Sessions are few and far between here, and unfortunately real life (delivering kids to all their sport and dance, and travelling with the job) prevents me from getting to most of them. My fallback is to play along with recorded music.
I can't keep up with Matt Molloy, Kevin Burke, Arcady, De Dannan, The Connerys, or the Bothy Band (and I probably shouldn't even try.) Other albums have tunes in dubious keys (why does Mary Bergin play those e-flat whistles?). I use my ABC-player set to "fiddle" and that's fun, but it's missing all of the lift real musicians supply. On the other hand, the recordings on the BBC Virtual Session web site are great for this purpose.
So my question is this: can you recommend good play-along CD's with which to stock my collection? Has anyone put together a super-session collection of 100 or more tunes to keep me happy for the next couple of years? (Anyone like to volunteer?)
One More Time, Billy McComiskey, Brendan Mulvihill and Zan McLeod. Get it at http://www.irishbutterfly.com. This is a dance cd, made specifically for dancers to practise to, and so there are exact times all the way through the pieces. The jigs range from 50 to 120 bpm, the reels from 80 to 113, slip jigs, 90-113, single jigs twice as fast, hornipies from 80 to 113.
Grego, here are my favourite not-so-fast-not-so-flashy albums and their thesession URLs. Check the URLs for comments and info on where to get the CDs.
Southerly Breeze. This is Terry McGee's recording of Australian flutists. I like it because it's just flute with at most one accompanying instrument. Nothing fancy, and the're not big names, just local Joes. The easiest way to get this is probably through http://www.woodenflute.com (but let me know if you need help finding it). http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display.php/299
A Tribute to Michael Coleman (Joe Burke, Andy McGann, Felix Dolan). Probably the best ITM album ever, and it's not too fast. This is available in the usual places (even Amazon.com). The instrumentation is violin, box and piano. http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display.php/47
Not strictly Irish music. At a workshop I attended, I picked up a book called "The Portland Collection" . It's got a really good selection of tunes in it. I think its catagorised as Contra music. Then at another workshop I found a CD with all tunes from the book. It's a great CD some really good tunes and great to play along with. They have a web site which is easy to find. I can highly recomend the CD and book. The CD on its own is worth purchasing, but if you read the dots then the book is an excellent addition.
I was curious about that Portland CD Daver. You mean the thing is actually entertaining? Perhaps I should get a hold of it. If you get into the mood to Jam, ummm (Excuse me Zina) that would be session, and there is no one else around, you are not lost.
I swapped emails with Susan Songer and found her to be an extremely nice person. You can order the book from here directly and she will probably sign it.
About the CD - Do they play each tune one time through or multiple times? Do they string tunes together? Do it have every tune in the book?
By the way, the second book is on it's way. I'll buy it because she was nice to me. (Always pays to be nice) ;)
The Portland CD has a small subset of the tunes in the book. They are played in sets and each tune is played multiple times. It is really just a typically trad music cd. The tunes are not played slowly or anything, they are played pretty much at normal speed. The music is what I would categorize as 'contra' which means a strong bent toward old-time 'southern' tunes, although there are pleny of Irish and Scottish tunes in the book as well. It is a good book, the tunes have very nice settings and there is a section in the back of the book with a story about each tune - that alone is worth the cost of the book.
The Portland Collection is a great tunebook. Get it. Contra music is hardly old-timey and "southern". Contra itself is a New England tradition. You'll find contra musicians have a varied and respectable repertoire. This does indeed include some old-timey and southern, but embodies many an Irish and Scottish tune. You can actually play any tune from any tradition in contra music. It simply has to be dance friendly and compatible. You could dance contra to techno if you liked.
grego- if you go to http://laurarisk.tripod.com/cds.html, under teaching cds, there is a great recording of Laura playing well over 100 tunes at regular speed and then slow speed. i highly reccommend it!!! best of luck!!
Just a word of warning though -- if you want mainly Irish tunes, you're not necessarily going to get that in either Laura Risk's CD or the Portland Collection. They're both great collections, but they're not mainly Irish tunes, is all.
t's not true of a lot of sessions (and in fact I've heard more non-Irish tunes in sessions in Ireland than I have in sessions outside of Ireland), but in some sessions you'll get quite the crusty from some players if you play too many non-Irish tunes...
OK... so I'm about to self promote....... *grin*.... I teach bodhran and whistle and found that commercial CDs were too fast to practice along with for beginners so I made my own, very basic, just melody (whistle, flute, accordion) and guitar. The CD has many of the more popular session tunes, slowed down slightly. Although it has tips for bodhran players it is suitable for melody players to use too. (approx 1hour's worth of music)
Thanks for the wonderful suggestions. Zina's suggestion made me think of a CD I already have
It's an Irish dance practice CD called "Two Left Feet" with fiddle by Fiona Coll and Accordian by Merv Bell.
