I'd like to hear yall's (ok, ok I'm from Texas) ideas of a top ten list of tunes for beginners to ITM. They should be popular at sessions, appropriate for beginners and include jigs and reels at least (maybe other tune types?) I await your educated responses.
Hey Joe! Well, we've any number of these sorts of lists of common session tunes -- mainly Will's lists. I'm not sure we've ever done a top ten most common list -- mainly because what's most common at sessions is different in any given area, so it'd be quite difficult to pinpoint ten. However, round here, it might be:
1) Jackie Coleman's
2) Sligo Maid('s Lament)
3) The Silver Spear
4) The Sally Gardens
5) The Mountain Road
6) The Connaughtman's Rambles
7) The Rose In the Heather
8) The Kesh Jig
9) The Kerry (FABA) Polka
10) Britches Full of Stitches (Brad's favorite)
But there's any number of others. Humors of Tulla, Maggie in the Woods, Rakes of Mallow, Teetotaler's (Prohibition or Temperance), Off to California, Boys of Bluehill, blah blah blah...
Fair warning, some of these are NOT popular at sessions (notably Sally Gardens, you'll generally hear the others round here) simply because by the time you've gotten any good, you can't bear to play some of these any more. Which is why some players will groan and run for the bar if some of them come up. But it's one way of seeing whether your session mates are good joes or not, if they'll play these along with a beginner!
Yeah, that's near impossible to narrow it down that far, unless you pick one specific session, and even then, every player would probably give a different top ten.
So...if I was just starting out (but had the foresight to learn then what I know now), here are the top 10 jigs and top 10 reels (I'm already cheating!) I would focus on first. (Mind you, this list favors fiddle, with a few easy tunes for whistle and flute. It would likely be different for other instruments.) Ask me again tomorrow and I'd probably change two-thirds of each list. Some of these will challenge a newcomer to ITM, but all can be broken down into "easy" versions, then layered up again with ornamentation and variations.
Reels:
Silver Spear
Cup of Tea
Mulqueen's
Star of Munster
Pigeon on the Gate
Bank of Ireland
Dunmore Lasses
My Love is in America
Julia Delaney
Ships Are Sailing
Jigs:
My Darling Asleep
Morrison's
The Lilting Banshee
Tobin's
Banish Misfortune
Munster Buttermilk (aka Behind the Haystack)
The Butterfly (slip jig)
Kid on the Mountain (slip jig)
Scatter the Mud
Denis Murphy's Slide
Other good candidates would include:
Reels:
The Morning Dew
Wind that Shakes the Barley
Last Night's Fun
Miss McLeod's
Cooley's
The Abbey Reel
Jigs:
Tripping Upstairs
Connaughtman's Rambles
Saddle the Pony
Top of Cork Road
Road to Lisdoonvarna
Rambling Pitchfork
Fig for a Kiss (slip jig)
I Buried My Wife and Danced on Her Grave
We posted a list of about 250 tunes here some time ago, and that's the "short" list of common session tunes. The point is, you could pick any ten tunes off that list, learn them, and you'll find someone else who knows them at almost any ITM session. Also, you may want to pick just one jig and one reel and concentrate on them for a good 2-6 weeks before venturing onto other tunes.
Last night we had out of state visitors playing at our session and the comment was made, after the set Tarbolton/Longford Collector/Sailor's Bonnet, that if you know Michael Coleman sets, you can find them in sessions anywhere you go. Check out this page that lists the top one hundred recorded tunes: http://alan-ng.net/irish/tunography/
As a beginner these are some i play:
Bill Harte's Jig
The Kerry Polka
Silver Spear
Cork Hornpipe
March of the O Neill's
Tripping up the Stairs
The Kesh Jig
Old John's
Connaughtman's Rambles( Of Course!)
Kid on the mountain
Maid behind the bar
Wise maid
Ballydesmond Polkas
Boys of Bluehill
The Teetotaler
Bank of Ireland
Jug of punch
Kesh Jig
Swallow Tail Jig
Morrisons Jig
Harvest Home
Flowers of Edinburg
Red Haired Boy
Off to California
Boys of Bluehill
Paddy on the railroad
Off she Goes
Now, I typed those in but I cringe at the thought of them. I especially have to hide my pain when someone kicks off Harvest Home or Off She Goes. In fact, those are decent tunes and great for beginners. Me I'll play along with any of them - forgive me if my face slips for a moment.
Look - I too believe, play what you like! I never really got into the common tunes, only cause i heard the music all my life and was sick of them by the time I learnt to play. It didnt affect me badly! Just get a couple of nice cds and learn a few tunes )
Thanks so much for all your responses. I agree that you should learn tunes you like, but since a big part of the music appears to be the social/musical aspect of sharing music, it seems important to learn a common vocabulary.
Joe
In addition to having a repertoire of commonly played tunes to take full advantage of the social dimension of sessions, it's also useful to have a few tunes arranged in sets. The comhaltas session book (Foinn Seisiun) which contains 116 tunes in 39 sets will help you in this regard. Details on the book are given at http://www.comhaltas.com/seisiun/foinn.htm.
