So this is what we'll be learning first

So, if you're currently in the Mather Orchestra and would like to play some Irish Music with me when school starts up again in August, this is what we will learn first. This is the Connaughtman's Rambles (from an earlier post) in action in a Pub in Limerick. You might spot me on the left. If you look and listen you'll see guitars, concertina, fiddles, flutes and bodrahn. Near the end of the clip you can see the guy in the middle with glasses on turn around and call the next tune to the folks around him. This was his "set", he started it off with a different tune and was leading.

By the way, I'm sorry for the abrupt edit. I don't know why my camera did this. The jig comes in at the 17 second mark. I spend the first 16 seconds filming the feet of a dancer who was sitting next to me. There are a couple of different types of Irish dancing. The one that most everyone associates with Ireland is set dancing or step dancing. This is similar to what you might see in Riverdance. Everything is highly choreographed  and is often performed with multiple people. There is also Ceili dancing. I spoke of this in an earlier post. You might think of Ceili dancing as similar to square dancing. It is group dancing, often very complex, that is performed at social events.

My favorite type of dancing is Sean-nós dancing. Sean-nos means "old style" in Gaelic and reminds me of tap dancing. You can see sean-nos dancers with hard or soft shoes, but it is a much more improvised form with free arm movements. It is just as rhythmic as the other styles but much more individualized. This is what the girl sitting next to me was practicing. 

Getting Ready

So in the couple of months since I received the news that my fellowship had been funded by Fund For Teachers I have been working in preparation for my journey. While I have been teaching for almost twenty years, and playing music most of my life, I am quite unfamiliar with traditional Irish music. A major inspiration for my decision to design this particular type of professional development was that I could learn something altogether new, and then immediately share that knowledge with my students. Very often, especially for veteran teachers, there is a disconnect between the students and the teacher-as-student. Simply put, it is easy for teachers to forget what it is like to learn something new, especially in their subject.

To that end, I have started to take Irish fiddle lessons with Matt Brown at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Irish traditional music is, in large part, folk music, not art music. It is music played by people of all experience levels. While performed on stage and in concert halls in some instances, Irish traditional music is most often played socially, in pubs, homes and other gatherings. There are literally thousands of Irish tunes in the lexicon. Most of them are relatively simple to learn (although often very ornate and difficult to play well) and vary greatly by style and region. From what I have come to understand, groups of people who get together in different areas will often draw from a similar repertoire of 20-30 tunes that are common to that region.

I wanted to start to at least learn a couple of Irish tunes before I left so that I could start to try to work on some of the unique technical aspects of Irish music. Of course I can play lots of songs with the sheet music, but they always come out sounding like some classical dude trying to play an Irish melody. Inauthentic to say the least.

I have found my lessons to be very enjoyable. Some of the tunes that I have learned include Connaughtman's Rambles, Off to San Francisco, Mug of Brown Ale, The Silver Spear, Bohola's Jig and Many a Wild Night.

Check out sheet music and videos by clicking on the links or in the margins.

So then I found out that Matt, along with some other teachers from the Irish Music School of Chicago collaborate in coordinating the Irish sessions at Cheif O'Neills pub in Chicago. There are sessions every Tuesday and Sunday which are great. I would recommend it to anyone who plays, or would like to go just to eat and listen to music. It is a family friendly environment. All of the songs that I have learned (and many more) are played in these sessions. I have gone a couple of times and it is a super-friendly vibe. I have not been intimidated to sit in. I only hope that I have the same resolve once I actually get to the Emerald Isle.