Just a random question that popped into my head while takin' the ol' shower the other day.
So I'm sure everyone has tunes that mean something special to them...
For me, I'd have to say it would be the Britches Full of Stitches and Church Hill. Britches was the first tune that I ever learned on the fiddle either directly or indirectly from my then fiddle teacher, Jimmy Devine. The latter is a very old pipe tune taken from the descriptive piece "Mairseail Alasdruim" that was taught to me by my pipe teacher, Patrick Hutchinson. Of the tunes that he's taught me, I feel that this one is the most significant.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
A few that I've picked up from Jim, the other piper at my session; Miss Susan Cooper, Bonnie Anne, The Holly Bush, Snug in a Blanket. They're sort of special just because I enjoy his company and like playing with him (well, and they're good tunes). I can't play them without thinking of Jim and it makes me smile.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
About five months after we started going out, my wife-to-be and I went on a 10-day trip to Ireland. At the tail-end of our visit, we wound up at a session outside Dublin, and we were invited by one of the onlookers to a party where -- we were told -- we would be able to play with a piper who was about the best thing this side of Paddy Keenan.
We arrived, were introduced to the piper in question, and realized right away that he was blue-blind paralytic drunk, a state which rather obscured whatever talents he indeed might have had. Not only that, he didn't seem to know, or remember, very many tunes, so about every other tune he would play "The Silver Spear." I think we must have played that damn tune about six or seven different times before, mercifully, we decided this party had about run its course.
For several months afterward, my wife-to-be and I couldn't hear "The Silver Spear" without laughing. We still grin a little when it comes up, not just because of the experience it evokes but because it reminds us of the first trip we ever took together.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Give Me Your Hand. It was the tune that the nice folks at the Crane in Galway graciously let me play on September 11, 2001 as my little way to recognize the tragedy that occurred in NYC that day. Crane kind of became my adopted home after the musicians and patrons were very supportive and kind of took me in. I had only really just started playing ITM at the time, so it's a great early memory.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Hmmm... I'd have to say:
Britches Full o' Stitches
Bonnie Tammy
Road to Boston
La Bastringe (sp?)
Kesh Jig
Swallowtail Jig
Flop Eared Mule
Bridget's Mazurka
Marie's Wedding
Road to Lisdoonvarna
I'm sure there are others, but I can't think of them right now. I learned all these tunes with my first violin teacher, Charles Kadyk. He was bar none, my most favorite teacher of ALL time! He taught strings in the public school system ans would use the Essential Elements cirriculum. But he had a passion for fiddle style music, especially Celtic/New England style. I don't know if it was true, but I always felt I was kind of his favorite because we both had a passion for the same kind of music. I used to go to fiddle workshops and fiddle camps, and would always help learn the new tunes I needed to memorize. He would even meet me about a half hour earlier b efore the rest ofthe student came to class to learn the tunes.
Then, he took myslef, some middle schoolers (I was about 10 or 11 at the time) and created a sudent fiddle group called Tree Sap (for those who don't know, rosin comes from trees). He would play his Viola, a few would play fiddle, and we also had guitar, whistle, and bodhran players. Every once in a while, he would have his wife come, and she would play her harp with us.
I remeber him telling me that would go with me when the time was right to help pick out a 4/4 violin. Sadly, he has moved away now. But I will never forget all the fond memories of him.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
The first tune I ever played in front of an audience (at a folk club - it was a performance ) was Star of the County Down, with my son and daughter aged 12 and 14. I suppose that means it'll have to come on the desert island.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Just about every tune I play has considerable significance to me.
I associate most of them with the people who gave them to me.
So playing them takes me back to sitting in someone's kitchen or on the porch, or in a pub, picking up the tune.
Some tunes are tied to making new friends, and a few tunes are forever linked to the last time I will ever see some old friends.
These connections and associations shape how I recall and play the tunes. A A trained musician might say they are "the influences for how I interpret a tune." I just think of them as the poeple, places, and events that help make my playing my own.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
When I was 15 (1951) I used to sit beside the excellent drummer of a local seven piece ceili band and watch him playing. He taught me a lot, and eventually let me sit in and drum along to some of the dances. When he broke his ankle the band leader asked me to deputise for him and I got seven shillings and sixpence per gig. A favourite selection of reels that the band always played was The Mooncoin Reel and The Scholar. When I learnt to play the box they were among some of the first reels I learnt to play. To this day I can never play that selection without remembering the excitement I felt as I dressed in a white shirt and black dickey bow for my debut as a musician. Sadly every member of that band has passed on.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
The tunes on Phil Cunningham's record "Airs And Graces" that I heard in spring 1984; I was living rather more intensely than usually at that time, and it was a belated version of the teenage experience of having a record that seems to be the soundtrack to your inner life. The reel The Harsh February chimed in with my doing archaeological work outside in, yes, a harsh February; I was due to go to work on a dig in Shetland and associate much of the album with the prospect, and indeed the reality of going there - though it's not Shetland music. Tunes I particularly liked were/are Joey's Tune, Miss Rowan Davies and Mary McKinnon Of Digg.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
The Kesh Jig, it's the first tune I ever learned. And Waltz for Polle. I played that one on the pipes with the fiddler of my band, and she liked it VERY big time. I composed a second tune to go with it for her then, we practised that set more and more, and well...now she's my girlfriend...
