Irish music

[Chris Travers]

My friend, a b***o player, loves to play Irish music and I want to play along but know any Irish music. Can anyone give me a list of "standards"?

Thanks in advance!

[Chadmills]

There are so many tunes in the Irish tradition the ones to learn are the ones that are played by the people you want to play with, but there's a discussion running here :-
http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin....t=53362 (http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=5;t=53362)
and this is a pretty regular topic over at www.thesession.org
"Dow's list" over there is a pretty good list, only fifty or so tunes.....
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/13056/#comment268197

[steve V. johnson]

Of all the Irish tunes anyone can list, the very most important ones are the ones you learn from the folks
who play irish in your neighborhood.

Learn 'em from your friend and from his friends, play 'em together and listen, listen, listen.

The more you learn from the folks around you, the more sources you'll pick up, the players they've
learned from, the recordings they listen to, and so on.

As mentioned there are -lots-, so be patient. But once you learn a few with your banjo buddy and
are having fun playing those, then with some other folks, you'll be hearing tunes you want to play, too,
and off ye go.

There are lots of sources, books, videos, audio recordings, and they've been listed lots of places.
But the very best is to learn from other folks and the most important thing is to just start right in
playing with others.

Enjoy,

stv

[Paul Kotapish]

The "standards" vary a lot depending on where you live and what community you are hanging out with. Even in the SF Bay Area, one group's set of standards are not those favored by a session across the bridge or even across town.

There are a couple of good tunebooks with tunes that are pretty widely played, though, and worth having as a starting reference. Smoke in Your Eyes was compiled by Kevin Gow based on popular tunes at Seattle sessions, and a lot of what you might encounter anywhere in U.S. sessions is included. You can find it here. (http://kinetic.seattle.wa.us/fish.html)

Karen Tweed's Irish Choice is another good one. Get it here. (http://www.music44.com/X/product/A128-M). There are CDs with recorded versions to accompany the notation.

O'Neill's Music of Ireland is often cited as the bible of the repertoire. It's an essential reference for the serious player, but it's pretty daunting and many of the tunes and specific settings are not so central to what might be encountered in casual pub sessions these days.

As noted above, the fastest and surest way to get started is to attend a few sessions with one's ears and a recording device (asking permission, of course) and just get a feel for what's being played, listen to the tunes on one's own, and learn from that. Books are great once one has a sense of the music, but there is no substitute for just listening and learning by ear.

As always, good session etiquette suggests--especially with the banjo--that it's best to sit and listen until one can play well enough to keep up before chiming in.

Good luck to your friend.

[Jkf_Alone]

mandolin sessions (www.mandolinsessions.com) by mel bay has a fella who teaches beginner celtic tunes. there are a ton of his lessons in the archives and he has mp3's of most music, as well as tab / notation. the nice thing is you learn the right technique to apply to the song as well as the tune itself.

[Jim MacDaniel]

To second Steve's and Paul's point about learning the local standard(s), you are fortunate that your banjo wielding friend is also into ITM, as he is probably a great place to start to get a feel for what the most common local favorites are. Also, you might want to ask your friend what some common sets are at the local sessions, and perhaps focus on learning those first.

[Chris Travers]

Thanks for all the help guys!

[jc2]

At Yahoo groups, the TCCeltic group has a pdf of the tunes they play and it's a really good selection of the most common session tunes played in the midwest. Real afficianados of ITM would think it's heavy on the warhorses, but it's a good place to start, and the book is done very well. Price is right, too.

[man dough nollij]

Hey Crazylotrfan,

Where'd you get that cat? Chernobyl?

[Goodin]

Find your local irish sessions and ask them the names of the tunes they play is step one, because you need to know the tunes that they play so you can play along with them. Step two....buy every Bothy Band cd and learn all those tunes. The Bothy band has a huge impact on pretty much every trad irish musician. Then get every Planxty album and study the mandolin style of Andy Irvine. It is quite uncommon to see a mandolin in irish sessions, but a tenor banjo and zouk seem to be more acceptable. I started out with the mando, then switched to a tenor banjo, but i fell in love with playing backup bouzouki with some melodies here and there. Some tunes right off the top of my head that you should learn are....the Kesh jig, the Butterfly, The Otters Holt, Gander in the Prattie Hole, Chief O'Neil's Favourite, The Humours of Ballyloughlin, Drops of Brandy...the list goes on and on....there are probably hundreds of thousands of trad irish tunes out there, but first learn the ones that people you play with will know! Oh, also check out thesession.org. Everyone of them is on there!

[Matt Hutchinson]

You might want to try the BBC's online Virtual Session too. Gives you a chance to play along with a bunch of great British tune players on some sets of popular tunes chosen by them:

The Virtual Session (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sessions/)

Matt

[Jack Roberts]

The one Irish tune that everyone seems to know is "king of the fairies". It is one of the top Celtic dance tunes and is a spectacular fiddle tune. It's played nice an slow with room for lots of ornamentation. It has an altenative title: "Your old wig is the love of my life"

It is a great tune to start with.

[Jim MacDaniel]

And if you check out this thread (http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=25;t=51697;st=0), so far Whiskey Before Breakfast seems to be a popular choice among mandolinists here are the Cafe discussion boards.

[jk245]

http://traditionalmusic.co.uk/index.htm
http://www.nigelgatherer.com/index.html
http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/mandolin-tab/mandolin-tab.html
http://www.thesession.org/