This is the archive of tunes recorded with the intention of assisting students and other musicians following along with the weekly #TunesAndTea workshops, taught on Tuesdays, both online and in person. For recordings of pieces taught in previous years, or to set up lessons and get personalized feedback or instruction, please feel free to get in contact.

Each selection is first played slowly and then a little faster.

8th of September, 2024

The Rainy Day

A bit of a tongue in cheek choice for today, given the dreadful weather. Thank you, to each of you who came out to the workshop and/or the session. It’s always a pleasure to see you, and would brighten any day, rainy or not.

Next weekend, September 13th – 15th is the very first Irish set dancing festival here in the valley. The type of dancing that these jigs, reels, slides, polkas, hornpipes and more have been the other side of the coin to! Dances and workshops will be held at the Port Williams community centre, 1045 Main Street, Port Williams. (Out back of the fire brigade).

The weekend has kindly been organized by Pat Loughnane, who has been tipping away at teaching set dancing here for the last couple decades. Some of you may remember my own Nana (a school teacher) who was very fond of the dancing and would even sometimes work with the children on it after the school day was over. We’re over the moon in welcoming very special guest, Pat Murphy, who quite literally collected the dances from older generations and wrote the books on it (including Loughnane’s brother, Michael, who was a wonderful teacher of the style). Pat Murphy is a fabulous hand on the B/C accordion, and began collecting, preserving, teaching and composing after playing the music for them for about 20 years. There’s dancers and musicians travelling from near and far, and we can expect a good few of them to be present at next weeks session.

Additionally, the festival features traditional music, courtesy of several local musicians: Kevin Roach & Jane Lombard (who’ve been steadily providing music for dances for 20 odd years here!), piper Scott Henderson and friends, as well as myself within the Delhaven context, joined by the fabulous Michael Roddy on uilleann pipes.

If you’d like to get involved with dancing locally (it happens on Thursday afternoons in Greenwich), or even just take in some of the music and dancing going on during the festival, please get in touch with me and I’d be happy to put you on to the details.

NOW! Here’s The Rainy Day!

1st of September, 2024

The Cottage in the Glen

This lovely, flowing reel was penned by the Galway fiddler, Tommy Coen. Perhaps you’re familiar with his well known composition, the reel “Christmas Eve”?
In any case, it felt like a nice way to welcome back these Sunday afternoon workshops here in the valley. The tune is sometimes called “Coen’s Memories” or “The Crosses of Annagh”.

In Spring 2024, we had a lot of focus on hornpipes, getting the swing or lift into the rhythm of our notes. In particular, on fiddles, it can prove helpful to slur your bow from the note before the beat into the beat note itself. It’s easiest to try to incorporate this habit into hornpipes first as its much more obvious where these slurs could be aptly place, from the short note going into the long note, or the note approaching a group of triplets into the first note of the triplets. You needn’t use this as a coverall bowing pattern, nor should you. It is a helpful one to have ahold of, and once its feeling handy in hornpipes, it can easily be applied to reels, which are hard for all of us to play in the way we’d hope to hear them.

It’s equally common to hear it in E minor and A minor (and surely some other keys might fall nicely depending on whaat instrument you’re playing). I’ll include recordings of both here.

7th of July, 2024

The Blackbird

This lovely tune is extremely old and comes from the piping traditions shared between Ireland and Scotland, as well as the era of travelling dance masters. It would date at least as early as mid 1600’s, and is quite possibly older than that. Here is a lot more history about it!

Though it has a something of a hornpipe feel (short long, short long, short long long long) – and we can use it like a hornpipe to practise slurring the bow from the note prior to the beat into the beat note – The Blackbird has an irregular number of bars, and doesn’t work out to have even 4 or 8 bar phrases like the majority of tunes do. Because of this, it cannot be used to play as a hornpipe for any type of dancer, though it may flow nicely before or after a hornpipe from a purely musician perspective. The unusual number of bars and phrase lengths makes it a good bit more challenging to learn, even though the notes themselves do not demand a high level of technical facility. As far as categorizing its tune type, (jig, reel, barndance, slip jig etc), it would be referred to as a “set dance” which is confusing term as it can refer to one of two things...

In this case, “set dance” means that there are very specific steps that go with this tune, and only fit with this tune. Other examples of this tradition include tunes like Rodneys Glory, The Blue Eyed Rascal, King of the Faeries, The Garden of Daisies, The Job of Journeywork, Jockey to the Fair…

I’ve played it 3 times in the recording here, once quite plainly, and then with a few ideas for variation and ornamentation.

