Yes! Yes! Yes! Its this week!

Maleny Tunes Class starts again this Wednesday, 2 February!!

Can't wait for the Silly Season to make way for the Ceili season! This silly season has been off the scale nuts, with flooding all over Australia, especially in Queensland, and including Maleny (which is up a mountain for those who are reading this elsewhere) where 282mm fell on Jan 10th alone. And there's a cyclone on the way up north.

But the BIG NEWS was that the Maleny Ceili Band, starring members of the Maleny Tunes Class, played at Woodford Folk Festival! Congratulations to Tania, Mal and Missy, who not only played at the Irish Ceili, but joined Nicole, Jem, Donald, Max and Davydd to play a concert spot on the Folklorica stage!

So join us for a tune, a chat and a chocolate cake this Wednesday. There are lots of exciting plans for this year - watch this blogspot.

Christmas Party!!

Tonight is the final Tunes Class for 2010. Naturally we are having a party involving cake.

But we are also in the last five days before Woodford Folk Festival, so we're also having a Ceili Band practice.

6pm - 7pm Maleny Ceili Band practice - a run-through of all the tune sets we have prepared for the Irish Ceili at Woodford.

7pm - 9pm - Slow tunes, the choicest morsels that we love to play, chosen by class members. A Christmassy supper and lots of fun!

And here are some details of the Ceili: its at the Dancehall venue, Woodford Folk Festival, from 5pm - 6pm on Thursday 30 Dec.

Our tune sets are:

Reels.
The Peelers Jacket (G)/ Miss Monaghan (D)/ The Banshee (G)
The Plough and the Stars (G)/ The Bank of Ireland (Am/D)/ Martin Wynne's (D)
The Musical Priest (Bm/D)/ The Monaghan Twig (Amixo)/ Star of Munster ((Am)

Jigs.
Willie Coleman's (G)/ The Black Road (D)/ My Darling Asleep (D)
Tatterjack Walsh (Dmixo)/ The Pipe on the Hob (Dmixo)/ Lilliburlero (G) - Steve's version that starts G2A BAG | A2B cBA

Polkas
Rakes of Mallow (G)/ Egan's (D)/ Bill Sullivans' (D or A) - and we could add the Finnish Polka (Bm/D) to this, as we learned it last Wednesday night.

There's also a set of barn dances which we'll play tonight.
See you there!

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