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!

Leitrim Fancy, another guest, and exciting news!

Last week's tune was "Leitrim Fancy", a lovely jig that hovers between Gmajor and Eminor. We listened to the Bothy Band shredding it (a good thing according to the Year 9s I've been teaching), then learned it slowly.

This week we have the pleasure of another guest tutor. Cath Ovenden, a Maleny-based fiddle player, will come and teach a tune, and this time Nicole will be there to provide supper and enjoy learning from someone else.

And in an exciting follow-up to the last post, Cloudstreet performed at the lovely Mt Beauty Music Festival in the Victorian Alpine country, and just found out, we were voted Artist of The Festival by the audience survey! Yay!!! We enjoyed the whole festival, from singing in the primary school, to all the concerts, and even the rather early morning gospel gig!

See you at tunes on Wednesday

Nic

Guest Tutor this week!

Hi, tune crew.

This week we have the excitement of a guest tutor. Tune fanatic, font of tune knowledge and amazing multi-instrumentalist Steve Cook, from the Irish band Tulca Mor, will teach the class on Wednesday 21 April, 2010. Here's a link to a bit too much info about Steve:  http://users.tpg.com.au/folkrag/profiles/Steve_Cook.htm

In last week's class we indulged our romantic notions and learned Josefin's Waltz, by Roger Tallroth. Sweeping, charming and Swedish, this lovely waltz is played by Irish and Scottish players as well, and it was lovely to learn a slow tune and immediately play it up to speed!

Nicole will be back to teach on Wednesday 28 April. She's in Melbourne doing art stuff this week, and Cloudstreet will play at Mt Beauty Music Muster next weekend in Victoria.

Til then, crank it up.

Nic

The National Folk Festival and Beyond

We're all off to the National Folk Festival, to absorb the wall-to-wall tunes in the session bar. Nicole and John are playing as cloudstreet (www.cloudstreet.org), and launching the new cd, The Circus of Desires. (Which features one of our tunes-class tunes, Willie Coleman's)

So, NO TUNES CLASS ON WEDNESDAY 31 MARCH. And no class on the following Wednesday, April 7, either, as many people will still be travelling.

See you all for a further fix of tunes on April 14. Happy Easter with lots of jigs and reels!

New Tune Tonight.

Hi, tunesters. Tonight is the last tunes class before the National Folk Festival, and we will be learning "The Musical Priest" and enjoying a yummy supper.

Last week we spent the class working on tunes we have already learned, and getting them closer to session speed, as well as working on getting out of one tune and into the next to create a set. The tunes we played were "The Lark in the Morning", "The Glass of Beer", and "Miss Monaghan", and the jig set we worked on is "Willie Coleman's (G)/ The Black Road (D)/ My Darling Asleep (D)". It was all sounding terrific by the end of the night.

Its proving more difficult than I thought to get sound files of the tunes up, without having them all play at once when you look at the blog, so I'm working on that to make the blog easy to use. In the meantime, reminders of how all these tunes go are available at www.thesession.org.

See you at 7!

Nic

Yes! We are having a St Paddy's Day class.

The last two weeks have been eventful, with all of the available time going to finishing the new Cloudstreet cd, "Circus of Desires", and Nic teaching every day, so the blog hasn't had an update. Next week!

The good news is we ARE having a St Patrick's Day tunes class, this Wednesday. I have encouraged everyone to join in other celebrations if they would prefer to be in the company of green beer, but we will be playing in Maleny.

We have had two tunes since the last update and I'll put them up next week.

TONIGHT, Tuesday 16 March, is the once in a blue moon session at Irish Murphy's at Noosa Junction, starting at 7.30pm. See you there!

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