Hello!!!

Sorry for the really generic title - Irish Music can encompass a lot of things! - but my question is this; I have recently found that the LCM do an Irish Music Syllabus. I play the Recorder and I am asking the LCM whether I can take the exams on my instrument as it wasn't listed on the syllabus, so I had to write in to them and ask permission.

My background is strongly rooted in Irish music, and I would love to discover more and play more! I was wondering if anyone here knew of any way I could do this apart from the obvious (going to a shop and buying lots of music!)? I ideally want to know if there are summer schools, festivals or anything of the like that I can take a look at and get involved in? I know it is a bit of a shot in the dark, but I don't know where else to look! Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks very much everyone!

This is a link for a summer school on traditional music which is open to non-fiddle players, but doesn't specifically mention Irish music or recorders. Not sure if it's of any use to you. I'm quite interested in going though!

Just found this although again it doesn't mention recorders.

Hey there !

I play almost exclusively Irish and Scots traditional music, so know the domain quite well now.

Honestly, the best way to learn more tunes is to start to attend sessions (I'd recommend taking up the whistle, rather than the recorder, though, as recorder isn't used a great deal in Irish music - you can get some magnificent whistles, including some beautiful low whistles that sound amazing). As you attend the sessions, you'll hear a 'standard' repertoire for that session that turns up more or less each week. Record the session (after asking permission from the attending musicians - they won't ever say no, but they like to be asked) and then learn the tunes at home. If you can persuade a wind instrument player to give you some tips on ornamentation (crans, cuts etc for the whistle), phrasing etc, then so much the better.

Once you've got fifty or so tunes under your belt and you're participating regularly in the session, you can start to attend workshops. There are literally hundreds of festivals and workshops all over the place. I'm involved in the organisation of one in France (in Brittany) where we have some excellent players (Liz Carroll, Lunasa, Dervish to name but a few) who come, give concerts and then play in sessions with the attendees who can ask for advice etc - almost always it ends up being an impromptu workshop given by some star player.

Our festival is free of charge, but many people charge for the festivals (largely because they plan the workshops and the people giving them, rightly, want to be paid) - but the fee is never huge.

Check out www.thesession.org for more information on sessions in your area and festivals. There's also a tunes database with thousands of tunes in ABC and sheet music format (although I don't recommend using sheet music to learn - it doesn't really show you the way the tune should be played and those who learn from sheet music always stand out like sore thumbs in sessions - but it's a starting point).

The other obvious thing to do is to listen to as much music as you possibly can by as many players on all kinds of different instruments (wind instruments and fiddle share a lot of ornamentation and phrasing tricks).

Finally, check out www.tradlessons.com - it's a free site by a whistle and pipe player with video lessons for a load of standard reels and jigs (and a couple of slow airs) - he plays them once at full session speed and once at a slow pace for learners. They include all the various ornamentations (actually an interesting thing to do would be to take the sheet music for a standard tune from the session.org and look at the way the guy plays it - that should make it glaringly obvious that they're miles apart!)

Above all - have fun! And feel free to PM me if you want any more info.

Allan
(sorry, this post wasn't meant to gibber on for ten weeks!)

hi i am new to folk but joined a local folk band in hampshire after a shaky start things are going really well its really fun to play with so many different instruments and for £15 for the year and about 200 sheets of music its good vaule if you want to pm me i can give you a number to contact all are welcome no matter want level

monkey flute

Try this

http://music.dkit.ie/index.php?page=SUMMER...ITIONAL%20MUSIC

You might want to look up Celtic Connections. I think it does quite a lot of Irish music , but it is based almost entirey in Glasgow. I know they did some workshops on whistle etc last time. It would probably be better to go in on whistle rather than recorder from what i know some of the fingerings are relativley similar and the recorder really isn't particularly well suited to the music imo.