Perhaps MT Guru meant to write that tunes generally perceived to be Irish jigs tend to be Irish in origin, whereas many of the best and most well-known Irish reels are derived from Scottish tunes. I don’t think he meant to suggest that the Scots didn’t have many jigs. Most of the jigs that you list are little played outside the Scottish piping scene, although you would be surprised at the number of people who think G.S. MacLennan’s “Jig of Slurs” is a traditional Irish tune.
http://www.mally.com/results.asp?CategoryID=1
i love the two books produced ‘the shaskeen ceilidh band’ (available from the above)
something i’d like to see is bands like altan and cran putting arrangements of the tunes they play on their websites, which would be really helpful with the more obscure tunes or just with unusual settings of common tunes
Yes, thanks SP. Exactly.
After hunting around,
I bought a few things from the music shop.
This one:
This is a collection from the Turoe Stone Collection by Vincent Broderick.
They are easy and playable, but getting it into ‘ITM’ mode is going to be tricky.
I bought Volume 1 and I think it is miles better than the Mel Bay ones, but it still don’t feel right.
Has anyone got experience of Brodericks’ Irish Flute Solos Vol II; 110 Sessions Tunes, Francis O’Neill’ classic collection of Jigs or Levey’s collection of 200 tunes?
I can’t afford to buy them all, and would like to pick one volume at a time.
I think you should just get Brid Cranitch’s colour coded books and learn the tunes in them. Or something like them, something easily accessible. Levey’s or O’Neill’s are not going to do much for you at this stage, even though they are classic collections.
Alternatively, you can ofcourse sit down with your favourite CD and learn all the tunes on it. At least you’ll be able to hear what you’re aiming for.
Oh, I get it now: Irish jigs tend to be written from within the Irish tradition, while Scottish jigs tend to be written from withing the Scottish tradition. 
I’ve met more than a few people who think Lord Gordon’s is a traditional Irish reel too… And Clumsy Lover.
I do find it interesting how so many people in the Irish scene seem to have an active hostility towards sheet music. In highland piping the music isn’t really so far removed from ITM, and we learn new tunes almost exclusively from sheet music. I can only conclude that both methods work and a musician should take advantage of all the available tools.
You’re really not addressing the WHY of there being two camps, and the answer is simple: their goals for playing in the trenches. GHB playing is primarily a band thing and tight unison is the prescribed mode. For that, you need sheet music to get the prescription right. OTOH Irish music, which is to say Pure Drop Irish music, is invariably defined as needing no more than one musician, with individual expression and variation held up as things absolutely to be cultivated. Only an ITM musician with enough experience will be able to get a tune from sheet music and give it the life it deserves from there, but better to listen, to HEAR how other people express their takes on a tune, and learn or make other choices thereby.
Of course there are the counter-examples of Irish céilí band playing which at its best is true unison and tight as a drum, and solo GHB playing which has plenty of room for individual expression. I daresay that if I were to play in the former I would want sheet music in order to be able to do the lock-step thing, and in the latter case it seems to me I would want to listen to many others for the reason of tasting the breadth of the GHB solo tradition, and thus to eventually find my own voice thanks to aurally experiencing the individual nuances other players bring to it.
For tight band playing, sheet music is a necessity. For individually expressed playing such as ITM usually is, sheet music is really only like a genome. A genome of a bird is not the bird itself.
I don’t think that’s the case. First, I don’t agree that Highland piping is primarily a band thing. Sure, there are pipers who play primarily in bands, but there are also pipers who never play in bands. Piobaireachd is almost never played by a band. In the Eastern United States Pipe Band Association there are 1,300 pipers registered as solo competitors.
Contrary to your perception, we don’t need the sheet music to get the tight unison. That comes from practicing together. That aspect of musicianship is no different for a pipe band than it would have been for (i.e.) the Bothy Band (who had exceptional unison).
I do, however, agree 1000% that a person can’t take sheet music for a reel and play it in an authentic Irish style without being one with the style. The same thing is true for highland pipe music. If you handed highland pipe sheet music, even for a simple tune, to someone who didn’t know the style, it wouldn’t sound any more like highland pipe music than if you gave that same person your reel.
Back to band unison and style – say our pipe major (band leader) hands out music for a reel and tells us to memorize it and be ready to play it in two weeks. So we all go and memorize it, and it and two weeks we sit around a table with our practice instruments and take turns playing it. If there are 7 pipers at the table, there will be 7 different versions of the tune. We’ll all have the same notes and ornaments, but we’ll all be playing a bit differently. Slightly different phrasing, etc.
Interestingly, bands, in general, seem to have far greater scope for creative expression than solo pipers.
No matter what kind of music you play (Irish, Scottish, blues, classical, funk, rock, whatever), you can’t get the style from the dots – that only ever comes from listening.
And I did mention the solo piping tradition, as I recall. I would be interested to know the proportion of band players to solo players in the EUSPBA.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. You can’t have unison without consensus. Sheet music takes care of that issue the quickest. Then, as you so rightly say, the rest is practice.
You’re talking about competition flash, though, right? All the same it’s unison playing other than hamony sections and such, but everyone’s as one, and the tighter the better. That still doesn’t change. Put two or three ITM players to perform together and often as not they take no thought of needing to modify their particular individualisms. Whatever the Bothy Band may have done, in ITM as a general rule that kind of “tight” isn’t an aesthetic necessity, or a norm. The Irish céilí band style, for example, stands out as an exception to the usual.
good luck with that one bucko
Guess I know which lot you play with. 
haven’t played with 'em in ages 
You still got fleas. 
