As mentioned in my long post, I’ve started practicing playing songs all legato using cuts for articulation. I started by studying Brother Steve’s pages about this, and now I’m looking for songs to practice it on.
Mary Had a Little Lamb sounds really dorky played this way, so I’m looking for easy Irish tunes with repeated notes to “cut apart”-- suggestions?
Noel
This may not be right, as I can’t bring the tune to mind at the moment, but Swallowtail Jig is sticking out as one that might help you.
You will want to learn cuts not only to separate same-pitch notes, but also to accent notes that are preceded by a note of a different pitch.
That said, why not try Lucy Farr’s (a barndance):
X:1
T:Lucy Farr’s
R:Barn Dance
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:G
DE/F/|G2 G2 G2 G2|GABG E2 D2|B2 B2 B2 B2|BcdB A3 A|
BcdB G2 G2|GABG E2 D2|DEGA BddB|A2 G2 G2 
A2|BcdB G2 G2|GABG E2 D2|DEGA BddB|B2 A2 A3 A|
BcdB G2 G2|GABG E2 D2|DEGA BddB|A2 G2 G2
You can copy and paste that here to see dots:
http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html
You might get further recommendations for jigs (like the Swallowtail Jig), with those typicall jig figures: One note, followed by two same pitch notes, like GEE BEE | GEE in the Swallowtail. But I’d be careful using those to practice cuts, because you rarely would hear cuts used there by a traditional player (in my limited experience). You’d either get tonguing, as in slur-tongue-tongue, as Bro Steve recommends, or you hear the Cathal McConnell approach: to separate the two repeated notes with a tap (aka strike). That has the advantage of giving you the option of putting a cut on the next note, which will be on the beat, of course. If you want to practice taps/strikes with cuts like that, I’d recommend a tune like the Lilting Banshee.
Hello, Squid Girl! Send my regards to Octopus Boy.
Start calling them tunes, not songs. This is important. Learn the vocabulary or people won’t help you as much.
Read through the ornamentation pages in Brother Steve’s Web site. There are a lot of examples there, including the dots and MP3s. That’s the site where i learned all i know about playing Irish music.
Good luck!
g
hehehe. 
What? Do you expect me to read these posts before replying? 
OK, i’ll go find a nice piece of rope to shoot myself on the foot with. 
Does the Bro really have Mary Had A Little Lamb as exercise? 
Quality control must be slipping there! 
That’s on the agenda, but it seemed sensible to try learning 'em as punctuation before I started using them as decoration. At this point I’m happy if they sound at all crisp, and somehow using 'em as punctuation between notes seems to help me from turning them into recorder-style grace notes.
You can copy and paste that here to see dots
I’m already totally addicted to BarFly. Seldom do I bond with a piece of software so quickly and completely! When I get burnt out on practicing, I’ve been using it to enter songs from the Appalachian folk song collections I got from the library.
BTW, thanks for all the great suggestions on what contexts might be appropriate for using this stuff.
From a safe distance, perhaps. He’s got those creepy suction cups all over his arms…
Read through the ornamentation pages in Brother Steve’s Web site.
Y’know, I just knew someone was gonna say that…
You may be beyond this point, but I found “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” to be a great tune for practicing cuts and taps between same-pitch notes!
I’d read Brother Steve’s or whatever else, but I wouldn’t get too fixated with this whole issue. I’m not recommending you ignore ornamentation, but if you did ignore it, it wouldn’t matter a whole heap. Having wasted too much time on this issue myself, my recommendation to you is to learn to play tunes first, ornamentation second. If you ultimately end up playing in public it will be in sessions, and few will notice whether you ornament or not.
This question was really an offshoot of my tonguing question in another thread, and the quest to make my tune playing more pleasing to listen to. As I mentioned in the other thread, I’d just started taping myself, & I sound just like a kid playing recorder, so I want to introduce more legato fluidity into my sound, now, before this recorder style “tooting” becomes even more habitual than it already is. I’m thinking that practicing more legato with cuts on repeated notes would be a good first step toward acquiring more fluid sound. So the goal isn’t really to learn “ornamentation” in the decorative flourish sense – I just want to learn modes of articulation that don’t sound so “toot-toot-tooot-y”.
If you ultimately end up playing in public it will be in sessions, and few will notice whether you ornament or not.
Not sure about that – my mental “goal image” isn’t one of playing in sessions. Instead, it’s an image one of myself sitting in the park under a tree, playing traditional songs… or pulling the whistle out of my bag when I’m waiting around for someone downtown, or waiting at a bus stop, ticket line, etc. So my goal is just to sound pleasant enough playing alone that innocent bystanders won’t be stuffing their fingers into their ears in auditory self-defense…
Nope, that’s one of the tunes I was working on last night. I’ve flipped right back to the front of my tutorial books, and starting over from zero, only trying to introduce a more legato w/ cuts style into my playing.
Bill Ochs starts you off with Tarmon’s Polka (in the Clarke Tinwhistle Tutor). Very easy, but it’s not the most melodically varied tune.
I found that “Ballydesmond Polka #1” from the Walton’s Ireland’s 101 Best Tinwhistle Tunes book was another easy one. (I won’t attempt to ABC the whole thing, but it starts out “EAAB|Cd2e”).
When you get a bit further along, I found A Dossan of Heather by Packie Manus Byrne (assembled by Brother Steve) was a real help - 85 good tunes, with (mostly simple) ornamentation given & an accompanying CD (less than half the tunes from the book, but a good sampling).
Of course, I’ve got a good long ways to go, too - my cuts and taps are getting decent, I think, but my rolls - well, 
Try the Ten Penny Bit.