Soldier's Joy

I picked up the basics of this old fiddle tune from my banjo bible and then trawled Youtube for variations and a sense of the tune. It seems like it's the Cripple Creek of C tuning and once you have the bouncy nature of the fingering its a great and relatively simple tune to relax into and enjoy to play. It follows the AA BB stucture of many banjo tunes derived from fiddle music and I play it capoed at the second fret raising the C tuning (gCGCD) to play in the the key of D (aDADE)

Oh Joy!

We had a go at Soldier's Joy the other night with and without the young'uns. Carl was playing mandolin and it worked best in D so at first I had the banjo tuned in C and capoed at the first fret, but it sounded a big clunky with guitar as well. So I tried it G tuned and capoed up to the 5th! which sounds very high and strange but seemed to work well with the mando and guitar, so I think that's how we'll try it at the moment.

Here's Soldier's Joy in G capoed at the 5th ie in D.

I wanna be... Aunt Bertha