30th of June, 2024

Stack of Wheat and Stack of Barley

These two selections were taught by special guest, Graham Wells (C#/D accordion), and will be made available publicly after the students who attended the workshop have had them for some time.

I will also share a recording on fiddle at that time, for those who are hoping to hear any ideas relevant to bowing.

9th of June, 2024

Dance of the Honeybees

This weekend, the great composer Charlie Lennon departed from us at 85. His impact on traditional music will be felt for many generations to come.

For this weeks tune workshop, we are continuing on with hornpipes in an attempt to learn some bowing patterns for the fiddlers which will prove helpful to the playing of reels down the line. If you’re following along, do try to slur from the note before the beat into the beat note itself. Though this is a good tool to have at your disposal in any tune type, this is probably most apparently presented in hornpipes as we so frequently see the short long, short long pattern of the swung rhythms. In other words, try to slur from the short note into the long note. It can be a little counter intuitive as many people get into the habit of changing their bow direction when the foot would be tapping – which does suit many genres of music just fine, but can sound quite heavy handed in Irish music if done as the main pattern.

The composition we’re looking at this week, “Dance of the Honeybees”, is one of my favourite Charlie Lennon pieces, and I was first shown it by flutist Conor Cronin, who comes from Dublin. Do keep an eye on my music blog as I’ll likely share some more Charlie Lennon pieces there soon.

2nd of June, 2024

Nell, Your Favour I’m Afraid I’ll Never Gain

Here is a very old tune. I have heard a few variations on the simple melody over the years, and in other keys as well. It just happens that this is the setting I learned from my mate, Mairi, who is a fabulous hand on the harp.

It’s a bit of a harder choice, hornpipes do tend to have a lot more notes than jigs or barndances, after all. Some small comfort might be found in the fact that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th phrases of the B part are identical to that of the A part. The key its played in here, G minor, (and the idea for this tune itself) was chosen because the people present in this weeks class expressed a desire to learn something in a minor key, and to learn tools necessary for making the bowing easier in reels (always the hardest tune type for any of us!). To hear a less academic interpretation of this tune, and one Mairi and I pair it with, you can listen to it in my music blog.

Tip for fiddlers/bowing tip: try to hear the pairs of short long, short long, short long in the notes as you listen. Rather than slurring starting from a beat note (a “long” note), try to slur from the note previous to the beat INTO the beat note – try to slur from the short note into the long note. This will eventually come to your aid in the bowings used in reels, and in the meantime, will keep your hornpipes from sounding either like Scottish marches, or draggy/stodgy. I don’t believe in exacting bow patterns, rather than we change each time around the tune – so don’t worry about being too specific, but do try to develop awareness for where those “Short Long” pairs are, and do attempt to get the slurs going this way a good chunk of the time. Watch out that changing from one string to another doesn’t make you unintentionally do away with a slur that you would have otherwise chosen.

26th of June, 2024

Cliffs of Moher (old fashioned setting)

I learned this beautiful, old old setting from the concertina playing of John Kelly (who also played the fiddle). It’s a subtle, almost primitive interpretation of the tune many of us know by the same name in A minor, played here in D minor. One notable feature of this setting in comparison with the other is that it barely covers more than an octave in range, while the more modern, A minor setting rips through a full 2 octave range and then some, making it more technically demanding, full of flash and bang, and inaccessible or not much for listening to, for instruments that don’t have that lower range.

My two cents? They’re both nice settings. The A minor one is definitely better bang for your buck to learn if hoping to have a very commonly applicable session tune. The D minor one is quite rare, and haunting in its simplicity.

19th of May, 2024

The Chapel Bell – jig

A recent favourite of mine, and a tune I’m considering putting on my upcoming, debut album. I’ve been following it with a composition of Kevin McHugh’s, called “The Wind Off the Lake”, and then ending the set with an Ed Reavy piece, “Swans Among the Rushes”. It wasn’t intentional when stringing them together initially, but the set has now come to be thought of by me as my little “Children of Lir” jigs.

