Old Yella Dog

Woof! Another favorite tune of mine (well, come to think of it, I wouldn't really be posting tunes I didn't like would I? lol.), Old Yella Dog, is a great cross-tuned tune.

According to Charlie Acuff, (check out the YouTube video below) Old Yella Dog is a civil war era tune. You might even recognize his version of the tune as it follows the same melody as the childhood song, The Old Grey Mare.



The version I have written up is closer to Rayna Gellert's version from her Ways of the World CD. I say 'close' because Rayna is an awesome fiddler and I am a total amateur when it comes to learning by ear and transcription, but also because it is simply impossible to catch all of the little grace notes and finer nuances of her playing on paper.

My transcription says Cross G (GDGD) as that is a more common tuning, but it sounds even better, in my humble opinion, in Cross F (FCFC), which I believe, Rayna uses in her version. To play it in Cross F, your fingers will be in the same locations on the fingerboard, just tune down your strings!

I've actually been holding off on posting this, hoping to get it as close to accurate as I can. It's a bit syncopated, so things don't always fall on the beat you might expect they should. As such, please use this (and any transcription that I provide at Fiddler's Folly) as a jumping off point only and modify it to suit your needs or what you hear. (I could very well be wrong after all!)

If you are new to my blog, when a tune is played cross tuned, the transcription indicates this (i.e., TUNING: GDGD). The transcription itself is then written out for actual finger placement on strings tuned to that cross tuning. So, were you to play the actual notes as written and not be in that tuning, well, it will sound like yuck! Just so you know. lol.