Tunes Class Cranks Up Again!

Tonight is the first Maleny Tunes Class for 2012. There will be carrot cake and a slow reel!

This Wednesday, 1 February, 7pm - 9pm, we're back with our friendly combination of Irish tunes and supper. Bring your instrument, learn tunes by ear, and join in a growing community of musicians enjoying tunes together.

This year the class will be taught by class founder Nicole Murray, with excellent local musicians Steve Cook, Jeremy Dunlop and Tania Owens, to cater for slower players as well as more experienced players.

This week, Feb 1, Nicole will be starting up the year with a new tune, taught at quite a slow pace with lots of repetition of phrases. After supper we'll speed our new tune up a bit, and play a couple of tunes we've done before.

On Feb 8, Nicole will run Tunes From the Vault, where we revise tunes that have previously been taught. We'll work in longer phrases, still with repetition, and Tania will be available to work with slower players and those who have never met the tunes before.

Jeremy will teach a new tune on Feb 15, at a slow pace, with lots of repetition. After supper the tune will go a bit faster and he might visit a couple of other tunes too.

And on Feb 22, Steve will run the Ceili practice. This is a chance to put the tunes together into sets suitable for playing in sessions and for dancing. Steve will move a bit faster, but Tania will be available to coach slower players before supper.

There are 5 Wednesdays this February, so Nicole will finish the month with Tunes From the Vault.

Our planning has moved as far as March! So in March:

7 March - Nicole teaches a new tune.

14 March - Nicole visits Tunes from the Vault, with Tania helping out slower players

21 March - Jem teaches a new tune.

28 March - Steve runs Ceili practice, with Tania coaching slow players before supper.

The cost of tuition has not changed, its still $12 per class including supper. Please invite your musical friends who would like to play Irish tunes to come to the class. Its a tunes class, rather than an instrument class, so they will need to be able to play a few tunes on their instrument and know the names of the notes to get the most out of the class.

All of the teachers may be available for private and small group lessons if you and your friends would like to improve on your instrument.

See you on Wednesday!

Cheers,

Nicole

We Rocked!!

The Maleny Celtic Winter School has been and gone and we squeezed every last drop of fun out of it!! At one point during the Ceili, I counted twenty-six musicians on the stage, and more than a hundred dancers! Congratulations to all the Tunes Class players who flexed their fine repertoire on the night!

Since then we've taken it on the road, playing at the Maroochy Bushland Botanic Gardens on Sunday. Big thanks to the eleven members of the band, Mal, Kate, Keith, Philippa, John, Tania, Peter, Miggy, Steve, Nic and Jem, who delighted the crowd with six sets of tunes, one of which we learned last week. The event was run by the Sunshine Coast Council and is was part of a series called Sundayze. The other acts on the day were John Thompson and Steve Cook, Cloudstreet, and Ironstone.

Last week's tune was Inisheer, a beautiful waltz named after an island off the west coast of Clare. We played it with a harmony line, it sounded luscious.

This week is the wild card class, the fifth class in a month. We might do a new tune, or we might play through a bunch of our favourite tunes. It will depend completely on who comes to class and what they need or ask for. There will be cake. And if its as chilly as last week, we may squeeze into the smaller room for warmth!

See you there

Nic

Tunes Class takes a short break - some time to practise?

Its festival time! The National Folk Festival is happening over Easter in Canberra, and we're all going. Well, lots of us are. So there will be....

NO TUNES CLASS ON APRIL 20 AND 27.

Maleny Tunes Class will resume on May the Fourth, which is of course Star Wars Day. Please don't make me explain.

Could you please let any friends know who might be planning to attend for the first time!! And just pass the message around? That would be much appreciated.

After two years of Maleny Tunes Class, the time has come for a small rise in the class fee. From May, the fee for the two-hour class including supper will be $12 instead of 10. Please tell me if this causes anyone any concerns, I'd rather you played tunes than worried about money. But it will help with chocolate cake and petrol costs!

Once again, my apologies for being absent so much due to my mother's failing health.

Nicole

May classes:

4 May New tune

11 May Tunes from the Vault - revisit tunes you have barely met.

18 May New tune

25 May Ceili practice - get those tune set closer to dancing speed.

June classes:

1 June New tune

8 June Tunes from the Vault

15 June New tune... followed by the Maleny Celtic Winter School that weekend

22 June Ceili practice

29 June Wild card night - maybe Vault tunes, maybe new tunes, maybe a guest teacher, who knows? That's what happens when you get five wednesdays in a month!

Maleny Ceilidh Allstars?

Twelve tunes! That's how many we worked through at last week's ceilidh practice. We played them many times through, worked on tricky bits, and even learned a bit of fiddle chop for extra-funky rhythm. For those who would like to learn more about chop from the master, Darol Anger's youtube tutorial is below. If you just want a reminder of the rhythm we did in class, it went: chord-chop-up, up-chop-up.

We played Willie Colemans, The Black Road, My Darling Asleep, The Peeler's Jacket, Miss Monaghan, The Banshee, Rakes of Mallow, Egan's Polka, Bill Sullivan's Polka, Josefin's Waltz, The Jig of Slurs and The Ash Plant.

I have uploaded a slow practice recording of the Jig of Slurs, done in a fairly Scottish style, to the side bar of the blog. 

Cloudstreet did a gig at Joe's Waterhole on Saturday with the Barleyshakes, and their flautist Belinda Ford suggested The Maleny Ceilidh Allstars as a name for our dance band. What do you think?

See you on Wednesday for a new tune!

Slow Tunes on the Blog!

Great excitement! Slow recordings of the tunes we are playing are finally appearing in the green box to the right! Four tunes are up already, and now I've been shown how to get them there, more will arrive soon.

Only TEN SLEEPS til Maleny Celtic Winter School!!! www.malenyceltic.org.

This Wednesday, June 9, is a practice night for tunes we have already learned, so we can get them closer to session speed. Sunday's session at Finbar, Bicentennial Lane, Maleny, was a triumph for several members of the class, who got in a decent number of tunes we've been learning at a reasonable pace, in amongst the shouting yet appreciative drinkers and the woodfired pizzas sailing past. The session this week featured singers, guitars, pipes, fiddles, button box, flutes (lots of flutes), whistles, mandolin, concertina, bodhran and bones. 

Now I've learned how to overcome the technological puzzle of how to get tunes up on the blog, entries will be more regular!