Joe, its good to know common tunes, but If I hear one more person play Tam lin, st anne's reel or the Merry blacksmith I think I'm just going to cry. There is nothing more irritating than a session who plays only boring old common tunes all of the time and dont make an effort to learn new tunes etc.
Many years ago, when I was a teenage cellist and had proudly passed my Trinity College grade 8 exams, I was asked to play a couple of cello pieces as a solo in a concert. I went to my teacher and asked for his advice, suggesting I ought to play a couple of the spectacular pieces I'd done for grade 8.
I've never forgotten his advice, which mercifully I heeded. He said I ought to chose instead a couple of the easier pieces from the grade 5 syllabus which I had done a couple of years before. He pointed out that a couple of easy pieces which I was very familiar with, played well and with confidence, are far more acceptable to an audience than some barn-storming bit of virtuoso trickery played scrappily. The fact that I had "mastered" the grade 8 pieces for exam purposes, he said, did not mean I was anything like ready to play them in public, at any rate not for another 2 or 3 years!
I started ITM fiddle a couple of years ago and, applying my late cello teacher's advice, I still return gratefully to that little handful of polkas, jigs and reels which I struggled with in those first few weeks and months to see how my technique and general playing has improved, and, because I am now comfortable with them, to use them as test beds for trying out bowing, ornaments and other aspects of interpretation. These tunes are now part of me, and they are the ones I choose to play if a visitor says "go on, play me a tune", rather than the reel or whatever I "learnt" at a workshop or session a couple of weeks before.
I think that if a musician is not prepared to learn something new from a "beginner's" tune or some old hack tune, no matter whom it's played by, then they have a problem.
Beginners Top Ten?
Beginners Top Ten?
I'd like to hear yall's (ok, ok I'm from Texas) ideas of a top ten list of tunes for beginners to ITM. They should be popular at sessions, appropriate for beginners and include jigs and reels at least (maybe other tune types?) I await your educated responses.
Joe
# Posted on September 15th 2002 by Carrmuse
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
Hey Joe! Well, we've any number of these sorts of lists of common session tunes -- mainly Will's lists. I'm not sure we've ever done a top ten most common list -- mainly because what's most common at sessions is different in any given area, so it'd be quite difficult to pinpoint ten. However, round here, it might be:
1) Jackie Coleman's
2) Sligo Maid('s Lament)
3) The Silver Spear
4) The Sally Gardens
5) The Mountain Road
6) The Connaughtman's Rambles
7) The Rose In the Heather
8) The Kesh Jig
9) The Kerry (FABA) Polka
10) Britches Full of Stitches (Brad's favorite)
But there's any number of others. Humors of Tulla, Maggie in the Woods, Rakes of Mallow, Teetotaler's (Prohibition or Temperance), Off to California, Boys of Bluehill, blah blah blah...
Zina
# Posted on September 15th 2002 by Zina Lee
P.S.
Fair warning, some of these are NOT popular at sessions (notably Sally Gardens, you'll generally hear the others round here) simply because by the time you've gotten any good, you can't bear to play some of these any more.
Which is why some players will groan and run for the bar if some of them come up. But it's one way of seeing whether your session mates are good joes or not, if they'll play these along with a beginner!
Zina
# Posted on September 15th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
Yeah, that's near impossible to narrow it down that far, unless you pick one specific session, and even then, every player would probably give a different top ten.
So...if I was just starting out (but had the foresight to learn then what I know now), here are the top 10 jigs and top 10 reels (I'm already cheating!) I would focus on first. (Mind you, this list favors fiddle, with a few easy tunes for whistle and flute. It would likely be different for other instruments.) Ask me again tomorrow and I'd probably change two-thirds of each list. Some of these will challenge a newcomer to ITM, but all can be broken down into "easy" versions, then layered up again with ornamentation and variations.
Reels:
Silver Spear
Cup of Tea
Mulqueen's
Star of Munster
Pigeon on the Gate
Bank of Ireland
Dunmore Lasses
My Love is in America
Julia Delaney
Ships Are Sailing
Jigs:
My Darling Asleep
Morrison's
The Lilting Banshee
Tobin's
Banish Misfortune
Munster Buttermilk (aka Behind the Haystack)
The Butterfly (slip jig)
Kid on the Mountain (slip jig)
Scatter the Mud
Denis Murphy's Slide
Other good candidates would include:
Reels:
The Morning Dew
Wind that Shakes the Barley
Last Night's Fun
Miss McLeod's
Cooley's
The Abbey Reel
Jigs:
Tripping Upstairs
Connaughtman's Rambles
Saddle the Pony
Top of Cork Road
Road to Lisdoonvarna
Rambling Pitchfork
Fig for a Kiss (slip jig)
I Buried My Wife and Danced on Her Grave
We posted a list of about 250 tunes here some time ago, and that's the "short" list of common session tunes. The point is, you could pick any ten tunes off that list, learn them, and you'll find someone else who knows them at almost any ITM session. Also, you may want to pick just one jig and one reel and concentrate on them for a good 2-6 weeks before venturing onto other tunes.
