I’m looking for a compilation of airs. Any comments on either of the following:
Or any other suggestions?
Thanks and best wishes.
Steve
I have both books and both are excellent. It seems like “Ireland’s Best Slow Airs” have the most usable airs so far. What I mean is, airs that, to me, sound like more than a slow improvisation. However, more trained ears perhaps can tell you more. I would recommend you eventually get both.
Airs are beautiful, and a relief from the “deeddly deeddly deeddly deeddly” of jigs, which can get nerve racking and monotonous.
[the above quote is my daughter’s opinion of my music!].
…and be sure to get both versions with the CD. It’s well worth it to hear the air before trying to use the dots. Airs are very different, and I don’t think I could play many with just the dots.
I’ve been wondering about this too, especially whether that $26 CD was worth it.
Thanks to Steve for posting this topic and to riverman for answering it.
I’m also looking at these two books, do either have anything in the way of chord accompaniment? It would fit in with my dream of having my young daughter, a fledgling guitarist, play along with me.
I’m leaning toward buying “Ireland’s Best Slow Airs” from thewhistleshop.com ($36.10 for both book and CD’s, and better they get the profit than Amazon), but would appreciate if any others have a comment about a favourite between the two.
Last, I’m looking for recommendations for an inexpensive whistle mainly for playing slow airs. I’m still liking my Oak D better than my Susato VSB D or Jerry Freeman tweaked Sweetone, but am looking to add another whistle or two to my arsenal.
Any and all help is appreciated, thanks!
I have that “Ireland’s Best Slow Airs (Ireland’s Best Collection) published by Mel Bay” book.
I’d strongly recommend you don’t waste your money on it. The versions are pretty bad, and generally have no relation to what’s actually played by traditional players.
There’s much to be said for listening to singers sing the songs and learning them that way. I practise what I preach, just learned two this weekend from singers. I was actually learning the songs to sing though, so learning the air on the pipes / whistle was just a side benefit really…
I would say for the price they’re asking, you’d be far better off spending it on really good recordings to learn from. Most good recordings have songs or slow airs on them, but some recordings with a more concentrated amount would be:
Singing:
Any of the Voice of the People recordings, but for Irish singing you’d want to focus on the more Irish ones!
Celtic Mouth Music (although it’s not just irish)
The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin (although she does things like lullabies and dance music and I think some lilting too)
Seamus Fay - Cavan’s Lilter (I just discovered this recording, and it’s really amazing. I just learned the May Morning Dew from him!)
Instrumental
Seamus Ennis (any, but especially Return From Fingal, which has him singing and then playing various songs)
Willie Clancy (any)
Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford (any, Kerry Fiddles and Star above the garter both have a few airs)
Ronan Browne: The Wynd You Know (lots of airs)
Mary Bergin Feadóga Stáin and Feadóga Stáin 2
There are tons more of course so this is really just a snap shot of some that I really like or I think would be the most useful.
I should add that I don’t have the other book, but regardless, I think learning airs from books is even more hopeless than learning tunes from books. You really can’t learn them right or very well without hearing how they sound. You’ll end up putting big pauses in the middle of a word, or even syllable, if you follow some transcriptions!
I have the “Traditional Slow Airs” by O’Cannainn and have found it to be very satisfactory for me. I just started whistling 8 months ago, and can certainly go through a majority of the songs. I will second (or third) the CD versions of the book, because it can help you develop your own style along with them.
O’Cannainn’s book does not have any chord accompaniment on the songs that I can remember. I can’t really speak for an inexpensive whistle to get, but I do have a Clarke (I think it’s the original … it has the black paint and gold diamonds going down the front) that I have trouble with on airs because of breath control. I find that it needs more air and I run out before the phrase ends.
Regarding an inexpensive whistle, you might try a Walton or a Generation. My experience with my personal Walton is that the second octave can be slightly out of tune. Generations can, I’ve found, be hit and miss. However, most of their quirks can be tweaked out. Hope this helps.
