Irish Flute Tunes

Here's a tune from flute and accordion player Sean McCusker from the Pride of Erin Céilí Band. More about the tune and the band here and here .   (I hope the photo really is of the correct céilí brigade. Google says it is, so it must(n't) be them.)

Here's a jig I first heard on the record Ceol Aduaidh by Frankie Kennedy and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh. Didn't realise it was in O'Neill's Dance Muisc Ireland (DMI), where it lives at No.84. I wonder what other things about the world I haven't realised yet.   The DMI version is more or less what I hear played at sessions. Maybe just with a-g-e more often than a-e-e to start the second part, and not so...

This version is pretty close to flddle player Fred Finn's version in the more than excellent book Trip to Sligo , apart from a few variations caused by whatever eye-failures and brain-wobbles occured across the 8 inch chasm between the book and my head.   The session.org has an entry for it here under the name "Paddy Jim Frank's". It's also related to The Navvy in The Shore. Regarding these names,...

Here's a great old reel for the flute.     You can see what thesession.org has to say about it here .

Here's another great tune for the flute. It's been popular enough to have been included on 20 commercial recordings to date (see here for details).    

Here's a good flute tune from Co. Galway. I first heard it played on this record by flute player Gabriel O'Sullivan.   There are a couple of versions of it and some background info. here .        

This is a tune from the Glencolmcille area of Donegal, named after the fiddle player Patrick "Paddy the Cooper" Breslin.   You can find information about Patrick Breslin here .

Here's a tune I first learned from the book The Northern Fiddler which includes a version from John Doherty.   The Tommy Taylor in the alternative title was a dancer from Teelin in Donegal.

Here's a reel I heard from the playing of James Byrne from Glemcolmcille. It's the first tune on an album of his music that can be got here .   Some other information about it can be found here .

Here's the first tune on a recording of the same name of Johnnie Maguire, the Co. Cavan, and then Belfast, whistle player, who was Seán Maguire's father.   He decribes it as "an old traditional reel I used to hear my father play". So it's Seán's granda's tune, or maybe he inherited it from the extreme olden days in Co. Cavan.   The ever excellent The Session site has details of the recording here...

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 often just versions of tunes as I remember them but, as my memory isn’t the best, in some cases I cheat and find the dots online. As often as not, the online versions and the dots inside my head aren't quite the same so there may be a sort of 'average'...

Here's a nice tune from a nice county (you can probably work out which county from the sentence below).   It's named after the Fermanagh flute player on the right in the photo below (you can probably work out his name from the title above) and was popularised by Cathal McConnell, who is also in the photo (you can probably work out what side he's on from the side that's already been used up by the...

The way I'm playing this tune here is probabably about as reliable as the average Harlequin. Nice tune though.   More info here   And a more competent rendition here    

I don't know anything about this tune apart from how it goes, or sort of how it goes. I do know some Jimmies and have met an O'Reilly or two, but that probably doesn't give me much to base a tune blurb on here. So there'll be no blurb. Enough to say that I like this tune because it never quite goes how I'd expect it to.         The session.org has some (occasionally strange) versions here.  

Here's a reel composed by Charlie Lennon, who made up lots of great tunes. He had the ability to make a new tune sound like it had been there for years, thanks to his imagination combined with having heard thousands of traditional tunes thousands of times each over tens of years. Unlike Charlie Lennon, loads of people make up tunes all the time just relying on the imaginatioin bit. Leaving out the...

Here's a tune written by the concertina player William Mullaly (1884 - ca.1955) from Mullingar. I was reminded of it by a recording of the recently departed fantastic musician Charlie Harris. That recording, along with a recording of William Mullaly himself playing it in the extreme olden days, is available here: The Drunraney Lass on "The Session".   The tune reminds me of "The Lark on the Strand...

Here's a tune I learned from a recording of the Chicago fiddle player Johnny McGreevy. The session.org call it " By Golly ". I was  surrprised to see "By Golly" written on the "session" site without an exclamation mark. So surprised that I nearly said "OMG!!!!!!!!!!".      There's more information about the tune and the Jimmy Neary (and it's played properly!) at https://connollymusiccollection.bc....

I might have posted this tune under a different name in the days before AI, but here it is anyway, along with computer generated triplets in the picture below, to go with the flute generated ones in the recording. Sorry if the notation is a bit truncated and twisted. That's all my free Chatgpt account would give me. The rest of the notes are here: Wexford Lasses notation.  

Here's a second post for this Olympic-length posting period. A sensible reel without much musical tautology. Rare enough in our times.   My new (cheap) phone can't seem to handle anything louder than a sigh so the recording is a bit distorted. No harm: I can hide my dodgy tone behind the buzzing. I've been keeping my flute and my mouth in a cupboard for over 9 years so rich resonances are rare in...

I was just reminded yesterday of the existence of this Irish Flute Tunes site by getting my annual subscription receipt from Podbean. So, I thought I might as well put a tune on it to get my money's worth.  I played this one on a very reliable Rob Forbes flute which I got off eBay a little while ago. My wooden flutes are also reliable but my ability to find them is less so. I'm in Belfast at the m...

Here's another tune from O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland. I hadn't noticed it before, despite its being there since 1907. I don't remember ever seeing a wren either. Maybe because they're so small.  

Tune number 748 from O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland - 1001 gems  There are 1000 tunes in this book with better names but only some of them are better tunes.      

O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland tune number 129   I probably would have been better getting the cat to play it.  

I play this tune by direct debit.  

Here's another tune from Francis O'Neill's 'Dance Music of Ireland - 1001 Gems'. My understanding of 'gem' in today's context is a tune without syncopation and notes keeping close company with other notes they don't get on with.