I’ve been working on Noel’s Hill’s version of “The Morning Thrush”, here’s my attempt at the tune:
http://members.cox.net/eskin4/eskin_morning_thrush.mp3
This is on my 30-key Carroll C/G.
A nice tune and a good effort , thanks for posting
I remember when Noel introduced us to that tune last year at the Mid-West class, and especially I remember how difficult I thought it was. You have done a really good job of getting all the ornamentation in while still keeping the tune smooth and steady. Great work!
Ross Schlabach
Nice playing, but The Morning Thrush really doesn’t suit the concertina at all, in my opinion. It can’t convey the warbling song of the thrush like the pipes can (not that anything comes close to the real thing).
Does anyone else agree, or am I being instrument-ist?
Maybe just over-literal. Imagine you don’t know the tune or title, and have never heard it before. Do you like it now? Sure, some tunes seem particularly suited to particular instruments. But I’ve yet to hear a tune whose artful setting on a particular instrument can’t result in something to please the ear.
Yeah, perhaps. Although I didn’t say it wasn’t pleasing to the ear. The tune itself is masterfully written and would probably sound good played on beer bottles, but it was written for the pipes, and it’s on the pipes that i think it sounds best, with all the ornamentations etc. that it ought to have.
To play it on another type of instrument takes the tune out of its context, and removes it from its history and background, which, in my opinion, is an important component of a folk song.
Imagine Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile played on an oboe… It sort of loses something in translation.
So? People will always transpose things to suit their instrument, and why shouldn’t they?
Granted, there are limits. I remember seeing an Appalachian dulcimer player (not the hammered kind) who had arranged Carolan tunes for his instrument. My feeling was, OK, so you can do it, but do we really want to listen? 
Then there’s Johnny Og Connolly’s rendition of a Bach solo violin partita on B/C accordion - astounding that he can pull it off at all, and the kind of thing that is fun to listen to - at least once, and in a live performance especially. But a showpiece and a bit of fun, not intended as a serious alternative to hearing on violin. Ditto this: Beethoven’s](http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/brosteve/clips/ocarinas.mp3%22%3EBeethoven%27s) Symphony no. 1 Finale on ocarinas.
But I don’t think the Morning Thrush on concertina is a case in point. Have you heard it played by Noel Hill? No disrespect to Eskin but there’s a wee bit more of a flow to it. I don’t think Ennis would have objected. There’s also a very definite warble.
I learned the tune from Noel’s playing, he’s my guru. He also has on several occasion in class said that his playing is highly influenced by the sound and technique of the Uilleann pipes, its all there in his ornamentation and choice of chords modeled on the regulators. He’s recorded many piping tunes on the concertina.
I’m just a barely serviceable concertina player, have a long way to go…
Well, then yes … you’re being instrument-ist. 
Steve, I enjoyed the ocarinas! 
For heaven’s sake. If I worried about whether I’d be dishonoring a tune by learning it on my particular instrument, I’d have a stupidly small repertoire. Sheesh.
So, really, considering the history of the concertina in Irish traditional music, are there any tunes that were written specifically for the instrument?
Written? That’s a big word. Written for? This is getting deep. 
But there must have been plenty of tunes made up on the thing! What about “The Old Concertina Reel”? Which IMO sounds best on an accordion…
On Noel Hill’s first album (which features the Thrush in the Morning as he calls it) there is an air that he commissioned from Peadar O Riada, “An Draigheann.” So that’s one piece that we could say was specifically composed for a concertina player, at least.