5th of May, 2024

Up Leitrim! – jig

If single reels had a jig equivalent, this would be it. The A part is 4 bars, then repeated, followed by an 8 bar B part that doesn’t repeat. A total of 16 bars to get through the tune, rather than the usual 32. This is a nice, easy tune to approach ear learning with as it doesn’t have too many notes, is in an easy key on any of the instruments (D major), and you can really get it flying/get it off the floor without a huge technical demand on the player. It also is limited to the mid/upper range of the instruments, creating something of a light, airy feel when played quickly… For these reasons, its the type of tune I often find myself choosing to finish tune sets with.

20th of February, 2024

Na Ceannabháin Bhána – jig

The Fair Haired Canavans

A slip jig, for anyone unfamiliar with the form, but familiar with music theory, is 9/8. This means that there are 3 beats in a bar (or phrase), and each beat is divided into 3 eighth notes. A little mindbending… for the rest of us mortals, the rhythm sounds something like “One and ah, Two and ah, Three and ah, One and ah, Two and ah, Three and ah” and so on.

Slip jigs, though the notes are often easy enough, and the tunes not particularly long usually, they can be challenging for anyone who is not familiar with how they sound. To get the feel of the rhythm, I would recommend listening to lots of them, and trying to feel the pulse of 3 beats over and over again. Some slip jigs you could search for might be, “the Arra Mountains”, “The Butterfly”, “Kid on the Mountain”, “Comb Your Hair and Curl it”.

13th of February, 2024

The Cow That Ate The Blanket – jig

Often when we have to think on the spot, “Quickly – think of a jig in G!” this is one I seem to gravitate towards. Its one thats been in my repertoire since childhood, I believe, and still hasn’t worn out its welcome one me.

6th of February, 2024

The Keel Row – barn dance

An oldie, but a goodie! Here’s an excellent place to start if you’re looking for a simple tune to begin learning by ear with.

1st of February, 2024

The St Brigids Day Jig

Composed by uilleann piper, Louise Mulcahy

A lovely composition which strikes immediately with its simplicity and its ability to sit well on any of the traditional instruments.
In 2022, Louise Mulcahy, along with Síle Denvir (singer), and Caitlín Nic Gabhann (concertina, sean nos dancer) were commissioned to create piece for St Brigid’s Day. It’s a day for celebrating women, the coming of spring, and much more…
To hear the composer herself playing the piece, the harmonies chosen for the regulators on her pipes, and to learn more about St Brigids Day, find links to the other two compositions, you can listen here on youtube.

23rd of January, 2024

Dornoch Links – barn dance

Also known as Bill Malley’s Schottische, and Joe Bane’s Barndance

I’m not sure would a person call this a barn dance, a fling, a Schottishe… these forms are all intertwined, of course!
The tune dates very far back, with the earliest reference (under the name, Dornoch Links) being found in a Scottish piping collection dating early 1800s. It is quite likely that the tune made its way into the Irish dance tune repertoire by way of Scottish planters.
Prior to it becoming famous to our modern day ears by the good graces of Martin Hayes, it was associated with both Joe Bane and Bill Malley’s, and Co. Clare.

16th of January, 2024

The Flowers of Doocastle – single reel

Also known as Paddy Sean Nancy’s, and Patsy Sean Nancy’s

Here is a nice, very old fashioned single reel. The single reels are a favoured tune form for me. Instead of an A part having 8 bars and then repeating before going on to the B part, “single reels” are either 4 bars with a repeat, or 8 bars without a repeat, and then the B part (same length). This means that there are shorter, and fewer ideas. They tend to be more emotionally evocative from a rhythmic standpoint, rather than relying on long lines of weaving melodies, and the simplicity of the melodies found in them makes them more often than not something that sticks in the ear. I’ve found that they usually really shine at fairly fast tempos, where as something more meandering with very long phrase lines seems to sit better (at least in my hands) with a more relaxed idea of the pulse.

9th of January, 2024

Man In The Bog

composed by Brendan Tonra

I learned this tune from Anne McGee, who comes from a wonderful family of musicians in and near to Toronto, Canada. Anne plays concertina and button accordion, and for a time while I lived in that city, we were weekly tune pals. The tune is a composition of Brendan Tonra’s, who came from Co. Mayo.

2nd January, 2024

Happy to Meet, Sorry to Part – jig

I learned this jig from my Nana. There is also a Cape Breton setting of the tune, which is certainly recognizable, the different notes choices in that setting tend to lend a bit more of a driving version, whereas this setting would be more on the contemplative side.