That would be tricky to come up with. There are 193 bands registered, so guessing there might be 1500 pipers in those bands could be reasonable. And a fair portion of the two groups overlaps. Then you’d have the issue of which do those pipers put more emphasis on, the band or the solo.
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You’re talking about competition flash, though, right?
Just in general. It’s part of the culture. Bands have more latitude for creativity than individuals. Even more in a concert setting than in a competition.
Which style is Brid Cranitch’s set? Or maybe his colour coded books encompasses them all?
I like Brodericks’ East Galway style. That is the only style I really want to get into.
Most of the music I like, was live music played in pubs in Galway; Clare and Mayo. I never had the nerve to stop the band and ask what they were playing. The flute (played live) has a gorgeous resonance which CD/iTunes/record just does not capture. The majority of live flute music is far preferable to recorded music for me.
The other problem is, my Irish flute budget has seen the cost of the flute I’m hankering for, rocket beyond my limit, so I’m going to have to save. I figure I’ll just settle for Brodericks’ Volume II and see where that takes me. I checked out the library, and they have none of these recommendations 
I’ll second on the Breathnach books. The integrity is complete in them, the author did his very best to be accurate. The updated ONeill’s is a bit of a time capsule, in the sense that many of the tunes in there have evolved a bit, so both their titles and execution are kinda different than today’s norm. . In both cases, they will not include many new trad tunes that you encounter on modern recordings, because of copyright, etc.
I think a person who really wants to use notation is better off spending time using your computer and the ABC system than buying a lot of books that are often sloppily compiled, weirdly notated for ornamentation, or not at all. With ABC tunes, like Henrik Norbeck’s, the compiler has worked pretty hard to notate a specific version, told you what it is. Same goes for The Session web site, where you can get ABCs or a pdf. Seriously, don’t waste your money or time on the Mel Bay’s, unless you enjoy marking them up after countless hours of listening to recordings and realizing their deficits. I have a big pile of books, but my pile of ABC printouts are what I actually use when I’m trying to get a handle on a tune and reconcile it to what I hear on the recordings..The Breathnach and ONeills are the only books I bother looking at anymore.
If you hear a tune on a recording, want to learn it, and want notes to it, you’ll find it faster in ABC than in any book, unless it’s a specific folio of a specific artist, like the Liz Carroll book mentioned above. I haven’t seen it, but I assume its a careful transcription book of her versions.
The best function of the books is if you are a good reader and just feel like looking at tunes you have never encountered in any real session or recording. then you have to count on your native impulses and experience about the tunes to apply phrasing and such.. I have found tunes in ONeills that I just love but have rarely or never heard them live or on any record. It’s actually frustrating, because you want to share them, but because people haven’t heard them, they aren’t as interested.
Thanks for the input.
I’ve just received my copy of the O’Neill’s tome.
I was shocked that it was published by Mel Bay! But when I opened it - I’m amazed at how many tunes are recorded in it. I’ve yet to plough through it, but I suppose, it will be a better start than just trying to figure out what i’m hearing.
The Slow Airs book I ordered also arrived. I’m finding this one more exciting already - it’s much thinner than the O’Neills. Perhaps after these two, I’ll take up your recommendation for the Breathnach. I can see why the O’Neill’s is so famed on these forum pages. It makes sense, given that its cost is really good compared to other much slimmer and slight collections from the same Mel Bay catalogue.
It’s the O’Neill’s 1001 you’ve got? The 1907 facsimile edition was published by Waltons in Dublin, then re-published by Mel Bay. My copy actually has Mel Bay stickers simply pasted over the Waltons imprints.
Mine also has a curious little imprint, at the bottom right of the back cover, which states “Guaranteed Irish”. Good to know!
I endorse pretty much everything Weekenders says in the above post. The Norbeck ABCs in particular are as good or better than any printed resource.
As others have said, as long as you focus on the question “What book(s) to get”, you truly have the cart before the ITM horse. Think of the dots as snapshots of someone else’s holidays. They can give you a static idea or impression of what a place is like, as seen through someone else’s lens. But they’re no substitute for experiencing the place for yourself. Especially not when the living tradition is out there, and accessible at least via recorded sound and video as a much closer approximation of the real thing.
For experienced players, tune collections are a handy reference once you’ve internalized a very clear understanding of what they represent. But they won’t lead you to that internalization in the first place.
Mine is the O’Neill’s Music of Ireland - Eighteen hundred and fifty melodies’ edition.
I see that Mel Bay is actually, only the distributor rather than editor. That probably explains why this one is the one that got away
From the usual Mel Bay quality
Mine definitely doesn’t say guaranteed Irish. It says ‘Visit us on www.melbay.com’.
MT- you might not have picked this up…I’ve said so elsewhere.
I spent my life growing up in Ireland. All those years there never led me to internalising any of it.
I’m honestly that thick when it comes to ITM. As for recorded music … hmmm.
The title of her book is “Collected.” The website says it has 185 tunes that she’s collected over the years (including her own compositions, which I’d guess number somewhere around 50). She used to have her tunes in manuscript on her website – they’re just the bare notes like you’d get in O’Neils. Haven’t seen the book though.