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

Woodford on the Horizon

Cloudstreet are back from tour, Nicole is back in the teaching seat, and Woodford Folk Festival looms large!

The Maleny Ceili Band is booked to play for the irish Ceili at the festival, and we're working on the sets we'll play. Davydd Macdonald, our intrepid dance caller, advises that we need to play at 110 beats per minute.

To that end, here is the first of a series of practice recordings up to speed, so you can get the feel of playing the tunes this fast. This is a rough-as-guts but right speed recording of our first reel set:

The Peelers Jacket/ Miss Monaghan/ The Banshee.

The keys are G/ D/ G.

There'll be more info soon on the blog and more recordings.

See you on Wednesday at 7pm.

Nicole

First Class of 2010

Tune of the Night: The Lark in the Morning - jig in D major.

Here is a slow recording of it to play along with...

We had a wonderful class tonight, full of enthusiastic players on whistle, flute, fiddle, mandolin, and viola, and learned the four-part jig, The Lark in the Morning. Well done! 

I have decided to keep the fee at $10 for everyone during March, as its a bit of a disrupted month. I'm not sure yet if there will be a class on March 17, as its St Patrick's Day, and I look like having a gig, and so does every other Irish music player in the district who could possibly step in to teach, but I will know more by next week. There is no class on March 31 due to the imminent National Folk Festival.

In April, there will be four classes, and they will be $10 each if you pay in advance (ie $40 at the start of the month) or $12 each if you attend casually.

Next week, Wednesday 3 March, we will learn a new tune from 7 - 8pm, then have supper (of course), then spend the remaining time working up three jigs to a good level of comfort and a reasonable speed. The plan is for the tunes class to play one of the sets of tunes at the Ceili in June as part of the Maleny Celtic Winter School. We will have them right up to dance speed by then, but next week we will just work them up a little faster than we learned them, and sort out how to get from one tune to the next. The jigs we will work on are the first three on our practice cd: Willie Colemans (in G), The Black Road (in D) and My Darling Asleep (in D).

Happy playing, and see you next week.

love, Nicole

Happy Festive Season, crank up the tunes!

Maleny Tunes Class is having Christmas and January off to enjoy summer and go to some music festivals. See you at Woodford for the Ceili.

The first class for 2010 is on Wed 24 February. 

Maleny Tunes Class is run by multi-instrumental tutor, Nicole Murray, every Wednesday night from 7-9pm in Maleny, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, Queensland. Nicole teaches mainly Irish tunes, by ear, working slowly phrase by phrase. We usually learn a tune in the first hour, have a delicious supper and finish with a slow session, playing tunes we have learned in previous weeks. Its very social and a good challenge.

If you can pick out a tune on your instrument and would like to learn some traditional repertoire, you're ready to join the class! Maleny Tunes Class students play a range of instruments including flute, whistle, mandolin, fiddle and concertina.

Maleny Tunes Class had a wonderful Christmas Party and Slow Session at Finbar's Lounge Bar in Maleny on December 6, and since then we have learned two more tunes!

A cd of 28 of the tunes we have learned in 2009 will be available in the Woodford Folk Festival shop for $15, or can be bought from Nicole by emailing her on nicole [at] cloudstreet.org.

Tunes we have learned this year include: 

1. Willie Colemans jig in G

2. The Black Road jig in D

3. My Darling Asleep jig in D

4. The Peeler’s Jacket reel in G

5. Brenda Stubberts reel in Am

6. Craig’s Pipes reel in G

7. Rakes of Mallow polka in G

8. Bill Sullivan’s polka in G

9. Egan’s polka in D

10. The Kesh Jig jig in G

11. Christy Barry’s No 2 jig in G

12. Dusty Windowsill jig in Am

13. Calliope House jig in D

14. Dowd’s No 9 reel in D

15. St. Anne’s Reel reel in D

16. The Banshee reel in G

17. Star of Munster reel in Am

18. Hardiman the Fiddler  slide in D mixolydian

19. The Fair Little Canavans slide in G

20. Lannigan’s Ball jig in Em

21. The Ship in Full Sail jig in G

22. The Wise Maid reel in D

23. The Glen Allen reel in G

24. The Concertina reel in D

25. Rolling in the Ryegrass reel in D

26. The Ash Plant reel in Em

27. Christmas Eve reel in G

28. Dinkies reel in A mixolydian

See you in February!

Cheers, Nicole