Irish Flute Tunes

Hello. This site contains recordings I have made as a source of tunes for people who play the flute, or other instruments for that matter. They are just versions of tunes as I remember them. My memory isn’t the best so some of the versions and the titles might be a bit astray but hopefully they’ll be of some use. I usually play the tunes once through slowly to make them easier to learn, then I have a bit of a run at them to give another view of them. I hope this approach is OK. If anyone has any comments, or tune suggestions, please get in touch (iflute@googlemail.com).

At this stage tune suggestions are particularly welcome as my “isn’t the best” memory has started to resist my attempts to plunder it for any more material. Thanks,

Michael.

(The tunes are split over a number of pages to stop the pages being too slow to load. To go to the next page, please click on Previous Entries at the bottom of the page, otherwise use the index on the left of the screen to navigate to a specific tune).

These tunes are now available via iTunes so you don’t even have to go through the displeasing process of accessing this site directly to hear them. Hearing the tunes may be hardship enough in itself.  I don’t really know what the iTunes caper means but a search for “Irish Flute Tunes” will point to where this stuff lives in iTunesville.  The URL via which to subscribe is http://irishflute.podbean.com/feed .  If that all made no sense to you then welcome to my world.

Slowing Down Tunes

Just in case the tunes on this site aren’t dull enough, you can slow them down using recent versions of Windows Media Player (I’m sure there are plenty of other ways of doing this too).

In Windows Media player click Now Playing at the top of the screen then pick Enhancements and then Play Speed Settings. There is a nice range of speeds displayed but I can only get the half speed one to work. That’s probably enough to be getting on with in any case.

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The title of this tune (and song of the same name) translates as “The Seaweed of the Yellow Cliff”.

- a tune caught between a wrack and a hard place perhaps.

There are a few versions of this tune but I could only think of this one just now.  I still have to think of the other tunes which are on my list to play here but my thought processes are running very slow these days.

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Here’s a tune I stole from a recording of Con Cassidy.

I don’t know much about it, except for what the notes are.  I suppose that’s a start.

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Here’s a jig I heard on a recording of Michael Gorman.  It’s called Guiry’s favourite in O’Neill’s.

I was a bit distracted by an infant with a new set of noisy birthday presents but hopefully the tune recovers sufficiently frequently to make it possible to pick up.

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I’m a bit behind on recording tunes at the moment.  I’m even behind with being behind with things.  I think that’s what’s behind the delays.

Anyway.  I was asked for “The Lads of Laois”, so here it is / they are, unleashed.  I think I was asked for a nice version.  I never really had a nice version so I had to record a nasty one.

I listened back to the start of this recording through my computer’s speakers and it sounded as if the tune was being played underwater on a trombone but maybe once it has been hung out on the web for a while it’ll dry out a bit.  I’ll record the other tunes on my list once I find the list.

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I’ve just been asked to play this tune so here it is.  I’m not too sure how reliable this version is but it is maybe a bit closer to the version common in Ireland than the version on another website near you.  I think it mightn’t originally be an Irish tune so maybe the funny version is the normal version where the funny version comes from and the normal version is maybe … etc.

This is also known as “The Cliff Hornpipe”.  Whether that’s the Cliff of “Summer Holiday” fame, I don’t know.

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I was asked a while ago to play this.  I think I’ve already played it under a different name but I’m happy enough to post it with this name and look like I know more tunes than I really do.  I can’t remember what the other name I called it was so this is probably the one I’ll use in future.

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Here’s one I wasn’t asked to play.  I wasn’t asked not to play it either so as it doesn’t seem to be here already I thought I’d give it a go.  I think I was half the age I am now when I last played this tune and if I live to be twice the age I am now I’ll either have too few teeth or too much sense to play it again.

There’s a touch of a farting in the bath sound about it.  Maybe it’s more of a windpipe than a hornpipe.

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Here a very long hornpipe which I’ve been asked to play.  I maybe played it a bit too fast the second time around but as it has so many parts I had to rush to finish it before the shops shut.

(This version is vaguely like the one in Ceol Rince na hÉireann Vol. 3 - No. 208)

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I had to look this one up in “The Book” when asked tp post it.  I found it in O’Neill’s Dance Music of Ireland, 1001 Gems (No. 469).  I had just previously found “The Book” on the sideboard by the door into the kitchen.  There is some audible dissent in the background but O’Neill was from Bantry so I’d trust this version OK despite the critical opinion which is to the fore in parts of this recording.

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I found a ‘please play the battering ram’ email so here’s said man-ewe (not Man U which I believe is a soccer team).

This rendition is more sheepish than extraordinary but most of the notes are there.

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I was asked to record this tune so here it is.

I don’t know what key it should be in.  Here’s a go at it in D minor and then A minor.  I heard something once about dropping a piano down a coal shaft and getting A flat minor.

