This Week: The Realz about Reels? And Slow Session....weather permitting!

IN THE CASE OF BAD WEATHER, I WILL DECIDE TO CANCEL BY 6:00 PM WEDNESDAY: CHECK HERE ON THE BLOG, CHECK YOUR EMAIL IF YOU'RE ON THE EMAIL LIST, AND LOOK ON THE OLD SONGS FACEBOOK PAGE FOR CANCELLATION ANNOUNCEMENT.

Getting Ready for the February Session?

Hey there! Here's a a firehose of musing about reels just in time for the Old Songs Irish Slow Session this Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 7:30 p.m. 

Hey, Tune-Buddies! 

What a crazy weather week - 50 degree weather followed by tons of snow...followed by tons more snow. Of course we only get winter AFTER Punxatawny Phil popped his head out of the ground to tell us "six more weeks of winter." I guess what he meant to say was, "Six weeks of winter starting....NOW!"

What's with the Obsession with Reels? 

Of all the types of Irish "chunes" there are to play, the reel is the one people tell me they have the most trouble with. And I get it. I do. Some reels just make sense and others...well... If I could avoid ever playing The Salamanca, I would. In fact, if you asked me to play it right now, whatever came out of the fiddle would be a hot mess and not sound anything like the tune is supposed to sound. 

A friend of mine has played Irish concertina for a few years. She loves jigs. They make sense to her. "I don't ever get lost playing a jig." But reels? "Well, it's like you're going upstairs to get something. You get halfway upstairs and forget why you were going up there. So you stop for a second in the middle and then forget what you were doing altogether."

Playing a reel is like going halfway upstairs and forgetting why you were going up there in the first place.

Her trick? She tries learning the tune as if it were played in twos instead of fours: one and two and one and two and....  Like I mentioned last week, there are words that perfectly illustrate the reel rhythm: rutabaga rutabaga, for instance, or as a piper friend says "animated alligator animated alligator." We are not alone in our confusion around reels. Seems like everyone has this question at some point. Listen to what fiddler Natalie MacMaster has to say about it.  

Natalie MacMaster explains the difference between a jig and a reel:

Jump to 3:03 to hear Natalie's answer 

Where do Reels come from?

Brilliant Donegal fiddle player Liz Doherty, in Fintan Vallely's "The Companion to Irish Traditional Music," explains the reel as "...2. The most popular tune-type within the Irish tradition. In 4/4 time it consists largely of quaver movement with an accent on the first and third beats of the bar. ...It is likely that the reel originated in France in the early 1500s as the haye. It was being played as 'reill' in Scotland in 1590 and its modern form was brought to Ireland from there in the late 1700s. Many of the older reels in the tradition are borrowings from the Scottish tradition and the tunes are often found in more than one variant in different parts of the country...."

How do I love to play a reel? Let me count the ways...

There are quite a few ways to play a reel: smooth, rolling, jaunty - some of it is personal style, and some is regional tradition. Here, Slaibh Luachra musicians Matt Cranitch, Jackie Daly and Conal O'Grada play a set of reels with a slight bit of a bounce. Lovely stuff:

Can you play it straight?

My first teacher was (still is) a huge fan of The Bothy Band. He didn't give me the philosophy of playing reels, he just taught me the reels. Speed notwithstanding, listen to the flow of the music. The reels flow like rushing water - onetwothreefour onetwothreefour - there's a drive to this approach, right? 

Punch It, Willie!

Johnny Doherty is a brilliant Donegal fiddler who plays reels with a more single-bow style associated with the north: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEdM2jHbxUc and  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL_9r0kSGYA.  

And finally....my favorite...

French-born Irish fiddler Patrick Ourceau has won the hearts of fiddle players and music lovers the world over. Can you tell why? His music just floats, and is full of magic and lift (and Laura and Josh ain't half bad either!). 

What's Your Favorite/Least Favorite Reel?

Thanks for checking all this out! I hope you found something to love in here. If you are so inclined, share why you love or hate reels in the comments below! Could you tell us which reel is your favorite or least favorite? 

Hope to see you on Wednesday!

Happy Monday,

Hilary

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February's Reel of the Month - Man of the House sheet music w/chords (PDF)

Man of the House mp3 with chords (NOTE: the chords should fairly closely match what's on the PDF)

Slow Session Next THURSDAY 11/21/13!

Friends,

I'm moving the November slow session from Wednesday, Nov. 20 to Thursday, Nov. 21 because Peter Jones is hosting a special Thanksgiving Ale House concert/session on our regular Wednesday evening date.

Claudine at Celtic Colours Festival 2012

Please join us to hear the always amazing Claudine Langille with special guest Triona at the Ale House, 680 River Street, Troy at 7 PM.


We'll be there for dinner, come and join us, and then hear a concert by two amazing musicians and listen to the live session that follows. Faster players are invited to join us.

Please RSVP to Peter Jones. The evening of music is FREE, so don't miss it!!!

SLOW SESSION 11/21
Our Monthly Irish Slow Session will be held on Thursday, Nov. 21 from 7:30-9:00 PM.

We'll play the tunes from the last two sessions, and I'm hoping that some of the Spotted Dogs will come and share the tunes they've been working on for the past season.


Contact me with questions. See you next THURSDAY!!!

Hilary

October Slow Session Wednesday 10/16

Hi, Friends!