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
I got my heart broken in 1997 and went to Ireland for a fortnight to escape and lick my wounds. While there i got a cassette by the piper Mickey Dunne called The Limerick Lasses. I used to play that tape and particularly that tune when I was back in the UK and feeling mopey, frequently at full bore in my camper van on the M1 near Northampton. Very therapeutic. Incidentally a friend of mine who was an apprentice pipemaker did some work for Mickey Dunne and told him how much i loved the album-so nice to know he knew.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Bill Charlton's Fancy, a lovely piece composed and recorded by the late Northumbrian piper Billy Pigg. (It's in the Tunes section, but a fast and tricky final part is missing.) When I first heard it as a student at Oxford it evoked for me the pure light, clear clean air and sense of space that you can get in North-East England - well, some of it, some of the time. Its first notes were like the few stars you see when first you look up at night; its more complex developments were like seeing ever more stars appear; the last bit was galaxies rioting. Anyway, you get the picture.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Dennis Murphy's Slide, I play it on all my instruments. It's just one of my favourites. It also starts the Ballyvourney Jig Set by the Abbey Ceili band which is a dance close to my heart.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
The Banks (or Shores) of Lough Gowna, for memories of things that happened there long before I knew there was a tune that encapsulates what it means to me. Love that tune.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Roaring Water. Whenever I play it, I think of the long beach on the west side of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. I always think of it as the white-and-silver beach.
Shingly Beach. I have actually been on a shingly beach up in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Instead of sand, a shingly beach is made up of stones. They've gotten rounded over the centuries, and they make the most amazing sound as the tide pulls in and out.
Banish Misfortune. I am a pagan, and I often start rituals with this tune.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Mine would have to be 'The Lark in the Morning' which I first heard at Nottingham's Irish Social Centre and subsequently taught myself to play on a warped Chinese fiddle I'd bought for a couple of quid on Denman Street.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Down the Tannoch Road, the first tune i ever learnt by ear, and the cock of the north (the one from shropshire, strangely) would be mine, and the song Van Dieman's Land.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
>That drunken piper sounds like Willie McD.
the silver spear was his default tune when he was like that.
Unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately -- the piper's name has long since faded from memory. Truth to tell, I'm not quite sure we were formally introduced.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Haaaah,
As of last night's house session at a friend's place, the Rolling Waves has now been bumped to the number one slot... Somebody was doing some pretty sick operatic accompaniment.....
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
On January 15 of this year, I was learning Whiskey Before Breakfast during a lesson, and when I played the low B at the end of the fourth bar, my teacher literally leapt up from his seat and shouted, "I heard that! That was beautiful! YOU'VE BEEN PRACTICING YOUR VIBRATO!" I'm grinning right now, remembering that day, and I associate that memory with that tune every time I play it.
Other significant-to-me tunes:
- Marie's Wedding, the first tune I ever learned.
- Fanny Power, the first tune I ever picked up at a session.
- The Road to Lisdoonvarna, the first tune I ever led at a a session.
- The South Wind, which I played this morning, outdoors at a remote bed and breakfast in Newfoundland, because it seemed like a fitting tune to play when winds were gusting at 50 km/h from the south.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
I fell in love with Out on the Ocean immediately when I heard it, and love it still, but I am darned if I can remember who I heard it from or where. So no name-dropping or tales to tell related to that one, just a wonderful tune. Although, I do remember it was a gent named Bob Drouin that taught me the version with two different B parts (or a B and C part) that is most common in this small corner of the world.
Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Just a random question that popped into my head while takin' the ol' shower the other day.
So I'm sure everyone has tunes that mean something special to them...
For me, I'd have to say it would be the Britches Full of Stitches and Church Hill. Britches was the first tune that I ever learned on the fiddle either directly or indirectly from my then fiddle teacher, Jimmy Devine. The latter is a very old pipe tune taken from the descriptive piece "Mairseail Alasdruim" that was taught to me by my pipe teacher, Patrick Hutchinson. Of the tunes that he's taught me, I feel that this one is the most significant.
Alrighty. I'm a bit hungry. Food time.
Cheers,
Armand
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by fiddlinviolinin
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
A few that I've picked up from Jim, the other piper at my session; Miss Susan Cooper, Bonnie Anne, The Holly Bush, Snug in a Blanket. They're sort of special just because I enjoy his company and like playing with him (well, and they're good tunes). I can't play them without thinking of Jim and it makes me smile.