What NicoMoreno says is fair enough. What I found was that I recognised the tunes as soon as I had played them. I have the Tomas O Cannainn book. The airs tend to be a bit more ornamented than I would transcribe them myself (if I could). But it’s good. If you can get a couple of recipes worth using from a recipe book, it’s a good one, and if you can get half-a-dozen, it’s a great one. Same goes for tunebooks in my experience. I have more than half-a-dozen from the O Cannainn book.
Hearing how each tune is played, by different people, is sound advice. There are a lot of sound-clips and videos out there on the internetweb, if you can’t get hold of a CD.
I seriously question the value or purpose of any attempt to write out an air in musical notation.
It cannot function as written notation is supposed to: a musician who is a good sightreader cannot read the published version and produce anything remotely resembling the tune.
It’s like any rubato tune: writing out the actual timing would produce something so rhythmically complex as to be unreadable, while on the other hand arbitrarily assigning incorrect note values produces something which has no semblance to the original.
So, forget books and learn airs by ear.
Actually with a computer music program one can, by trial and error, eventually produce a written score which when “read” by the computer produces something pretty darn close to the way the tune sounds, but such a score almost defies sightreading due to its complexity. I did take a couple tunes and transcribe them, but when I show the result to “legit” musicians they say “nobody could read that”.
Perhaps the best way it to write airs out without bar lines with all halfnotes or whatever, admitting that no attempt is being made to capture the timing.
What I found was that I recognised the tunes as soon as I had played them.
That’s the key I think. No doubt you recognized them because you’ve heard them many times. I recognize a lot of the airs now, but it’s strictly from hours and hours of listening! Trying to make sense of the air before having heard it from any book is challenging at best, and at worst, downright impossible.
There are some really dodgy versions in the Mel Bay book, and now that I do recognize airs, I’ve found in looking back at it, that they’re even worse than I initially thought.
Yes, if jigs get deedly they get nerve racking.
However if slow airs get doodly
they get deadly (for the player!)
I wouldn’t get just the book in either case, I was hoping to get the notes from the book, then a feel for the timing and subtleties of playing from the CD. I sight read reasonably well, and don’t tend to learn purely by ear. I certainly need to hear the great players more, and my first move will be to buy a few of the CD’s NicoMoreno recommended.
As for whistles, I’m going to pick up one more Oak D for now, and try my hand at a few of the tweaks I’ve found here. I’d rather not desecrate my current one. They’re the only whistle I can find sold locally and I have a sentimental attachment to them. Searching the forums, they don’t come up in conversation often, but a number of people seem to really like them, especially when tweaked a bit.
Thanks again for all the help!
Oaks are decent whistles. I’ve got a couple and they’re almost up there with the top three. Most important thing is to learn how to play, and until you’ve got a few years of playing in, it doesn’t really matter what whistle you use.
I think there is some value in using sheet music to train your brain to hear what’s going on, but even in dance tunes there’s quite a lot that’s simply not notated, and never will be. Airs are much worse, and probably the only thing notation is good for is a rough (very very rough, in a lot of cases) outline of which notes are played, in a general sort of sequence. Timing is never accurate, and more often than not is misleading, too!
I guess I’d say you should probably steer away from books at all for airs, and even the CDs that go with them aren’t necessarily that good either. Better to listen to excellent musicians play the one air they’re completely comfortable than to listen to a bunch of airs that may or may not be that well executed or that familiar to the musician doing the recording.
Another aspect to it is that if you look at most recordings of good traditional irish music, you’ll find that there’s rarely more than a couple slow airs on the recording. This is because playing slow airs well, and convincingly, is hard! Arguably harder than dance music. Don’t assume that because it’s slow it’s easier!
I’d like to point out here that I’m using the term slow air to refer to a particular style or subgenre if you will of melodies to songs and tunes in a similar style, while air refers to all melodies to songs, or pieces in a similar style. Something like Si Beg Si Mor would not fall under the slow air category, although it is generally referred to as an air. Something like Valencia Harbour / Song of the books is a slow air, when played instrumentally.
