Hi all! I just started down my whistle journey, inspired by a recent trip to Ireland. I have found a group to play with here in West Virginia, but I need to learn some tunes. I have sat in with them on guitar before, and it’s the old go round the circle with requests. There are just so many tunes though! If you could recommend 5 for me to get under my belt first, what would they be?
I think that’s an impossible question. As far as I can tell, every local session has its own set of tunes they like to call. To make it worse, most of the tunes have multiple names.
These are the tunes I decided to teach myself, partly because I seemed to see them mentioned a lot, but mostly because I liked them. I bet you they will elicit some groans from people here for being overplayed. I bolded the five I like the most.
Jigs
the lilting banshee
the Rolling Wave
Out on the Ocean
Helvic Head (This is a hard one because it’s got five parts)
The Ten Penny Bit
Garret Barry’s Jig
The Spring Wells
Morrison’s
Reels
Rolling in the ryegrass
The Sally Gardens
Maid behind the bar
Michael Creamer’s
John Blessing’s
Drowsy Maggie
The Old Bush
The Green Mountain
Hornpipe(?) Red haired boy/little Beggerman. This tune is fairly common in Old Time and Appalachian repertoires, usually as “the Red Haired Boy.” Its a cool slippery melody
A few slow tunes
Si beag, Si Mor
Boolavogue
The Sally Gardens (different tune than above)
Some songs I learned for my late father in law when he was ill
The Kerry Dances
The Minstrel Boy
The Boys of Wexford
The Foggy Dew
I decided to learn these and work on them until I could actually play them, as opposed to just getting through them. After about nine months. I’m close to that. Then I’ll teach myself a new set of tunes. Then maybe I’ll think about a session. Probably not
Most of these would be easy to find on the internet, either as recorded tunes or in sheet music
I’m very far from an expert.
Your best bet is to ask the group you’re playing with (or maybe get a list of most of the tunes they play and pick a few). We (Gallowglass in Wheeling, WV) usually have a list of our 30 - 40 (ish) current sets that we are willing to share with visitors and I’m sure there is something similar where you are. BTW, where in WV are you?
Pat
And I say stuff the begrudgers. You have to start somewhere, and that’s a decent list for it.
OK I’ll bite and I don’t mind a bit of grumbling. For the record, I’ve not only never played in on a session but I’ve never even been to one. So from one beginner to another here’s a list of tunes that I like to play. I’ve been lumping a lot of tunes into sets lately, so that’s what I’ll give you.
Kesh Jig
Swallowtail Jig
Cooley’s Reel
Charlie Harris’ Reel
Cliff’s of Moher
Piper’s Chair
Brosna Slide
Dennis Murphy’s Slide
Downey’s
Streams of Whiskey
The last two don’t really go together and I know Streams isn’t a trad tune but I like them all the same.
I’m another one who’s never been to a session. Here are some of the tunes I like.
Cooley’s
Red Haired Boy
Rolling in the Rye Grass
Drowsy Maggie
Gravel Walk
Banish Misfortune
Inisheer
Tam Lin
Harvest Home
Rights of Man
King of the Fairies
The Wonder
Lisdoonvarna
Planxty Fanny Power
Saddle the Pony
The Kesh
Moon and Seven Stars
Tripping Up the Stairs
I play most of these each day. I vary the speed. I play around with ornamentation. And I watch vids looking for new tunes.
Good luck. Have lots of fun.
If you go to thesession.org website and visit the Tunes section, you can select the type of tune (reels, jigs, etc.) that interests you. Leave the search box empty and press Search.
It will return the tunes ranked by popularity of the website’s users (based on # of users who’ve added X tune to their tunebook). This gives a fairly global view and might be a good starting point. But as others have commented, most sessions have their own favourites.
EDIT: I’ve just noticed that for the reels section, it lists Mason’s Apron as #10. Yikes… Maybe the “Add to Tunebook” function is aspirational in nature.
It really depends on what you want to do. If you are playing with a group of people who have a repertoire they play, learn the tunes you want to play with them. If you want to play music to please yourself, for the fun of it, learn what you know and enjoy. When a tune takes your fancy, learn that, rather than one you’re ‘supposed’ to learn.
