Here’s the tune: http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/4160
I’m curious how to deal with the low C# in this tune. The low C# is there in the first measure and then look at the last measure before it repeats.
How would you handle it? It’s such a pretty tune.
You really have only three options here. Either play the note up an octave, work out some melodic variation that avoids the note, or get yourself an eight-key flute. (Isn’t there a Rudall for sale on this very board right now?) I’d have to hear the tune and play around with it a bit before knowing what I’d do with it myself. But I do have an eight-key flute, so I have a pretty good idea what my solution might end up being.
Anybody have an example of a variation that you could play in a session or by yourself? Something that wouldn’t clash?
Try playing E instead of C#.
Or play the C#, D-E-F# figure up an octave, and drop to the written octave on the A.
Either should work ok.
–James
I haven’t looked at the tune myself, but from first principles I agree with James and John Kerr. First option is to substitute an E. Best option is to get a flute with a usable foot! 
If you’re playing it on your own, a variation that works around the low C# might be more enjoyable, but if you’re playing in a session where there are fiddles, accordions, banjos, or other instruments that can go down below D you can just play the C# an octave higher. There’s an amazing aural illusion that happens when you do this, especially if you blow that note fairly quietly: it blends with the overtones of the other instruments and they make it sound like it’s being played an octave down.
You can hear a great example of this effect on the first track of Kevin Crawford’s CD, In Good Company. In the tune “The Long Drop” (second tune in the set), the fiddle drops down to a B and Kevin plays the B an octave higher. But no matter how closely you listen to it, it sounds like Kevin is playing that low B right along with the fiddle.
I guess my ear isn’t fooled by a high C#. It sounds awful to me, probably because it’s held so long.
I’ll try the E and then maybe just keep quiet when the C# comes up in the session.
I wouldn’t change the C sharp as it seems key to the tune (as a variation, maybe, but otherwise …).
I would either do as James suggests, or being a lazy spud I would probably just take the C sharp and D up and than drop back down to the low E. Being an even lazier spud I might try a long roll on the E, leaving out the succeeding three notes, just to make the jump sound like it was my idea. 
But I don’t know this tune and I certainly wouldn’t do it every time.
If you’re playing with others such a jump should blend in sufficiently; I’ve recently noticed that’s exactly what Mike McGoldrick does on a couple of things on his “Tunes” recording with Sharon Shannon and Frankie Gavin, and hey, if it’s good enough for Mikey …
Trying it from the sheet music, I’d take the fifth..E just doesn’t do it for me…A That’s the ticket ! 
How about …
d|cA~A2 EFAB|cfec BAFA|BF~F2 dcBA|GBAF ~E3d|
cA~A2 EFAB|cfec BAFA|BF~F2 dcBA|EAGB A3||
This is close to Solas’ solution, and it preserves both the C# and the A that Jack likes. 
Dang! My first thought was to put an A roll there, but then I chickened out, especially since the office frowns on one’s whipping out one’s flute to try things. Suppose I could have typed that into skink and played thru headphones, but see my above comment about being a spud.
So close, yet so far.
<does not pass Go, does not collect $200 Olwell bamboo flute>
BTW, what is it with women’s names and dropping below the bar line? Alice’s Reel in Em is another.
Hey, one more thought – reset it in a different key and get your session to learn it in the new key. That’s always good for a few laughs, especially if it turns the tables on the stringed folk.
Or you could learn the Fiddle. 
I would be inclined to play it an octave up, I don’t play the tune but there are two tunes in A that I do play with low C#s and I play them up the octave. If you are by yourself it will be much more noticable than when playing with others.
Fiddlers like to write tunes to impress chicks. In baseball, they say that chicks dig the long ball. In ITM, apparently chicks dig the low G string. As a flute player, I’m still trying to figure out what I can do about that one myself…