Constant Billy – Basic Lesson

Irish jig in G major
Art of fiddling > Irish & Celtic fiddling

Here’s a fun tune from an album called the Christmas Revels, which is a fun Christmas variety show of songs, skits and tunes. I think this tune is originally an English Morris dance song.

Warm ups:

D3-A1

A1-3

AL2-E0

A0-D3

A PART

First half: (D0)-3-A1-3-1-0-D3-AL2-1-L2-0-D2-0

Second half: A1-0-D3-1-2-3-0-1-2-3

 

B PART

First quarter: (D3)-A1-L2-3-E0-AL2-1-0-1-L2-3-1-D3

Second quarter: A1-L2-3-E0-AL2-1-0-1-L2-3

Third quarter: A3-L2-3-1-0-D3-AL2-1-L2-0-D2-0

Fourth quarter: A1-0-D3-1-2-3-0-1-2-3

Note that the A part is half as long as the B part. Practice the basic rhythm of this tune on an open string. If you know 4th finger, use that instead of E0 in the 1st and 2nd quarters of the B part.

Full Mix

Sheet music

Bowing for this tune

  • Slur 3
  • Slur across strings
  • Mixing slur patterns
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4 responses to “Constant Billy – Basic Lesson”

  1. Nice bouncy little dance tune, and a good “warm-up” tune for G major. The extra bowing tutorial is great, too.
    Unfortunately the “Full Mix” play-along track doesn’t work at the moment. But as Jason kindly provides the chords in the .pdf sheet music it’s easy to set up in Strum Machine.

    1. Hi Nigel, thank you for sharing. I’m glad your feeling it and enjoying this lesson. Thanks for your feedback as well, it greatly helps to be informed when something isn’t functioning. I added an audio version of the full song, which is kept at a decent tempo throughout. We’ll consider adding another full play along track to this with more tempo variances in the future.
      Glad to hear your utilizing strum machine, an efficient means for getting play along tracks happening. Their enhancements to the program lately have been great. Cheers to music making 🎶