Is anyone out there familiar with it, and able to list the tunes? (Unfortunately the CD cover only names the sets
according to the dance - reel, hornpipe, etc.)
I recently picked up "121 Favorite Irish Session Tunes" put together and played by L.E.McCullough. It comes with the written music (including basic chords if you need them) and 4 CDs where all the tunes are played on whistle and guitar or piano accompaniment (these are channel specific so you can turn one or the other off depending on what you are trying to learn). There really are a lot of standard session tunes (reels, jigs, slides, misc) in the collection and they are played quite nicely. The tunes are recorded in slow and moderately fast speeds and are played once for each speed (the repeat botton on your CD player works fine for repeating the track). I play melody and accompanying instruments and found the CDs great for learning tunes by ear and for checking what I learned from the written music. I don't play the fiddle but think the music was written out with the fiddle in mind (lots of fiddle triplets). For accompaniment playing, the CDs are okay but even at the moderately fast speed once you get a feel for the chords you wish the tune would speed up.
I picked up the collection from http://www.ossianusa.com/. This really a nice place to purchase Irish music--the owners always include a hand written thank you on your receipt.
Yes I bought that 121 Irish Tunes book/CD package from homespuntapes.com, worth every penny & then some, we're learning tunes at a breakneck pace these days!
How do you turn the channels off to hear only accompaniment? Like left speaker, right speaker? Wow the things you learn.
Play-along CD Suggestions?
Play-along CD Suggestions?
Sessions are few and far between here, and unfortunately real life (delivering kids to all their sport and dance, and travelling with the job) prevents me from getting to most of them. My fallback is to play along with recorded music.
I can't keep up with Matt Molloy, Kevin Burke, Arcady, De Dannan, The Connerys, or the Bothy Band (and I probably shouldn't even try.) Other albums have tunes in dubious keys (why does Mary Bergin play those e-flat whistles?). I use my ABC-player set to "fiddle" and that's fun, but it's missing all of the lift real musicians supply. On the other hand, the recordings on the BBC Virtual Session web site are great for this purpose.
So my question is this: can you recommend good play-along CD's with which to stock my collection? Has anyone put together a super-session collection of 100 or more tunes to keep me happy for the next couple of years? (Anyone like to volunteer?)
# Posted on September 24th 2002 by grego
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
One More Time, Billy McComiskey, Brendan Mulvihill and Zan McLeod. Get it at http://www.irishbutterfly.com. This is a dance cd, made specifically for dancers to practise to, and so there are exact times all the way through the pieces. The jigs range from 50 to 120 bpm, the reels from 80 to 113, slip jigs, 90-113, single jigs twice as fast, hornipies from 80 to 113.
Zina
# Posted on September 24th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
Grego, here are my favourite not-so-fast-not-so-flashy albums and their thesession URLs. Check the URLs for comments and info on where to get the CDs.
Southerly Breeze. This is Terry McGee's recording of Australian flutists. I like it because it's just flute with at most one accompanying instrument. Nothing fancy, and the're not big names, just local Joes. The easiest way to get this is probably through http://www.woodenflute.com (but let me know if you need help finding it).
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display.php/299
One (Murphy Roche Irish Music Club). This is the people i session with. I like it because it's just a session, no fancy band stuff, just normal people playing. You can get it directly from the club: http://www.murphyroche.com - tell them glauber sent you.
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display.php/89
A Tribute to Michael Coleman (Joe Burke, Andy McGann, Felix Dolan). Probably the best ITM album ever, and it's not too fast. This is available in the usual places (even Amazon.com). The instrumentation is violin, box and piano.
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display.php/47
An Bhabog sa Bhadog (Kevin Crehan). All of the Junior Crehan tunes, played by his grandson. Fiddle only, no accompanyment.
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display.php/57
Then, if you get more daring, i'd recommend Harry Bradley's "As I Carelessly Did Stray" and Hammy Hamilton's "Moneymusk".
g
# Posted on September 24th 2002 by glauber
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
Definately get "Music at Matt Molloy's". A great session cd.
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display.php/52
# Posted on September 24th 2002 by SPeak
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill "The Lonesome Touch" has some great session tunes played at a very relaxed pace. The whole album can be heard in RealAudio at http://www.greenlinnet.com/shopping/search_detail.cfm?ProductID=154
Twiz.
# Posted on September 24th 2002 by Twiz
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
Not strictly Irish music. At a workshop I attended, I picked up a book called "The Portland Collection" . It's got a really good selection of tunes in it. I think its catagorised as Contra music. Then at another workshop I found a CD with all tunes from the book. It's a great CD some really good tunes and great to play along with. They have a web site which is easy to find. I can highly recomend the CD and book. The CD on its own is worth purchasing, but if you read the dots then the book is an excellent addition.
