A Tune A Week

I have no idea of the name of this. I found it at the whistle forums. I’m playing it on the antique box - listen to all the keys clacking. They are 100 years old, and feeling their age I suppose.

Learned from The Irish Tradition’s recording, where it’s between Congress Reel and Star of Munster. All those A minor B parts are easy to mix up.

Learned from Mary MacNamara’s Traditional Music From East Clare. Can’t find it at Alan Ng’s; he hasn’t indexed Mary MacNamara yet apparently. It’s at thesession.org, listed under the wrong key and (as usual, there) jumbled up with several other tunes that share the name. But the sheet music is right…

From The Corner House, by The Irish Tradition, after much peer urging. I have learned this using a new (for me) G/Am scale: E, G, and d on the left push; F#, A, and e on the left draw; B, f#, and a on the right draw; and c, g, and b on the right push. Actually the only new thing in there for me is the use of the right hand B/c instead of the left hand c/B, but whoa, it’s a doozy.

One I’ve been hearing at McGuinness for ages, and now it’s in my fingers at last.

I’ve learned something which is roughly Mrs. Crotty’s version of this one. She plays it in G, with some tricky triplets and a good bit of octave doubling. It sounds good (when she plays it, I mean!)

Suggested to me the other day, and I found it on a Kevin Burke fiddle CD. Probably the same one that had The Earl’s Chair, now that I think about it. Learning from a fiddle recording is Tricky.

A good one for a bellows-driven instrument, I daresay: I’ve heard it from Dermot Byrne on button accordion, and the Noel Hill/Tony MacMahon duo as well, and both recordings sound great.

The reel. I’ve been promising myself I’d learn this one for at least a year now. My stubborn insistence on sticking to one scale means the A part has 11 bellows changes in two measures the way I’m playing it. In a reel. I’m sure it’s good practice.

Finally… I’ve been promising this one for months. I’m still pretty slow with it, though. I got it from a Kevin Burke album. I often wonder how much difference the source makes - do I play a tune more legato, with more repeated notes and fewer cuts, if I learn it from a fiddle recording? I’m pretty sure so. Anyhow, learning the second part was right grievous.

A four-parter, which I didn’t realize until I already had half of it under my belt. It fits nicely after Ormond Sound, which is where I heard it first.

Or Paddy O’Brien’s. Half a century in the first month of the new year! Minidisc, minidisc… this gadget is very handy. I am using the slow-down feature again - it’ll go from recorded speed all the way down to half in six steps without changing pitch. There are just some digital resampling artifacts to contend with. They are a moderate problem with flutes and a small problem with pipes.