I recently made a Cd that can be very usefull and pleasant for people that like to practice and play Irish traditional music (melody-, and percussion instruments)
Being a whistle and flute-teacher, I started to make some percussion tracks at different tempo’s to help my students to maintain the rhythm and the pulse of a jig, reel, hornpipe or polka.
Because they liked it more than a boring metronome, and because they improved their playing, I decided to make this cd, for as far as I know it has not been made before.
There is 40 tracks and every percussion-mix has 4 tempo’s :
tempo 1-2 is very usefull for beginners learning to play a tune and for the timing of rolls ect.
tempo 3-4 is for advanced playing : improve, automise your playing and enjoy the swing playing along with the percussion.
Teachers of traditional Irish music can use this cd too in their lessons and workshops : put on a track/tempo and your students maintain the rhythm and wil not speed up anymore…
If you visit my website you can read and hear more: http://www.fluitpraxis.com or http://www.whistle-flute.com
If you want to buy it you can visit http://www.cdbaby.com
At that website there is 3 cd’s more : Druid Dance (2002) and Nehalennia Suite (2005) and a storycd with my music : Neeltje and Saltbeard
Enjoy it!
Jules Bitter
Ok Peter, its just an aid for beginners and more or less advanced musicians and not for a great dutch musician living in -as I saw on a postcard- “the capital of Irish trad”… and isn’t it fantastic we can all play this music the way we want to play?I hope we will play some tunes together in july…
Yes, but I have some serious doubts, general ones although some of them also apply to this CD, about the avalanche of ‘teaching aids’ that are launched unto the web as websites or DVD/CD’s for sale that aim at helping beginners. Some, and I don’t mean to specifically target this CD with this comment, do more damage than good. Hence the small print.
I agree that these kind of aids never can replace the traditional way of learning : by ear and by some help of an experienced player..
Thats the reason I just use it selective…
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I left it in small print as it was a bit of an afterthought, related to a few e-mails that came in recently about that sort of stuff rather than a direct comment on the CD advertised.
I didn’t however find a lot in the percussiontracks that would help you improve ornamentation (one of the claims made) but maybe that’s just me. It’s also a type of percussion pretty much alien to Irish music although in fairness a few years ago I was playing a quiet few tunes with one of my students one early afternoon during the Willie week when a new age traveller guy stumbled in with a set of African drums. One of these situation where people just sit down and join (never fond of that myself to be honest) anyway he started banging away and in fairness he was bloody good. When the tune was finished I told him so and he said ‘yeah you didn’t expect that did you, I saw you throw up your eyes when I sat down’. You never know do you?
I remember a session some time ago, a reduced group of friends sharing some tunes, then there joined a huge djembe (African percussion) player, a recorder player and a dog. They played with rage for some time and left.
God forgive me, but to tell the truth, the best of them all was the dog.
Good morning Peter.
About “improving ornamentation” : from my teaching experience I can say that a lot of my students improved their playing, in particular their timing of single-, or multi-note ornaments like long rolls, but most of all they just liked to practice with a “virtual percussionplayer in the repeat” now and than, for it gave them motivation to practice longer and more often.
About “alien” : Who is saying that? In other words : you have your (rightfull) view javascript:emoticon(‘:o’)
eekon Irish Trad but it seems you want to be more Irish than the Irish in your messages…
Since the seventies I have seen quite a few Irish musicians introducing and using percussion instruments from other cultures. And what about the Greek bouzouki…? A few hundred years ago the Irish music culture adapted a lot of dance-music from the continent..
About “percussion” used in a session I agree that it should be played carefully and servient and above all, with respect for the tunes.
Yes this type of percussion is alien to Irish music. It’s not the sort of percussion you would often find in settings where Irish music is played.
That you like to include this sort of percussion is another matter and that is fine, you can practice to it all you want, fact remains that if you go out there you’re very unlikely to encounter a situation where you get to play with that sort of percussion. We can go on drawing in fiddles from Italy, concertinas invented by an Englishman or bouzoukis from Greece or whatever widely used instrument you can come up with, , it doesn’t matter. This sort of percussion is not part and parcel of the instrumentation generally associated with Irish traditional music. Neither is the saxophone, even though it gets the occasional outing (and the novelty effect is fun for a while) or the double bass (Paul O Driscoll gets away with it though) or the cello (The Old Ireland Quartet, BowHouse and others not withstanding). It’s not a judgement or opinion but it’s an observation of what you see played at gatherings where Irish music is played (not talking about bands etc there). Get what I am saying?
Sorry, but Peter is Dutch and I know him from Holland years ago.
Maybe I had better said it seems he wants to be more catholic than the pope..
And to end this discussion:
I prefer to play in a traditional setting too Peter, but being a teacher I like to develope material to motivate my students, besides stimulate them to listen to the old masters.
Maybe we can talk it over in Miltown next July with a nice pint of stout or play a few tunes to loosse the head.
Cheers.
It’s sooooo 1980s but: Been there done 
