Curious about which tune any of you have marked as the one that would mean, if you could play it, you’re as good as you’d like.
In other words, your toughest tune that you’ve not mastered, but aspire to play.
Share the ABC here!
Mine was/still is Gravel Walk (ala Chris Norman/Matt Molloy), one of the hardest tunes for the flute, especially with ornaments, etc.
“The Contradiction Reel” a 3-part reel where Molloy sends the 3rd part up into the 3rd octave…(how’s that for a trifecta?)
I don’t know if this is the tune that would define me as a good enough player to my own satisfaction, but I sure would like to be able to play the “Salamanca” reel someday. It’s a toughie!
madfifer9
Still working on:
Paganini: solo cappriccios for violin, some of which are quite playable on the flute with some careful arranging.
Oh yeah, and also this trad piece called Tam Lin which sounds kind of like 80s Techno if you play it really fast. Okay, if I have my computer play it really fast. I can’t seem to get the feel of it.
Will be quite happy if I can pull of any of the above with proficiency suitable to a street corner. 
|binary_sunset|
Bach’s Aire in G. Played well, it’s the sound of angels, played by me, it’s a bunch of notes…
Hmm… you know I would be really happy if I could play any one of these:
“Bebop” - the way Dizzy Gillespie plays it
Marin Marais - “Le Tableau de l’Operation de la Taille”
Black Sabbath - “Psycho Man”
Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack - “Tonight I Celebrate My Love”
Charles Mingus - “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” all 4 parts
Clash - “Guns of Brixton”
John Dunstaple - “Veni Sancte Spiritus”
Pizzicato Five - “magic twin candle tale”
Oh… and that set of irish songs they were playing under the deck of the Titanic 
Colonel Frazer - from Conal O Grada’s “Top Of Coom”. It’s got it all, power, drive, the MOST amazing tone, sometimes it inspires, other times it just makes you put your flute away!!
Also, The Gold Ring off Matt Molloy’s eponymous album. While it’s not the most technically difficult, it’s a devil to master. Those crans on low D just kill me. 
Cheers
G
Ríl Bhéara, Dr. Gilbert’s, Bunker Hill…
Best,
N
For me it’s not so much a tune as a style. If I could play ornaments like Chris Norman, or play with the swing of Deirdre Havlin, I’d be happy just to play the simplest tunes.
If I had to choose a tune by each of them that I’d like to play, it’d be the Fairy Queen by Chris and King George by Deirdre.
Bunker Hill’s one of the hardest ones I’ve ever tried (learning it on whistle). You have a good recording to recommend?
Carol
Way back when I learned to play Baroque and Blue by Claude Bolling. That was an achievement since I had to learn it by ear. It took a long time because I had only been playing flute for a year or two. I even learned the basic piano lines.
I havent’ played it in awhile.
I don’t currently have a nemesis of music. Perhaps I’ll find one.
Carol, the only recording I’ve heard yet was, I believe, on an Altan CD somewhere, and played on button accordion. I recall the liner notes as mentioning the setting to be ‘unusual’, but compared to the sheet music I’m using for the bones of it, I don’t find it all that far and away, as memory serves. But my memory is getting dicey these days.
Quite the wild tune, eh? I love it. I’ll rummage around and see if I can find it. A caveat, though: the setting is complex, and might prove difficult for ear-learning.
Best,
N
I’d recommend learning it from the first recording that made it popular: “All-Ireland Champions: Violin,” by Paddy Canny, P.J. Hayes, Peter O’Loughlin, and Bridie Lafferty. It was recorded in 1959 or so; re-released a couple of years ago on CD by Shanachie with the new title of “An Historic Recording of Irish Traditional Music From County Clare and East Galway.” Bunker Hill is on there, and they play it nice and straight. This was, and remains, a very influential album, and is the source of many tunes and sets that remain popular today.
Actually I just checked Shanachie’s site and you can listen to Bunker Hill in RealAudio (it’s the second track on their CD version of the album; the original album’s tracks were ordered differently).
