I’m looking for a good recording of this tune…or an MP3. Preferrably one with a whistle, but I’ll take whatever I can find.
Thx,
Tyg
Hi Tyg,
Oddly I was trying this one out for the first time ever at lunch today.
I think I can email you a .wma of it tonight. It’ll be on a fiddle though (and not me playing, but Pete Cooper).
Tommie Potts. And Sean Keane on the Fire aflame, playing Potts’ version ofcourse.
Thanks…spelling has been corrected (I knew that! but my fingers were in a french sorta mode and the e sorta popped on by itself)
Peter, i’'l go looking for the Sean Keane recording. Do you have a name of a CD with Tommie Potts?
I’m giving up on trying to learn Farewell to Ireland…or is it Farewell to Erin? anyway, the tune that starts with that rumbly low A. The tune doesn’t seem to survive moving the notes up an octave and I’d rather not play it and just sit back and listen to the fiddles. but maybe Lads of Laois could be fussed with and still sound good.
Raising the whole first half of the first part of Farewell to Ireland makes it very simple, obviously they lowered it for the fiddle in the first place to get the low effect . You’ll have more of a job making the Lads sound convincing. Sent you clip. 
Lads of Laois sounds a bit silly when you play it solo on the whistle, whatever you do with it, because of the octave jumping.
You can do something like this with the first bit
eB B2 EGFE | dA A2 DEFD | GE E2 EFGA …
although there a lots of other choices as to which notes to bump up or not to bump up.
Played with other instruments it still tends to sound a little silly since you drop from above to burble away on your first octave B - fully two octaves above the fiddles - before disappearing into the inaudible range. It sounds as though someone has let a monosyllabic canary into the room. The tune is much more convincing played on a flute.
On whistle, if you wanted to get the low notes, and you’re not scared of high ones, you could transpose it into A fingering and play it on an A whistle, on which it would come out in E, if you see what I mean. You would however have to do a fair bit of high c-nats and top ds in the second part.
Peter, could you email me your clip, pretty please? Never heard of that tune but it sounds interesting.
Here’s a clip of how it could sound played on a whistle. I played it relatively slowly to help tune learners…but maybe not slowly enough!
http://www.firescribble.net/Laoise3.mp3
(approx 1 megabyte MP3 file).
I’m afraid that doesn’t sound silly enough Brad - better try again! 
Now don’t tell me you haven’t heard that tune Az!
That’s great, thanks a lot for posting this. I wish those of you who know how to play with good rythm would post clips like this more often. It’s not only a pleasure to listen to, but a good example of what the music (and a whistle) can sound like when it’s played right. It shows that it doesn’t have to be fast or fancy, if it’s got the rythm it’s a delight to the ears.
Well, I’m glad you liked it but for me it’s just one more reminder that I have to re-learn how to do rolls on B and A. There are lots of short rolls on those two notes in this tune, and while the technique that I use for them works okay on the flute, it really does not on the whistle, you can’t hear the taps. I got the very first B roll to sound about right, but things kinda fell apart after that…
I think what’s even more impressive with Brad’s playing is his phrasing. He’s the Phrasing God, if there’s one Too bad for you guys, only folks in Montreal usually get to hear him 
Yeah…rub it in whydoncha! I used to be fortunate enough to run into Brad now & again at sessions in Greenfield, MA at the People’s Pint before he moved north. Great guy, great musician.
Cheers,
David
Thanks, Az, I can always count on you to pour gasoline on the dry brush of my ego
And David, good to hear from you! Hope you’re doing well out there in Glaow-stah!
Having just spent a half-hour listening to the various recordings I have of this tune (Aggie Whyte, Tommy Potts, John Vesey, Siona), I realize that I’m missing an important little bit at the end of the A part the first time around – I’m playing the end of the A part the same both times, with the BCD triplet, but in fact there’s a different ending to the A part the first time through. If I have time I’ll record it again later today.
If you listen closely to my MP3 you’ll hear that the B part is also different the second time through; that was intentional as I usually hear it played that way, although Aggie Whyte played it the same way both times through.
Okay, I posted a new recording of this tune that has the A part correctly now:
http://www.firescribble.net/Laois4.mp3
(roughtly 800 K MP3 file)
-Brad
Thanks to those who sent or posted clips. Something to strive for!
Tyg (who is going back to practice)
Oh man Brad that’s great!
This is reminding me that Tom M. did a very nice rendition of your Road to
Crispendale on Sat. (If you are still in clip mode, post that one too!)
Lesl
btw I found I had a transcription of this for flute - not that it was asked for
but here it is anyway - little bit different to Brad’s. In my stack of tunes I
don’t yet play!
X:47
T:Lads of Laois, the
R:reel
S:Gordon Turnbull (Edin., Scotland)
H:Originally Scottish: “The Lads of Leith”
Z:Lesl from Gordon Turnbull, Flutility - side A #4
M:C|
K:Edor
eBAB EFFE|dA~A2 DEED|GEED EFGA|B2eB dBAF|
eBAB EFFE|dA~A2 DEED|E2Be dBAF|DEFA BEE2:|
|eB~B2 effe|defa gfed|(3Bcd ef g2 ge|fagf {f}gfed|
efed BAFA|BEED Bcd2|gbge fafd|efed BAF{A}B|
|eBAB egfe|defa gfed|(3Bcd ef g2 ge|fagf {f}gfed|
eEeB GBFB|EB (3B/c/B/ A Bcd2|gbge f2fd|efed BAFB|E8||
Don’t forget that Brad would probably play the tune a little bit differently three times through if he were playing it in a session, thus the beauty of not depending on sheet music. I know, I know, there I go again 
Well, I’m glad someone’s still playing that tune, since I sure am not! That’s from another lifetime.
I did actually record it for someone else recently, so I’ve posted that too:
http://www.firescribble.net/RoadtoGlencripesdale.mp3
Note that the title is The Road to Glencripesdale. It’s more of a Scottish tune than an Irish one; I composed it in 1986, after a long and very bumpy January drive down a single-track road to Glencripesdale, a large coastal estate in Argyll not far from Strontian. Sarah Bauhan and Bob Abrams recorded a slow version of this reel on Sarah’s Broad Waters CD; she learned it from Chris Abell, who used to play it with me.
That road is really meant for Land-Rovers, but I drove it in a tiny rented Fiat. I scaped over a few boulders that flattened out the exhaust system a bit, a very memorable experience.