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by seisflutes
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
About five months after we started going out, my wife-to-be and I went on a 10-day trip to Ireland. At the tail-end of our visit, we wound up at a session outside Dublin, and we were invited by one of the onlookers to a party where -- we were told -- we would be able to play with a piper who was about the best thing this side of Paddy Keenan.
We arrived, were introduced to the piper in question, and realized right away that he was blue-blind paralytic drunk, a state which rather obscured whatever talents he indeed might have had. Not only that, he didn't seem to know, or remember, very many tunes, so about every other tune he would play "The Silver Spear." I think we must have played that damn tune about six or seven different times before, mercifully, we decided this party had about run its course.
For several months afterward, my wife-to-be and I couldn't hear "The Silver Spear" without laughing. We still grin a little when it comes up, not just because of the experience it evokes but because it reminds us of the first trip we ever took together.
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by sts
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Give Me Your Hand. It was the tune that the nice folks at the Crane in Galway graciously let me play on September 11, 2001 as my little way to recognize the tragedy that occurred in NYC that day. Crane kind of became my adopted home after the musicians and patrons were very supportive and kind of took me in. I had only really just started playing ITM at the time, so it's a great early memory.
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by Jason G
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Hmmm... I'd have to say:
Britches Full o' Stitches
Bonnie Tammy
Road to Boston
La Bastringe (sp?)
Kesh Jig
Swallowtail Jig
Flop Eared Mule
Bridget's Mazurka
Marie's Wedding
Road to Lisdoonvarna
I'm sure there are others, but I can't think of them right now. I learned all these tunes with my first violin teacher, Charles Kadyk. He was bar none, my most favorite teacher of ALL time! He taught strings in the public school system ans would use the Essential Elements cirriculum. But he had a passion for fiddle style music, especially Celtic/New England style. I don't know if it was true, but I always felt I was kind of his favorite because we both had a passion for the same kind of music. I used to go to fiddle workshops and fiddle camps, and would always help learn the new tunes I needed to memorize. He would even meet me about a half hour earlier b efore the rest ofthe student came to class to learn the tunes.
But I will never forget all the fond memories of him.
Then, he took myslef, some middle schoolers (I was about 10 or 11 at the time) and created a sudent fiddle group called Tree Sap (for those who don't know, rosin comes from trees). He would play his Viola, a few would play fiddle, and we also had guitar, whistle, and bodhran players. Every once in a while, he would have his wife come, and she would play her harp with us.
I remeber him telling me that would go with me when the time was right to help pick out a 4/4 violin. Sadly, he has moved away now.
Sara
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by Celtic Lass
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
The first tune I ever played in front of an audience (at a folk club - it was a performance
) was Star of the County Down, with my son and daughter aged 12 and 14. I suppose that means it'll have to come on the desert island.
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Just about every tune I play has considerable significance to me.
I associate most of them with the people who gave them to me.
So playing them takes me back to sitting in someone's kitchen or on the porch, or in a pub, picking up the tune.
Some tunes are tied to making new friends, and a few tunes are forever linked to the last time I will ever see some old friends.
These connections and associations shape how I recall and play the tunes. A A trained musician might say they are "the influences for how I interpret a tune." I just think of them as the poeple, places, and events that help make my playing my own.
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by Will CPT
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
When I was 15 (1951) I used to sit beside the excellent drummer of a local seven piece ceili band and watch him playing. He taught me a lot, and eventually let me sit in and drum along to some of the dances. When he broke his ankle the band leader asked me to deputise for him and I got seven shillings and sixpence per gig. A favourite selection of reels that the band always played was The Mooncoin Reel and The Scholar. When I learnt to play the box they were among some of the first reels I learnt to play. To this day I can never play that selection without remembering the excitement I felt as I dressed in a white shirt and black dickey bow for my debut as a musician. Sadly every member of that band has passed on.
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by Free Reed
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
The tunes on Phil Cunningham's record "Airs And Graces" that I heard in spring 1984; I was living rather more intensely than usually at that time, and it was a belated version of the teenage experience of having a record that seems to be the soundtrack to your inner life. The reel The Harsh February chimed in with my doing archaeological work outside in, yes, a harsh February; I was due to go to work on a dig in Shetland and associate much of the album with the prospect, and indeed the reality of going there - though it's not Shetland music. Tunes I particularly liked were/are Joey's Tune, Miss Rowan Davies and Mary McKinnon Of Digg.
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by nicholas
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
The Kesh Jig, it's the first tune I ever learned. And Waltz for Polle. I played that one on the pipes with the fiddler of my band, and she liked it VERY big time. I composed a second tune to go with it for her then, we practised that set more and more, and well...now she's my girlfriend...
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by s.g.