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There’s a character in The Magic Roundabout called Mr. Rusty.  I fear that my Homme de Fer may have become a Fear Meirgeach himself.

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Here’s a Paddy O’Brien reel (I think).

Instead of a jolly seven here I think I have a fairly happy seven and a mildly miffed number 8.  The overall recording quality is a bit dodgy here and the sound of the sean nós shouting infant in the background maybe doesn’t help things too much (no infants were harmed in the making of this post).

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I can’t think of any quick tunes at the moment so here’s a slow one.  I want to spell this “Cois Abhainn na Seod” but forces I don’t understand take me to the spelling I used instead.  This is a song air which comes from Cúil Aodha in Co. Cork.  I probably have it all wrong but I never go to Cork so I should be safe from close quarter retribution at least.  (The title in English is “Beside the River of Gems /  Jewels - I know how to spell that anywaieieieiy).

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I just got an email from a pigeon fancier, or at least someone who wanted me to post this tune.  So here’s my pigeon-post, or maybe pigeon on the gatepost.  I’m surprised not to have recorded a pigeon on the gate to date, but better late than never at any rate.

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Here’s a reel which I think Paddy O’Brien (from Smallhillsville) composed. The hills may be small but they seemed to take an age to upload onto this site.  They must be the wrong shape for internet pipes.  I know little of hills and tend not to go anywhere more topographically elevated than upstairs in a not too tall house in a low down town.  I hope the tune’s shape hasn’t been too distorted, either by its journey to the web, or by its time spent in my mildly mangled music head.

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I’ve finally got round to playing another tune.  I stole my wife’s flute to play it as I can’t remember where I left my own.  The fact that this recording sounds like it was made in a sewer is no reflection on the flute.  The recording wasn’t made in a sewer; I’d never bring someone else’s instrument into such an environment.  Now I come to think of it, the same flute was once found in a wheelie bin after a burglary.

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Here’s a tune I was asked to play.  Some people associate this time of year with Yule logs.  I appear just to have a backlog but this will hopefully have removed at least a sawtooth’s fill from it.

One reason I’m so slow about posting tunes these days is that I can’t remember the names of any more of them.  I got this one by asking  Mr.Google about the name I was given.  He seems to call it ‘The Girls of Farranfore’.

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Here’s a jig about a betting Priest, or a Priestly bet.  I don’t know how he fared in the gamble but the jig flutters on to this day.

There are a few versions of this knocking about.  This is more or less like the one in O’Neill’s Dance Music of Ireland.

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Here’s a slip jig which I was asked to post here.  It’s been so long since I posted anything that the requestor has probably forgotten requesting it.

I don’t know whether you need a special type of fig for a kiss; “can I have a fig please; one of those ones you use for … ?” and if so is it the same sort which helps with the digestive processes.  Maybe just typing this little ‘f’ word will ease the blockage in my tune posting pipeline.

I must go now and post some Santa cards.

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Here’s a tune I’ve been asked to play.  I think there are various cereal crops piled up in hornpipe names.  In these straitened times maybe a little stack is the most appropriate choice for the days that are in it … innit’?

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I’ve been asked to play this one so here it is.  There’s a tune call “snow on the hills” a few posts down.  This one is continuing the theme but maybe has more to do with Kagools than with skis.

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Here’s a reel which is also called “Murphy’s Hound”.  I’m not sure how it got these two names or what the connection may be between them.  Something to do with the Isle of Dogs maybe, though as one island is in the Thames and the other in the Atlantic, I may well be barking up the wrong tree entirely.

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The question mark is part of the title, not an indication of doubt about what the title is.  Having said (or typed) that, I’m not sure whether said question mark should be in the title.  Maybe I should have typed (or written) ‘Anything for John-Joe??’.  I’m not too sure about the hyphen either.

Hopefully the tune is more straightforward???

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The recent weather which, according to the radio person, is the worst and snowiest since the last time we were told it was the worst since bad weather started to be bad and to be recorded as such, has reminded me that I was asked to post this tune.

I didn’t know it so here’s just a rough guess as to what the dots at www.snowonthehills.org (http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display.php/8535) say it goes like.

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Here’s a tune I overheard someone asking for.

I’ve a couple more to do too and I’ll get around to them as soon as I find where I tied the knot in my hankerchief.

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I dinny play this before ’cause I dinny know it right.  Chance I still donny but here’s a try.

(See CRÉ 3 uimh.145 for more reliable version.)

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Here’s a wee tune I stole out of Ceol Rince na hÉireann 3 (uimhir 57).

I know it’s meant to be bad luck stealing or interfering with thorn bushes in the wild.  Hopefully na daoine beaga don’t take such a dim view of thorn thefts from tomes.

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1 + 1 = ?????

Never could add up (or hit a high ‘A’ - worried about hiatus and all that stuff).

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