Chris Langan, in the book “Move Your Fingers” is quoted as saying something along the lines of “The problem with young players today, and they didn’t have this problem before the gramophone and the radio, is that they hear good players playing difficult tunes well and want to play them right away, rather than learning easy tunes that will make them great players.”
Yes many good points Nico.
When I use the word “air” I don’t mean in the general sense of any tune, but in a narrow sense meaning traditional Irish song-airs, the sean nos airs.
Carolan compositons are not airs. Nor are 1960’s pop songs such as Fields of Athenry. Nor are New York quasi-Irish compositions like Irish Eyes Are Smiling.
All of those non-airs can be played off the written page. Airs cannot.
A great CD to learn airs from is The Ancient Voice Of Ireland by uilleann piper Mick O Brien. It’s an entire CD of airs. I learned My Lagan Love and Roisin Dubh from it.
How about Ragalan Road as sung by Luke Kelly ? The page seems to have a lot missing - better though if its a page with the words.
“Raglan Road”, or infact “Dawning of the day”. 
I think that’s confusing (not that my way isn’t!) because it’s generally accepted by most musicians that the air of a song is the melody of the song. And so any time you play a song instrumentally you’re playing an air.
That’s why I make the further distinction that a “slow air” is the melody to a sean nos or traditional song. Or a piece in that style. The Blackbird may once have had words, but even if not, it’s still definitely a “slow air”. But an air is any melody to a song or any piece that sounds like it could be. O’Carolan compositions, Vaudevillian songs, ballads, even playing the melody of Whiskey in the Jar, these are all playing airs to many people. I think as long as you’re clear it doesn’t really matter, but it’s handy to be able to talk about something more general than just sean nos songs.
I know that this is pretty common in the traditional irish music scene (aka “the culture”), and it’s not something I made up myself.
I’ll go one further and say that I disagree that you can get everything off the sheet from some of these songs. Ballads and vaudevillian songs can still be quite tricky, and should still be learned by ear. Or at least in conjunction with your ears!
Re: Raglan Road: I would never bother learning this one myself, but if it makes you happy go for it. I’m not sure which melody it’s based on, but have a look here for some more information about all the different Dawning’s of the Day: http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/DASH_DAY.htm I play one of the march versions, myself.
The Raglan Road comment was in response to pancelticpiper’s post. The often heard argument for not playing ‘sean nos based’ airs unless you know the language is that the expression of the melody and timing come mainly from the meaning and rhythm of the words. Which is also common with english language folk songs, and I assume in other languages.
I was suggesting Luke Kelly’s version of Raglan Road (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBndHNJoC0k) as an example using a modern (about 1960 I think) song, as someone had suggested it to me There are not many notes to learn by ear, they differ very slightly from any version of Dawning of the Day I have come across in a way that supports the song well, and the rhythm takes many twists that I find are best taken from the words. And if I remember correctly he is singing it in D, which is very handy.
[edit crossed with S1m0n - I was fixing a typo]
The Raglan Road words are by the poet Patrick Kavanagh; I believe the melody is The Dawning of the Day (Fáinne Gael an Lae), which wikipedia claims is a 17th C. harp tune by Thomas Connellan.
Ah yes, I understand now.
Yes, a lot of people reserve the term sean nos for strictly irish language songs, however there are a great many songs in very similar styles in english language. For instance, the Bonny Bunch of Roses as sung by Seamus Ennis and played by Willie Clancy. Seamus Ennis sings an irish language song that is not about Napolean to the same melody (cough or air cough)
So it is the first of the 5 versions as described on the Fiddler’s Companion. I don’t know how close it would be of course. Edit: Checking, I don’t think it is related to any of those versions, really. So I would like more info. It’s actually a nice song now that I’m listening to it. Must have been thinking of a different one, as it wasn’t what I was expecting.
But yes, I’d agree with you david, that to learn it well you’re pretty much going to have to listen to someone singing it. If you can also find someone singing the original (or earlier, anyway) irish version, you can compare the two and get a sense of the differences, even if you can’t understand the meaning of the words.
The thing about listening to it being sung is that you can hear the phrases and the pauses and how the words go together, even if you don’t really understand what the words mean.