Irish Flute Tunes

***  CD:  Harry Bradley and Michael Clarkson ***

The Pleasures of Hope - flute music from Belfast and Beyond

This recording is now available in Ireland at:

http://claddaghrecords.com/WWW/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=15&products_id=2887

and in the USA at:

http://www.ossianusa.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=ossian&Product_Code=01838-CD

and in the UK at:

http://www.allcelticmusic.com/music/d92ee386-d8e2-102c-967a-12313b000932/The%20Pleasures%20of%20Hope.html

Here's our 'pop video' from the CD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbnuIYp6HsI

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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I've been trying to learn to play a C#D accordion and was reminded of this tune while playing through a few books as a way of telling my fingers that there's more than one melody in the world.  The box playing may be a sort of insurance against tooth loss which would make the flute sound a bit gummy; cleaning and flossing might be an easier approach.

This tune is in the book 'Trip to Sligo' under the title 'Come up in the room I want you'.  I played it (on the flute) into the tunepal.org machine and was given the title I've used here.  The person in the 'up in the room' name may even have been addressing the Ballina Lasses at the time of utterance.  I don't know what Tunepal will think it's called if I try playing it on the squeezebox.

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Here's a tune with a funny name.  I learned it from a flute player with a less peculiar appellation, i.e. Harry Bradley.

I recorded this on a mobile phone mp3 recording app (and a flute) and the end result seems to include some 78rpm type crackles.  That may have been an option which I inadvertantly chose on the recording device.

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Here's a tune called Peter Wyper's hornpipe.  It is named after one of the Brothers Wyper who is pictured above.   I had intended posting a smaller brace of Wypers but couldn't find the shrink button to resize the photo.  You could look at the photo on a smartphone screen to make it small but I think the text would go all exiguous at the same time.

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Here's a tune which as was correctly pointed out to me, I had forgotten to post up to now. I've played it on a poor, old and sick Rudall flute. I had even taken a picture of the flute but it's been so long since I've posted a tune here that I've forgotten how to include a photo (or else this site has forgotten how to have photos posted on it). The flute can't remember how to play bottom Ds yet. I'll be leaving it into a flute hospital in Galway shortly - maybe a bit of hypnosis from beyond the Pale will remind it of this particular alphabetic bark.

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Here's a tune I was asked a while ago to play. I've always been a bit allergic to this tune - I'm not sure why - I think something bad like the house falling down happened the last time I played it and that left a bit of an impression which didn't please me too much. It's a good tune all the same. I think it's really 2 jigs joined together. I'm away to stand outside for a while in case this house isn't up to the Knocknagow test.

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I think this is also called The Collier's Jig.  There's a collier's reel too which has the same general selection if notes in it.  I'll post it on the site if it's not already here.

I've been reminded a couple of times lately that some people are finding some use for some of the tunes on this site so I thought I'd try to add one or two more.  It remains to be seen whether they'll fall into the useful category or otherwise.  I have a couple of requested tunes still to post as well.  I'm just being delayed by not knowing them and almost never having a flute closer that about 20 feet away.  If I attended to the latter matter then my chance of sorting the former should increase accordingly.

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Here's the one that goes with the other two (Paddy O'Brien tunes I posted a while ago).  I've just been reminded that I missed this one.  I hope late is better than never.

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Here's a reel I've just been asked to play.  It was composed by Sean Ryan.  I found a couple of written versions on the web and this effort is sort of a cross between both and neither of them.  Sorry if some (or most) of the notes are a bit on the fuzzy side.  I found some ready salted crisps just before I found the notes for the tune.

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I think there's also a jig with this name - or is that 'the milker that masticated the mattress' ?

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Here's a tune I never knew the name of until the arrival of the magic tune finding machine http://tunepal.org/tunepal/index.php.

I see that people now even have telephones with this facility on them.  If someone sneezes at a session these days there's likely to be an iphonophile who will be try to identify the sneeze as some polka or other.  Any extraneous noises in this recording have passed without being interpreted as anything other than normal noise - any other noises are supposed to be the tune.