Go here:
http://www.shanachie.com/album.cfm?id=76001
and you’ll see Bunker Hill/ The Bush Reel in the track listing with a Realaudio link next to them.
Thanks, Brad! I’ll be looking for that one.
Bunker Hill is indeed a tricky tune on flute, mainly due to all of those C naturals in the second part that scream out for ornamentation. I was in class with Catherine McEvoy at Gaelic Roots several years back when she asked if there were any tunes that we wanted her to play for us to record. Someone asked for Bunker Hill. She said something to the effect of “Oh, I don’t really play that tune. It’s a very difficult one on the flute.” And then she proceeded to lay down a flawless setting of it for us. She triple-glottal-stopped all the C naturals.
I wouldn’t call this one of my showpiece tunes, but it shows up fairly often at sessions I frequent. If I’m not too many pints into the session I can usually do a halfway decent job of it. For the C naturals in the second part I do a quick C-D-C flick. Seems to work…
Those are excellent solutions to that problem! My own approach is to use short rolls on the C, fingered thusly:
ooo ooo
oxx ooo
oxx xxo
oxx ooo
which of course sounds ridiculous played slowly but passes as a short roll when played at speed. The whole sequence of notes at the beginning of the B part of the tune would be:
oxx ooo (C)
xxo ooo (A)
xxx ooo (G)
oxx ooo (C) --I do a brief glottal stop here)
ooo ooo (C# cut)
oxx ooo (C)
oxx xxo (tap)
oxx ooo (C)
The timing of the above would sound like:
dee-dah-DUM-dah-diddly
With the “DUM” being the G and the following “dah” being the C just before the short roll (the short roll being all the notes that come after the glottal stop), and the “diddly” being the short roll itself.
Since this is an awkward way to explain it, I’ve recorded myself playing this short roll (which admittedly does sound a little wimpy compared with Catherine and John’s solutions).
Here’s a link to an MP3 (about 250k) of me playing the sequence of notes shown above (including the short roll on C):
http://www.firescribble.net/shortrollbunker.mp3
And here’s a link to an MP3 (about 250 k) of me playing the entire B part of Bunker Hill. There’s a bit of reverb on this one, sorry.
http://www.firescribble.net/bunkerhill.mp3
My server seems to be a bit slow at the moment so you may get some skipping at the beginning when you download these; if so, just hit “PLAY” again.
I’ve found that this kind of thinking is a trick that our minds play on us. Everytime I start thinking about a tune like this and finally succeed in getting it down, a new one rises up to take its place. 
Still, I pursue the carrot on the stick - I’d love to play a convincing version of Gravel Walk on my pipes!
There is no one tune–I just don’t understand
how anybody can play a D flute as fast and
well as it’s played on the CDs I listen to.
Doesn’t seem physically possible.
Gee Dave
Just when a guy is starting to make things work for him on the flute you go and raise the bar. Right now the bar is at my ankles but the flute is getting better every day.
As to a tune that is a challenge or Holy Grail, I just want to play a decent reel/jig/hornpipe etc., at a decent speed and make it sound like something.
But the regime that I have set up for myself to practice one hour every morning before work is really paying off. The simple reel that I can play well is The Bag of Spuds no real challenge but I learned it entirely on the flute without going to the whistle.
I want to be wheezing Geezer!
MarkB
I love learning those screwy fiddle tunes, myself. I find it’s a great way to stretch my technique. My goal right now is to master “The Trip to Galway,” an amazing jig that’s on the new album by Liz and Yvonne Kane. Lots of D minor arpeggios, which means I’m finally having to get comfortable with my long F key. I’m also intent on learning “In Memory of Coleman,” a beautiful G minor reel by Ed Reavy that’s on that same album. I’ve been playing another Reavy tune, “The Road to the Glen,” in E minor, which lays out very nicely on the flute, but since fiddlers play it in D minor I’ve been relearning it in that key. More fun than a bathtub full of guppies.
I’m also slowly working on learning my whole flute repertoire on the button accordion, but that’s beyond the scope of this thread.