’s but eventually did move Westward across the country.
I have transcribed the Red Clay Ramblers version, which is very close to Henry Reed’s, which you can see here.
Notes on Playing the Tune
I would pay a lot of attention to how the quarter notes are sounding. In order to be rhythmic, we don’t want them too legato. Instead, use plenty of speed at the start of each, and make a slight separation between them. Use enough weight on the string to get a crisp articulation. (In the lecture I mentioned above, Jabbour talks about the sounds at the beginning of the stroke as noise and says we need a balance of noise and notes.)
You can, of course, leave out the lower notes of the double stops at first.
Try to bring out the syncopation created by the bowing in measures 13, 14 and 16.
Remember to use a fast bow speed on the down bows before the slurs in measures 2 and 5. This gives you enough room for the up bow slur, which will travel back to near where you started, but with a slower speed (since it is 3 times as long).
Here is the Red Clay recording.
If you’d like to hear some other versions, you can hear a few (including Henry Reed) at the Slippery Hill site.