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Here's a tune I think I learned from a recording of Jackie Daly.  It is also in Breathnach's Ceol Rince na hÉireann (vol 2) where the version is the same but for one note in the second part (answsers on a postcard to ...)

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Here's another Paddy O'Brien reel which goes with the previous one though usually before it and another one rather than after it and before another one which isn't the same 'another one' I referred to on another part of this sentence just before now - I hope that all makes sense.

All these tunes and information about them and Paddy O'Brien are to be found in an excellent compilation which is available from this site:  http://www.paddyobrienbook.com/

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Here's a reel composed by Paddy O'Brien.  It is often played after two others in a set.  I don't know the other ones either.

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I've been at around 3 sessions in as many months and this tune was played at 2 of them (albeit by the same person).  According to my statistical analysis this tune is therefore played at 66.66666% of all sessions.

I'm afraid that the flute here sounds a bit like it has a cravat stuck up it somewhere; possibly with a maritime person attached.

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Sorry for the lack of tunes in the last while.  I gave up playing for a while - as I sometimes do - and have only played the flute 4 times this year.

The perenthesised '2' in the title here doesn't doesn't refer to the modesty of Jenny's shellflsh harvest target but just to the fact that there's already another tune with this name on the site.

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Here's a new post after a very long gap.  I couldn't remember where I left the internet.  I was sent an mp3 file of someone playing this tune far better that it is played here.  I know that Séan Keane recorded it at some stage and hear it from time to time in sessions but I can't remember exactly how it goes.  I found a transcription in the bit of the internet referred to below.  I'm afraid I've lost / mis-ordered a few notes during the eye to mouth process but here's an approximation - hopefully enough to get a more accurate and diciplined person started learning the tune.

http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/2748

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Here's a slip jig which is really the tune of a song.  I think I have a CD somewhere including a recording of Séamus Ennis singing the song but it has been hidden somewhere more obscure than the side of the sofa by a young child.

I've had to rely on memory therefore for the way the tune goes.

The title means something like "The fair haired Canavans".

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I'm not sure I've ever seen a turnpike gate so I'm not sure what qualities one might have to get a reel named after it.

Anyway, here's a tune called after such a gate.

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Here's another request from long ago.  I don't think the tune's title refers to a domestic measuring tool.

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I was asked back in August to play this tune.  I've at least managed it before October ended.  The flute hasn't forgiven me for spending a lot of the last hour playing a miniature version of itself (I think baby flutes have a special name but I'm always getting the 'cc's and 'll's confused in the spelling) and blowing into a big flute has proved difficcullt - (it's happenned again only worse).

Anyway, thanks Mary for telling me about this tune on 2nd August, and I hope it sounds OK.

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I was asked to record this tune so here it is, only a few days late.  I've always just known this tune from afar so if it sounds like I'm a bit unfamiliar with its finer points (like the notes and stuff like that) then that's probably just because I am.

Like most of CL's tunes, it's a fine piece of music and might be strong enough to emerge intact from my mangling.

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Here's a popular reel - so popular that it has taken me 3 years to think of it.

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I've been laptopless for a while so have hadn't been able to post any tunes.   I now have a new laptop and it and an old flute have combined to record this not so new jig.  I'm not used to the recording level on the new computer so this post may only be audible to canine creatures.   Maybe they can be persuaded to bark a louder version out if necessary.

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Here's a nice jig.  I can't type any more as I can hear a baby stirrng; a baby who cares little about this site and the words and notes thereon.

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I've finally got around to looking at a couple of requests to record tunes.  This is the only one I've got around to playing though.  It's also the only torn jacket I've given any attention to although I seem to have several, the holes in which heavily outnumber the arms I can find to put through them.

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Here's a tune I was asked to play.  It is named after the great Sligo fiddle player whose name escapes me just now.

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This isn't really a flute tune.  It comes from the fiddle playing of Francie Byrne from Kilcar, Co. Donegal.

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All I know about this tune is what I read about it in Ceol Rince na hÉireann vol 5.  It says there that the fiddler James McEnery composed it.  I hope I'm not decomposing it too much here.

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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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