# Posted on September 24th 2002 by Daver
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
I was curious about that Portland CD Daver. You mean the thing is actually entertaining? Perhaps I should get a hold of it. If you get into the mood to Jam, ummm (Excuse me Zina) that would be session, and there is no one else around, you are not lost.
I swapped emails with Susan Songer and found her to be an extremely nice person. You can order the book from here directly and she will probably sign it.
About the CD - Do they play each tune one time through or multiple times? Do they string tunes together? Do it have every tune in the book?
By the way, the second book is on it's way. I'll buy it because she was nice to me. (Always pays to be nice) ;)
# Posted on September 25th 2002 by Mark Cordova
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
The Portland CD has a small subset of the tunes in the book. They are played in sets and each tune is played multiple times. It is really just a typically trad music cd. The tunes are not played slowly or anything, they are played pretty much at normal speed. The music is what I would categorize as 'contra' which means a strong bent toward old-time 'southern' tunes, although there are pleny of Irish and Scottish tunes in the book as well. It is a good book, the tunes have very nice settings and there is a section in the back of the book with a story about each tune - that alone is worth the cost of the book.
Sos
# Posted on September 25th 2002 by chicagofiddler
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
The Portland Collection is a great tunebook. Get it. Contra music is hardly old-timey and "southern". Contra itself is a New England tradition. You'll find contra musicians have a varied and respectable repertoire. This does indeed include some old-timey and southern, but embodies many an Irish and Scottish tune. You can actually play any tune from any tradition in contra music. It simply has to be dance friendly and compatible. You could dance contra to techno if you liked.
# Posted on September 25th 2002 by SPeak
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
grego- if you go to http://laurarisk.tripod.com/cds.html, under teaching cds, there is a great recording of Laura playing well over 100 tunes at regular speed and then slow speed. i highly reccommend it!!! best of luck!!
# Posted on September 25th 2002 by Kallie
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
Just a word of warning though -- if you want mainly Irish tunes, you're not necessarily going to get that in either Laura Risk's CD or the Portland Collection. They're both great collections, but they're not mainly Irish tunes, is all.
t's not true of a lot of sessions (and in fact I've heard more non-Irish tunes in sessions in Ireland than I have in sessions outside of Ireland), but in some sessions you'll get quite the crusty from some players if you play too many non-Irish tunes...
Zina
# Posted on September 25th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
OK... so I'm about to self promote....... *grin*.... I teach bodhran and whistle and found that commercial CDs were too fast to practice along with for beginners so I made my own, very basic, just melody (whistle, flute, accordion) and guitar. The CD has many of the more popular session tunes, slowed down slightly. Although it has tips for bodhran players it is suitable for melody players to use too. (approx 1hour's worth of music)
Details here
http://www.easy-pulse.com/alison/music/workshops/workshops.htm
or contact me for more details
# Posted on September 25th 2002 by alison
Two Left Feet
Thanks for the wonderful suggestions. Zina's suggestion made me think of a CD I already have
It's an Irish dance practice CD called "Two Left Feet" with fiddle by Fiona Coll and Accordian by Merv Bell.
Is anyone out there familiar with it, and able to list the tunes? (Unfortunately the CD cover only names the sets
according to the dance - reel, hornpipe, etc.)
# Posted on September 25th 2002 by grego
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
I recently picked up "121 Favorite Irish Session Tunes" put together and played by L.E.McCullough. It comes with the written music (including basic chords if you need them) and 4 CDs where all the tunes are played on whistle and guitar or piano accompaniment (these are channel specific so you can turn one or the other off depending on what you are trying to learn). There really are a lot of standard session tunes (reels, jigs, slides, misc) in the collection and they are played quite nicely. The tunes are recorded in slow and moderately fast speeds and are played once for each speed (the repeat botton on your CD player works fine for repeating the track). I play melody and accompanying instruments and found the CDs great for learning tunes by ear and for checking what I learned from the written music. I don't play the fiddle but think the music was written out with the fiddle in mind (lots of fiddle triplets). For accompaniment playing, the CDs are okay but even at the moderately fast speed once you get a feel for the chords you wish the tune would speed up.
I picked up the collection from http://www.ossianusa.com/. This really a nice place to purchase Irish music--the owners always include a hand written thank you on your receipt.
steve
# Posted on September 30th 2002 by Reeves
Re: Play-along CD Suggestions?
Yes I bought that 121 Irish Tunes book/CD package from homespuntapes.com, worth every penny & then some, we're learning tunes at a breakneck pace these days!
How do you turn the channels off to hear only accompaniment? Like left speaker, right speaker? Wow the things you learn.
# Posted on October 14th 2002 by emily_bmore