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

Pipes, hobs and bananas.

This week's guest tutor was Maleny fiddle player Cath Ovenden, who taught The Pipe on The Hob. I am reliably informed (though I am in Shropshire) that the supper consisted of a yummy banana cake!

Tunes Class Powers on with Steve.

Steve Cook has taken up the challenge of working the Maleny Tunes Class up into the Maleny Ceilidh Band. The next ceilidh is on November 13 at the Maleny Showgrounds, so its a clear goal to work for, and of course we will have guest musicians as well to make it loads of fun. The caller will once again be the fabulous Davydd McDonald.

Steve taught the Bank of Ireland this week. In his words:  

"We learned the Bank of Ireland, a sneaky tune with a simple and repetetive A part but a tricky B part. 

We did some work on building tempos by playing a few tunes more times through and gradually building speed. My thinking is that if we pick a sequence of notes that everyone can play without too much thought about the content, we can focus more on improving left-right co-ordination and practice learning to relax the muscles that aren't needed to play the instrument."

If you've been longing to play faster in a consistent and reliable way, Steve's classes are excellent for the skills and practice you need. Not only will the skills set you up to be in the dance band in November, but will make you confident to lead tunes at the sessions. A good place to try it out is Finbar's on Sunday afternoon from 4pm. 

Nicole has arrived in England with John, and this weekend sees the beginning of the Cloudstreet tour with a week of singing teaching. (www.cloudstreet.org)

Tunes Party Tonight!

Bring your instruments and break out the chocolate crackles, its party time at tunes class. Nicole and John are flying off on their UK tour next week, and for the next 3 months, Maleny Tunes Class will have guest tutors including Steve Cook, Jem Dunlop and Cath Ovenden. So put on your party hat and come tonight for some tunes!

An inspiration for the Maleny Tunes Class idea has been Emma Nixon's Brisbane Celtic Fiddle Club. Emma is currently in the UK delivering a paper in Aberdeen relating to her PhD topic on traditional music, and attending summer schools and Gaelic singing courses. Indeed, she is involved in teaching at a summer school in August in Northumberland, and if you would like to catch up with her doings, here is a link to the flyer about it.

Emma teaches at Sandpipers Fiddle Week

What we did at Ceilidh Practice.

Maleny Tunes Class has evolved a format where we have a two-week cycle. In week one we learn a new tune, in week two we have a ceilidh practice, running through tunes we have learned and sets we have created. We aim to become fluent at all the tunes, and play for the ceilidh planned for November.

This week was ceilidh practice, a solid play for the whole evening only interrupted by a welcome supper break. We have a set of jigs up to dance speed, but our reels set is still at a very stately pace, and twice through the three reels currently takes seven minutes , which is a fantastic workout, especially for the flautists.

At last night's class we ran through our jig set:
Willie Coleman's (G)/ The Black Road (D)/ My Darling Asleep (D),
and our reel set:

The Peeler's Jacket (G)/ Miss Monaghan (D)/ The Banshee (G)

plus a variety of tunes chosen by members of the class:

The Ash Plant (reel in Em)

Tatterjack Walsh (jig in D mixo)

The Musical Priest (reel in Bm/D)

Brenda Stubberts (reel in A dorian)

We also had a visit from Jem Dunlop, who will be one of the teachers standing in for Nicole while she's touring. He revised the tune he recently taught, The Monaghan Twig, and enough people missed that class to warrant teaching it again soon. We're going to use it in a new set of reels which Tania (flute) has suggested:

The Musical Priest/ The Monahan Twig/ Star of Munster.

The Maleny Ceilidh Allstars are well on the way!

The Mason's Apron and other goodies.

The Mason's Apron was the tune of the night on Wednesday. The intermediate flute class learned it at the Maleny Celtic Winter School this year, and I thought we should all have it. Its a great reel. We learned the two part version in G, which is very flute-friendly. Many people also play it in A, so its worth trying it there too.

For the Winter School, I analysed the Chieftains' version and then the variations that Matt Molloy plays solo in an amazing performance which I have embedded below. And I've posted the dots which compare the two versions, A and B parts only. The intermediate flute class worked on all sorts of variations, and each person contributed a bar of variation until we had a unique version created by the class. Loads of fun.

I've also posted the tune Jem Dunlop taught a few weeks ago when he was guest tutor for the night. Its a cracking reel called The Monaghan Twig. I've put a really slow, simplified version on flute. Jem's elegant fiddle version is below it.

Next week is ceilidh practice, which means a slow session of tunes we have learned, done as many times and as slowly or speedily as everyone wants until we're satisfied, or, I might teach a new tune if the people present prefer it. The week after that is tunes party night, as its Nicole's last Tunes Class until November.

We are still discussing the details of who will be teaching in which week while Nicole's away, and the info will be posted to the blog soon!

Click here for a pdf of the The Mason's Apron Variations

as sheet music.

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!