Good luck!
# Posted on September 15th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
Anyone got a copy of the 250 or remember when it was posted?
# Posted on September 15th 2002 by Kenn
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
Last night we had out of state visitors playing at our session and the comment was made, after the set Tarbolton/Longford Collector/Sailor's Bonnet, that if you know Michael Coleman sets, you can find them in sessions anywhere you go. Check out this page that lists the top one hundred recorded tunes:
http://alan-ng.net/irish/tunography/
# Posted on September 15th 2002 by aliceflynn
My comments above are to supply choices of what you may commonly find others playing... pick ten that you like.
# Posted on September 15th 2002 by aliceflynn
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
For our old list of common session tunes, go to:
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display.php/110
Mind you, that's the "short" list of 200-300 tunes, and your local session may favor tunes not on the list.
# Posted on September 15th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
As a beginner these are some i play:
Bill Harte's Jig
The Kerry Polka
Silver Spear
Cork Hornpipe
March of the O Neill's
Tripping up the Stairs
The Kesh Jig
Old John's
Connaughtman's Rambles( Of Course!)
Kid on the mountain
Maid behind the bar
Wise maid
Ballydesmond Polkas
Boys of Bluehill
The Teetotaler
Bank of Ireland
Jug of punch
# Posted on September 16th 2002 by Celtic1234
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
I'll take a stab and stop when I hit ten.
Kesh Jig
Swallow Tail Jig
Morrisons Jig
Harvest Home
Flowers of Edinburg
Red Haired Boy
Off to California
Boys of Bluehill
Paddy on the railroad
Off she Goes
Now, I typed those in but I cringe at the thought of them. I especially have to hide my pain when someone kicks off Harvest Home or Off She Goes. In fact, those are decent tunes and great for beginners. Me I'll play along with any of them - forgive me if my face slips for a moment.
# Posted on September 16th 2002 by Mark Cordova
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
Lark in the Morning (All 5 jigs)
Out on the Ocean
Kilfenora Jig
Dingle Regatta
Sweets of May
Ashoken Farewell (Air)
# Posted on September 16th 2002 by geoffwright
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
Look - I too believe, play what you like! I never really got into the common tunes, only cause i heard the music all my life and was sick of them by the time I learnt to play. It didnt affect me badly! Just get a couple of nice cds and learn a few tunes
)
# Posted on September 18th 2002 by bb
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
Thanks so much for all your responses. I agree that you should learn tunes you like, but since a big part of the music appears to be the social/musical aspect of sharing music, it seems important to learn a common vocabulary.
Joe
# Posted on September 18th 2002 by Carrmuse
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
In addition to having a repertoire of commonly played tunes to take full advantage of the social dimension of sessions, it's also useful to have a few tunes arranged in sets. The comhaltas session book (Foinn Seisiun) which contains 116 tunes in 39 sets will help you in this regard. Details on the book are given at http://www.comhaltas.com/seisiun/foinn.htm.
# Posted on September 18th 2002 by Bannerman
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
Joe, its good to know common tunes, but If I hear one more person play Tam lin, st anne's reel or the Merry blacksmith I think I'm just going to cry. There is nothing more irritating than a session who plays only boring old common tunes all of the time and dont make an effort to learn new tunes etc.
# Posted on September 20th 2002 by bb
Re: Beginners Top Ten?
Many years ago, when I was a teenage cellist and had proudly passed my Trinity College grade 8 exams, I was asked to play a couple of cello pieces as a solo in a concert. I went to my teacher and asked for his advice, suggesting I ought to play a couple of the spectacular pieces I'd done for grade 8.
I've never forgotten his advice, which mercifully I heeded. He said I ought to chose instead a couple of the easier pieces from the grade 5 syllabus which I had done a couple of years before. He pointed out that a couple of easy pieces which I was very familiar with, played well and with confidence, are far more acceptable to an audience than some barn-storming bit of virtuoso trickery played scrappily. The fact that I had "mastered" the grade 8 pieces for exam purposes, he said, did not mean I was anything like ready to play them in public, at any rate not for another 2 or 3 years!
I started ITM fiddle a couple of years ago and, applying my late cello teacher's advice, I still return gratefully to that little handful of polkas, jigs and reels which I struggled with in those first few weeks and months to see how my technique and general playing has improved, and, because I am now comfortable with them, to use them as test beds for trying out bowing, ornaments and other aspects of interpretation. These tunes are now part of me, and they are the ones I choose to play if a visitor says "go on, play me a tune", rather than the reel or whatever I "learnt" at a workshop or session a couple of weeks before.
I think that if a musician is not prepared to learn something new from a "beginner's" tune or some old hack tune, no matter whom it's played by, then they have a problem.
# Posted on October 10th 2002 by lazyhound