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
I got my heart broken in 1997 and went to Ireland for a fortnight to escape and lick my wounds. While there i got a cassette by the piper Mickey Dunne called The Limerick Lasses. I used to play that tape and particularly that tune when I was back in the UK and feeling mopey, frequently at full bore in my camper van on the M1 near Northampton. Very therapeutic. Incidentally a friend of mine who was an apprentice pipemaker did some work for Mickey Dunne and told him how much i loved the album-so nice to know he knew.
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by hakanozel
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Bill Charlton's Fancy, a lovely piece composed and recorded by the late Northumbrian piper Billy Pigg. (It's in the Tunes section, but a fast and tricky final part is missing.) When I first heard it as a student at Oxford it evoked for me the pure light, clear clean air and sense of space that you can get in North-East England - well, some of it, some of the time. Its first notes were like the few stars you see when first you look up at night; its more complex developments were like seeing ever more stars appear; the last bit was galaxies rioting. Anyway, you get the picture.
# Posted on August 3rd 2007 by nicholas
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
I paid Brenden Mulvihill to play Give Me Your Hand as I proposed to my now wife in a restaurant. We also danced to it at our wedding.
# Posted on August 4th 2007 by Kheelch
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Dennis Murphy's Slide, I play it on all my instruments. It's just one of my favourites. It also starts the Ballyvourney Jig Set by the Abbey Ceili band which is a dance close to my heart.
# Posted on August 4th 2007 by Aodh Rúadh
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
The Banks (or Shores) of Lough Gowna, for memories of things that happened there long before I knew there was a tune that encapsulates what it means to me. Love that tune.
# Posted on August 4th 2007 by Clear Drops
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Ah, Miss Rowan Davies, I forgot about that one. Will give it its first airing in years (from me that is) next time I'm out!
# Posted on August 4th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Roaring Water. Whenever I play it, I think of the long beach on the west side of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. I always think of it as the white-and-silver beach.
Shingly Beach. I have actually been on a shingly beach up in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Instead of sand, a shingly beach is made up of stones. They've gotten rounded over the centuries, and they make the most amazing sound as the tide pulls in and out.
Banish Misfortune. I am a pagan, and I often start rituals with this tune.
# Posted on August 4th 2007 by cathrynb
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
That drunken piper sounds like Willie McD.
the silver spear was his default tune when he was like that.
# Posted on August 4th 2007 by Frulator
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Mine would have to be 'The Lark in the Morning' which I first heard at Nottingham's Irish Social Centre and subsequently taught myself to play on a warped Chinese fiddle I'd bought for a couple of quid on Denman Street.
# Posted on August 4th 2007 by Floss the Tethers
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Down the Tannoch Road, the first tune i ever learnt by ear, and the cock of the north (the one from shropshire, strangely) would be mine, and the song Van Dieman's Land.
# Posted on August 4th 2007 by Djaque
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
>That drunken piper sounds like Willie McD.
the silver spear was his default tune when he was like that.
Unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately -- the piper's name has long since faded from memory. Truth to tell, I'm not quite sure we were formally introduced.
# Posted on August 5th 2007 by sts
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Haaaah,
As of last night's house session at a friend's place, the Rolling Waves has now been bumped to the number one slot... Somebody was doing some pretty sick operatic accompaniment.....
Cheers,
Armand
# Posted on August 5th 2007 by fiddlinviolinin
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
On January 15 of this year, I was learning Whiskey Before Breakfast during a lesson, and when I played the low B at the end of the fourth bar, my teacher literally leapt up from his seat and shouted, "I heard that! That was beautiful! YOU'VE BEEN PRACTICING YOUR VIBRATO!" I'm grinning right now, remembering that day, and I associate that memory with that tune every time I play it.
Other significant-to-me tunes:
- Marie's Wedding, the first tune I ever learned.
- Fanny Power, the first tune I ever picked up at a session.
- The Road to Lisdoonvarna, the first tune I ever led at a a session.
- The South Wind, which I played this morning, outdoors at a remote bed and breakfast in Newfoundland, because it seemed like a fitting tune to play when winds were gusting at 50 km/h from the south.
# Posted on August 5th 2007 by Tall, Dark, and Mysterious
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
Definitely Trip to Pakistan. Our little "teen ensemble" The Fainting Goats had first debut at a camp showcase with this song. Wonderful memories!
# Posted on August 6th 2007 by hippiefish
Re: Tunes that hold some sort of significance to you?
I fell in love with Out on the Ocean immediately when I heard it, and love it still, but I am darned if I can remember who I heard it from or where. So no name-dropping or tales to tell related to that one, just a wonderful tune. Although, I do remember it was a gent named Bob Drouin that taught me the version with two different B parts (or a B and C part) that is most common in this small corner of the world.
# Posted on August 7th 2007 by AlBrown