I’ll share a resource :
http://quinteirishcanadiansociety.blogspot.com/p/irish-music-sessions.html
all of these of course you can find on the session.org
The local session (slow & fast) use these tunes. A good mix of people some ear players and some sheet music readers, experienced players and newbies.
Playing in a session really helps get your skill level up! Learning to play with other musicians is a different ball game then tooting at home.
Some tunes that I found easy to pick up when I started :
Kesh jig
Out on the ocean
Off to California
Harvest Home
Boys of Bluehill
Rakes of Mallow
Girl I left Behind
Star of the County Down
Hector the Hero
Saddle the Pony
Not expecting to find a fellow West Virginian here! The group I have been visiting meets in Charleston and from what I can gather is loosely associated with FOOTMAD (Friends of Old Time Music and Dance) inasmuch as that’s how they advertise their sessions.
Montani Semper Liberi!
Fear the 'eers!
(Mr Gumby looks confused about now… 
So where in our beautiful state are you guys? I’m from Chesapeake but marooned in California for many years now. I visit my relatives every year, coming up next this June.
Yes sessions are individual, yet there’s a stock of tunes people call “first year tunes” which would in all likelihood be in that Billboard Top 100 as can be seen on The Session by using the filter suggested above.
I checked that list once, of the top 100 tunes that members included in their tunebooks. Of the first 100 I knew all but a few, of the next 100 I knew most of them. Yet I can sit at a session for an hour and not hear a tune I know.
I’m in Wheeling…
Pat
I live in Hurricane, midway between Huntington and Charleston.
Go back to your session,listen to the tunes and get the names of ones you like,preferably several different types eg jigs,reels,slip jigs. Those would be the ones to learn since the other session members already know them.
BTW-- for all the respondents who have said they’ve never been to a session, find one and go ASAP! It’s the single best way to really get a feel for Irish trad.Even if you’re not up to session playing speed, you’ll learn a lot.
If only it was that easy. I’ve met exactly one other person in my town that plays tin whistle (apparently there is one more as well but haven’t gotten around to stalking them yet) and it just isn’t a thing here sadly. The plan, once I get a little better at playing and confident with other players is to change that.
I feel like what I’ve learned about ITM from going to sessions or reading about sessions hasn’t made me like it very much. I like hearing the music, but as far as I can tell the culture of sessions is cliquish and unwelcoming. People typically have sort of grimly serious expressions on their faces, and there isn’t a lot of conversation. Over at "the session.org’ there was recently a thread about how to ditch the people who ruin sessions because they don’t “get it.”. There are lots of threads the gist of which is something like “oh some guy came to the session and started playing “the sally gardens” and I’m so sick of that tune how do we get rid of the guy.” There’s a thread now about playing really fast and how it’s mainly useful to weed people out. The whole point looks like exclusivity, not welcome. There’s no formal list of tunes to learn, there’s no standard way of playing the tune: you are just supposed to magically “know.” It’s like joining a different lunch table in high school.
Obviously lots of people find great joy in it and more power to them: also any social interaction looks weird from the outside. And of course there’s everything to be said for actually learning the tradition rather than thinking you’re entitled to wank away: respect and courtesy should be foremost and you can’t expect to just walk up and join a group of great players, of course not.
I’d love to know the history of “the session” as a thing. A great deal of the practice of irish traditional music appears to have been, at one time, solo playing, a guy in his home, a family after dinner, a single piper or fiddler, or ensemble performance at public events. There would be multiple musicians at wedding and fairs, and of course later ceili bands, but O’Neill describes groups of people gathering in someone’s home to play tunes, or in clubs. In Passing the time in Ballymenone Henry Glassie talks about lots of private playing, people gathering in someone’s home and taking turns playing tunes solo, enjoying the individual’s expression of a tune. I’ve just read a couple of Jr. Crehan’s oral histories, and a lot of what he describes is appreciation for solo playing. The session today is an odd hybrid of private music making, friends getting together to play tunes, and public performance, and it seems to simultaneously invite participation and repel it. I suppose it also has to do with the peculiarity of folk music as a pursuit. On the one hand you want everyone to like it, on the other it’s fragile and needs to be protected from oafs.
