Shady Grove

The narrowest range of the four: a single octave, no shift required anywhere, and a raised sixth that keeps a minor-sounding tune from ever sounding sad.

A modal tune with the narrowest range of the four — one octave, no shift, and a raised sixth that keeps it from ever sounding sad.

This page is a MAP, not a transcription. Traditional tunes have no single correct setting — your version and mine differ and both are right — so publishing one as though it were the tune would be inaccurate and useless. What does generalise across settings is the key, the range, and therefore the geography: where the tune lives under the hand, and what the hand has to do to get it.

Key and range

D dorian, running from D4 to D5 — 12 semitones, which is 8 notes of the mode. The key leaves G, D, A, E open available to ring underneath, which is a large part of why some keys feel generous on this instrument and others feel like work.

Every note, and where it lives

Shady Grove — every note of the tune's mode in range, with its string, finger, and position
NoteWhere it lies
D4open D; G 4 (first position); G 3 (second position); G 2 (third position)
E4D 1 (half position); D 1 (first position); G 4 (second position); G 3 (third position)
F4D 2 (half position); D 2 (first position); G 4 (third position)
G4D 3 (half position); D 3 (first position); D 1 (second position); D 1 (third position)
A4open A; D 4 (first position); D 2 (second position); D 2 (third position)
B4A 1 (half position); A 1 (first position); D 3 (second position); D 3 (third position)
C5A 2 (half position); A 2 (first position); D 4 (third position)
D5A 3 (half position); A 3 (first position); A 1 (second position); A 1 (third position)

What the hand has to do

half position or first position or third position covers the whole tune on its own — no shift is required anywhere. That is worth knowing before you learn it: a tune that needs no shift can be learned entirely as a finger pattern, and a tune that does need one has exactly one hard bar in it.

Take the position tables alongside this, and put the shuffle under it once the notes are secure — a fiddle tune with correct notes and no bowing is a scale exercise wearing a name.