What a beautiful fall this has turned out to be! I hope you've had a chance to get out and wander in it. And perhaps even hear or play some tunes...

I hope you'll come out and play some tunes with me on Wednesday evening, October 16 from 7:30-9:00 PM. We'll work on some of our "Learning Tunes" and then go around the table and pick tunes/sets - you can use the list below and the Sets Lists on the Set Lists Page to choose if that helps. 

I encourage you to print that page out - I've linked to a PDF. I also encourage you to bring a recording device so you can capture pieces of a tune you don't know.

I've put some recordings of some of the tunes below on our Tunes page from last month's session.

As we sat around the tables last month, we discussed what tunes we might like to learn for the season. Below is the suggested list. Links to printable PDFs of these tunes are (or will be) on the Tunes page.

Last month we went over the tunes in the learning list (see the Tunes page for printable PDFs). I also handed out a bonus tune, O'Malley Waltz, by a Massachusetts composer, Tom O'Hare (known to his friends as "Rabbit"). Eric and I had the pleasure and challenge of playing his compositions for a one-woman story-play by Marni Gillard a couple of years ago. (Marni's really good people - and an awesome story-teller!) I really liked this piece and thought it might be a nice little brain twister for us to try.

You won't be surprised when I tell you that last month's stuff got all shuffled in with a pile of papers. In my case, they happen to be campaign materials. You see, I'm doing my civic duty (not without a firm push from friends, of course), and my campaign letters and voter lists are all over my desk! So, this morning I woke up and realized that HOLY CANNOLI! Tomorrow is Slow Session and I'd better get the tunes up on the blog. And then I ran off to work and didn't get back here until about 8:30 pm.

Well, hey! Better late than never, and you should always bring your suggestions (and sheet music if you have it) to the session.

SEE YOU WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16 at 7:30 PM!!!

Best,

Hilary

Thinking about tunes...

Hiya, gang! What a great session last night! Sorry for any confusion - I forgot that the Blogger posts take a day to go out, so please nobody show up at Old Songs tonight looking for tunes! :-)


We had a great old chat about bands to listen to when you're first starting out playing the music (this is a post for another day), and we also talked about a tune that was on our list from last month: The Old Bush. I have a CD of uilleann piper Willie Clancy's music, and on the first CD in the set, there's a lovely rendition of The Old Bush. In contrast, I have a lovely CD by my friend Pat O'Connor, The Humours of Derrybeha, that features a gorgeous track of Sporting Moll and The Old Bush. Pat's version is the closest to what I hear played around this area these days. I encourage you to buy the CDs, but if you want to hear the contrast between the two versions, you can listen here:

Willie Clancy  - The Old Bush is listed as the third track, and if you roll your cursor just to the left of the number, a little play arrow icon will show up. Click it and you can hear a sample.   

Pat O'Connor  - This version is a bit smoother and less piper-y (for obvious reasons). It's very obviously the same tune, but the pacing and the phrasing is a little different.


I want to give a shout out to Colleen O'Sullivan's Comhaltas Slow Session! Clayton mentioned that you guys had played Eddie Kelly's #2 on Sunday. Joe and Amy remembered it and played it along with Eddie Kelly's #1 for us. Then Clayton dug out the sheet music for #2 and we played that a bunch of times. What a great tune! We're going to work on Eddie Kelly's #1 for next month.

After a bit of a delay (the photocopier was being cranky), we finally got around to playing Tonra's jig (dmix)/Anthony Frawley's (gmaj)/Kerfunten (dmaj); Shoe the Donkey (thank you Gary Mehlum for straightening me out on how to play the b part!), and Fermoy Lasses/Sporting Paddy. We had some nice discussion about tunes and a few variations, and made plans for next month.


Regarding The Kerfunten, I understand from notes on TheSession.org that the tune was composed by flute player Hammy Hamilton, who apparently wrote the tune in G, not D. Anyway, I originally learned it in D, and it just fit the set well in that key, so....we're just gonna do it that way for now. You can access both versions on the Tunes page. It just seemed right to mention the composer and the proper key, out of respect for the man and his wonderful music.

On the list for April 17*
Jigs: Eddie Kelly's #1 and #2
Polkas: As I Went Out on the Ice and Forde's Polka
Reels: Crooked Road to Dublin and Man of the House
Gary Mehlum will be giving us a Scandinavian Schottische, and I'll be digging up an Irish one to share.

*I'll post these tunes as soon as I have them.

Thanks again for a lovely evening! Hope everyone had a great St. Patrick's Day weekend...

Best,

Hilary

MP3s Up - Thanks to George!

Hiya, Lads!

The MP3 files for the learning tunes for the next two months are UP on the Slow Session Tunes page. Thank you so much to George Ward for quickly taking the spots and turning around some very nice sloooowwww recordings of the tunes.

These tunes were played on Tin Whistle. George and I have been discussing the fact that sometimes whistle players have trouble hearing the notation of new tunes played on other instruments. George points out that there is an inherent challenge in this: high D whistle players are playing an octave higher than everyone else.

I notice this issue in seasoned players as well as new players, so I think it is just a matter of figuring out where your whistle low octave breaks and becomes the high octave. It's worth discussing, but I'm not the one to make the case. Perhaps George will share information with us in a guest post if he can ever find the time!

Cheers,

Hilary