Click here to jump straight to the TAB.
Fiddle tunes are funny things. No one really knows where a lot of them came from, not specifically anyway. If you look into the histories, the only dates you are likely to find are for first documented recordings or a first copyright for the sheet music. Actual origin stories, if there is even an attempt, are rarely more precise than, “Likely evolved in Ireland/France/Wherever during the 17/18/19th century.”
So it goes with “St. Anne’s Reel,” a staple of fiddle players just about everywhere. The only definite thing we can say is that it was first recorded in Canada in the early 1900s. Before that, the tune probably didn’t even have a name. It was just a part of the musical vocabulary, an idea that floated around, with musicians learning it by ear and tweaking it to their liking over and over.
New musicians tend to think of music as this concrete, permanent thing. You learn a song as it is written, with the end goal of playing it perfectly before moving onto the next piece. And while that may be the way things are taught in some genres, folk musicians tend to take the core melody of a tune and then run off in their own direction with it.
The way I play “St. Anne’s Reel” today is not the way I played it when I first learned it. The places where I add emphasis and embellishments have changed and will continue to change the more I play it. Don’t be afraid to vary a tune once you have it down. Have fun with it. That’s the whole point.
“St. Anne’s Reel” Playing Tips
Quick Note: The performance structure for reels (and most folk pieces with A and B sections) is generally AABB. Also, I’ve transposed the song to the key of G as the original key of D does not work well on ukulele.
I spent a good bit of time honing this arrangement of “St. Anne’s Reel” to make it accessible to a relative beginner while keeping the character of the tune intact. There’s a lot more empty space here than you will find in most other arrangements or pretty much any recording.
That said, there are still a lot of notes here. Keep that BPM low until you can play the piece smoothly. If you jump up in tempo too early, you’ll find your fingers getting tangled, and progress will grind to a halt.
A Note on Fingering
You’ll notice that the first fret isn’t used at all in this song. Keeping your hand in “first position” with your four fingers assigned to the first four frets doesn’t make a lot of sense, then. You’ll never use your index finger, and your pinky will get more of a workout than necessary. Instead, shift up a fret with your four fingers covering frets 2-3-4-5.
Pay special attention to measure 12, where the 7th fret makes an appearance. On a mandolin, where I first learned this tune, the frets are a bit closer together, and covering a six-fret span without moving your hand is standard practice. I can manage this same stretch on my tenor uke, but it’s not at all comfortable.
I tend to shift my whole hand up quickly just for measure 12 with my four fingers covering frets 4-5-6-7. My index finger drifts back to grab the 3 at the end of the measure, and then I reset my whole hand back to the 2nd fret at the beginning of measure 13 to finish out the section.
I didn’t include notation for recommended fingering in the music because I know everyone’s preference will be different based on hand size and the size of your uke.
Click the link or the ‘Download’ button below to see the sheet music if your browser doesn’t display the embedded PDF. Happy picking!
Leave a Reply