Eddie Corcoran : "Connie O'Connell's" jig : https://youtu.be/6kxQiaKWfIY

Seamus Tansey & Eddie Corcoran - duet : "The Steampacket / The Limestone Rock" : https://youtu.be/qhLSUjgOHig

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"There's fast music and there's lively music. People don't always know the difference"

Thanks for the post. I really enjoy the old school sound. It's just so different from what you hear a lot these days.

Wonderful playing, the sort of playing that was around when I started doing this music in the 1970s.

I'll take that any day, over the modern stuff where the player is throwing in jazz/pop techniques and stylings.

Too bad there's no video of that duet! I'd love to watch their fingers, to see what fingering approaches they're using.

The old guys often used a fingering approach different from the semi-classical fingering one sees nowadays.

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Richard Cook
c1980 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle

I admit I would have liked it better without the tambourine in the first one. Or at least with a reduced volume. The second one (the whistle duet) was fabulous.

I know what you mean about the tambourine. I tend to associate it with Renaissance tunes, which by the way, I like to play on my whistle. I was a bit surprised to hear it in this recording.
Still very enjoyable, though.

A bit late to this.

Tambourine, not so surprising, bodhrans with bells on were quite common and were always called, well, tambourines.



Joe Ryan always called it the 'Two and Sixpenny Girl' and it I have always known it as such (although I was aware of the Connie Connell reference, and the tongue in cheek alternative 'Half Crown Girl). The recently published book of Michael Dwyer's compositions calls the tune 'The Restless Boy', which I suppose would be the proper, or at least original, name for it.

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My brain hurts

That's very interesting. Why did the bells on bodhrans fall out of favor? As an aside, I heard a recording of the spoons being used at a recent session and I rather liked it. Are spoons also uncommon in sessions these days? There aren't a lot of sessions where I live so I don't have first hand knowledge.

Con O'Drisceoil - The Spoons Murder

Bodhran/tambourine with bells on:

Packie Russell & Marcus Walsh

see also Instrument fashions thread

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My brain hurts

Yeah, that pretty much sums up the spoon issue.
On the Packie Russell and Marcus Walsh recording, I couldn't hear the tambourine part on the bodhran; I wish he had let that thing ring. Maybe it was audible if you were there, but lost in the old recording.

Most of these Bodhran/Tambourine players were friends/neighbours of the musicians.

In rural Ireland strangers rarely played music together; it was always friends and neighbours. If your neighbour could sing a song or recite a few lines or play the Tambourine then he would be invited in to play with you, no matter how he sounded. It was just part of the session fabric then.

John

There's the video of JP Downes playing with a neighbour, who was playing the tongs, and did it quite nicely too, not quite as harsh as the spoons.

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My brain hurts

Were they by the fire?

No, he was playing a reel I think

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My brain hurts

Your mention of the tongs remind of bones. In rural areas and Appalachia, playing the rib bones of pigs was common. I've heard some really decent bones players accompanying the fiddle and the old, fretless banjo.

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"There's fast music and there's lively music. People don't always know the difference"