As a complete newbie to irish flute playing, I was wondering if anyone could suggest a reasonable set of first tunes for me to learn (jigs and reels). just a few, enough to let myself loose on the world with, hopefully at a local session (if I can find one here in the uk). Needless to say they do need to be easy but well known. I can read music as i play other instruments but have not played irish trad. music before.
Any help appreciated, may even see you at that first session!..
Thanks for help on another thread re choosing a flute. Just about to order a Terry McGee keyless 5088.
HI abe
Welcome to the board.
You might want to have a look at the Comhaltas websitehttp://comhaltas.ie/ for sessions in your area.
As for tunes, I’ve just started again with the flute and learn’t ‘St Patrick’s An Dro’ http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/2290
Nice and easy to learn and helped me concentrate on my embrochure
Hope this helps
Just go to the Members page at The Session ( http://www.thesession.org/members ) and click on the Tunebook tab. You’ll get more or less a “greatest hits” list of Irish session tunes in order of popularity on the site. Use the title list as a guide for seeking out recordings of those tunes to learn from.
Look at the transcriptions if you must. But be aware that if you haven’t played / heard a lot of Irish trad before, learning only from the dots may put you very wrong with your future session mates. Good luck!
If you want to hear an acceptable account of many of the tunes as played at a session you might want to pick up the Foinn Seisiúns.
You can find 1-3 on iTunes.
Literally a few hundred tunes right there that I think most trad players will agree are played “correctly”. I don’t use that term lightly so I suggest you don’t either.
Look for Foinn Seisiún 1: Traditional Irish Session Tunes and go from there.
I’ll second Jimmy Ward. For a reel, maybe Glen Allan. The A part is in the first octave and the B part is essentially the A part in the second octave.
There are different schools when it comes to learning embellishments in tunes. One is to teach them right off as they are commonly played in the tune. The other is to start with the bare-bones and add embellishments later. For the latter method I’ve included a bare-bones Jimmy Ward’s in ABC. It will require some cuts, taps and/or glottal stops to separate notes of the same pitch.
Copy and paste here if you don’t have an ABC program.
The c3 can be replaced with cBA (c2A can be cBA). The G3 and A3 can be rolled.You can also slur the first G3 into the following G. DED and D2 can be replaced with D cranns. I’d recommend learning those variations in the order I listed them, making cranns a low priority. Switch it up in terms of when you roll, when you play a long note, etc. Also where you breathe is important. The easiest option is the last D in either part. Play the D2, breathing on the 3rd 1/8th note. Other opportunities to breathe are replacing G3, c3 and c2A with G2z, GzG, c2z and czA where z (the rest sign) is an 1/8th note breath.
You can also buy them for an insanely reasonable price at lala.com. I was able to get volumes 1-3 for about $8-9 per album. Not sure what iTunes is charging, but from past experience I reckon it’s a bit more.
Completely agree with the recommendation. These tunes are a GREAT starting point.
That’s a fair price, too. For a while, I could find the album’s only through CD Baby, and they were asking a fair bit more. Also worth pointing that that there are songbooks available for some of the seisun albums (if you care to learn from the dots). But you’ll likely find it easy enough to learn by ear (they play at a very reasonable tempo).
Unless things have changed, you can download the Foinn Sessiun songs straight from the site for free. Only problem is that you have to get them one at a time. Took me a few hours… I bought their pdf books and had them printed at my local UPS store.