O’Neill describes groups of people gathering in someone’s home to play tunes, or in clubs. In Passing the time in Ballymenone Henry Glassie talks about lots of private playing, people gathering in someone’s home and taking turns playing tunes solo, enjoying the individual’s expression of a tune. I’ve just read a couple of Jr. Crehan’s oral histories, and a lot of what he describes is appreciation for solo playing.
All this is a bit of a tangled web and one does need to be careful not to read today’s practices into varying accounts.
First of all, O’Neill’s gathering may or may not have had people playing together, there will certainly have been duets and trios and even foursomes but not necessarily big groups playing. At one time it was not uncommon for musicians to gather and play a few tunes each for eachother, taking turns while the rest of the group listened. But you said that already.
There were tunes at home, playing for neighbours but function is important here. Junior’s appreciation for solo playing doesn’t rule out playing as part of a group as well. And Junior certainly did that when the occasion arose, in social situations, playing for the sets, at housedances, for volume more than one musician would be needed. Junior played for seventy years for dancers with various people. For decades a group of six of them, sometimes referred to as ‘Dad’s Amry’ and also irreverently known as the ‘Stiff Six’ (and sometimes with even less reverence the ‘Six Stiffs’). And, more formally, he was part of the Quilty Ceiliband and the Laictín Naoifa ceili band in his time. Context is important for the form the playing takes, solo and playing with others each had/have their time and place although it could be argued that ‘sessions’ as they function now are a development of the latter half of the last century.
Junior’s words are just fascinating. I doubt I could understand him speaking in real life, so I’m delighted they were written down! He does clearly play a lot of what we would call “gigs,” contracted to play for money, and yes you’re right he does describe small groups playing together, and he likes to hear and play with other musicians as good as himself, and he describes the robust rivalry with other ceili bands. I just don’t fully understand the modern session, which seems like it’s sort of a public performance and sort of a private gathering. In lots of the american music I’m more experienced in, each player gets a “turn,” a solo, and the novice gets brought in and tested and learns. The Session seems to want the player to show up fully formed, while in Jr’s account he learned his trade playing for himself but also in the forge of paying gigs, and most good musicians he met knew the same stuff in large part because they played the same stuff at gigs.
So sessions started after the 1950s? Please tell me more, if you will.
I’m also wondering about O’Riada and the Cheiftains. O’Riada seems to want to have imposed some of the modes of classical music–not just the concert hall, but ensemble playing, then featured turns by individual instruments–on irish music. I know the Chieftains come out of his bands. In my conversation with Nicholas Carolan he compared the Chieftains to a jazz band, but also pointed out how they were kind of a dead end, respected but not widely imitated today and replaced by the unison playing of three tunes in a set.
it’s all very interesting
Junior’s words are just fascinating. I doubt I could understand him speaking in real life, so I’m delighted they were written down! He does clearly play a lot of what we would call “gigs,” contracted to play for money,
He was very quiet spoken, at least later in life, but he wasn’t that hard to follow. Not sure there were that many paid ‘gigs’. He did play the sunday nights for near seventy years but that was more a social event. We kept it going after Junior died, until the pub folded anyway.
Christmas eve 1996, Junior having a break at the bar
There’s some speech on the (double) CD they did of him. You may also want to look at the documentary (‘Junior’) TG4 showed at Christmas, I may (or may not ) still be up on the TG4 player. It didn’t go very deep but it was nice enough to watch. If you can’t find anything else, I can probably dig out a bit and put it up, if you want to hear him.
Sessions as we have them today are supposed to have grown out of the melting pot that was London during the fifties and onward.
Sessions as we have them today are supposed to have grown out of the melting pot that was London during the fifties and onward.
I was a bit brief on the subject last night, busy making the dinner. It came to me later that for the London scene and development of sessions there you will probably need to read this:
Reg Hall : A few good tunes of music
It’s downloadable as a PDF, or was years ago, and is a massive piece of work, a mighty read.