I want to accompany reels , jigs, hornpipes and other fast melodies with the keyboard. Where can I find material/inspiration? I know that the guitar is more common in irish folk music, but I am not that good guitar player. (I am not a very good keyboard player either, but I do my best.)

Au contraire, there's a lot of good piano accompaniment in trad.

There's Geraldine Cotter:
Seinn an Piano (tutorial) http://www.amazon.com/Seinn-Piano-Play- ... 0946005923
Piano + (recording) http://celticgrooves.homestead.com/cg_c ... piano.html

I like Brendan Dolan [not Felix Doran!] on "Live at Mona's", and Padraic O'Reilly's "Down the Ivory Stair" for some nice Irish piano.

Many ceili bands use piano as their anchor instrument, so check out ceili band recordings. Piano is also the accompaniment of choice for much Cape Breton fiddling and New England Contradance, with styles applicable or adaptable to Irish trad.

And here's another thread on Irish piano: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=69182

Thanks a bunch! I will try the tutorial and see if it helps.

You might also want to do a search for "ceili band" on the Comhaltas website or on their youtube channel and see what you come up with. They have some of the All-Ireland ceili band performances on there, IIRC, and those bands usually have pianos.

http://www.youtube.com/user/comhaltas

Good luck, and have fun!!

I just joined, so forgive the delayed response.

Brian McGrath is teaching a class in Irish piano accompaniment at ZoukFest. Go to www.zoukfest.com for more information.

1. Cape Breton, the deedle-dee music tradition with the strongest piano tradition. Tracy Dares and John Morris Rankin are names to look out for.
2. Irish Ceili bands of mid last century, in which piano was often an important part of the sound. The Ballinakil and Tulla Ceili bands in particular.
3. Josephine Keegan's piano acc., on many of Sean McGuire's 'solo' fiddle LPs.
4. Contemporary CDs featuring, starring, or produced by Bill Whelan, Phil Coulter, or Phil Cunningham.
5. Battlefield Band CDs.

The latter two suggestions might be form of piano accordion or 'keyboards', so be careful. My first three suggestion are the surest, and rank in that order.

I played with my 3 man "band" today and they said i had improved my playing. It is difficult to listen to music and know what notes they are playing. Some things i can grasp and it makes my playing sound better. Youtube clips where you can see the keyboard is the best.

That course would be great. Especially the teaching of patterns. Unfortunately it is at the other side of earth. (I live in Sweden.) Thanks all for advice.

Congratulations! Can you at least ask them to tell you the tunes' keys in advance? That way you can always vamp ...

And BTW -- and YES, EXPERTS, I'M AWARE THIS IS AN ALMOST INSULTINGLY OVERSIMPLIFIED "TRIAGE" CONCEPT WHICH IGNORES ALL PROPER MUSIC THEORY BUT CAN NONETHELESS HELP A BIT -- a lot of these tunes might have their first 8 - 16 bars ("A part") in a major key like G and then go to that key's relative minor (em) in the B part. Or vice versa (start in Em, go to G major). So if your tune starts out in one key, look for its major or minor counterpart to show up halfway through the tune. In reality, many of these "minor" tunes are in Dorian, Mixolydian, or Aeolian modes as opposed to "minor keys," but the "major/minor key" basic can at least help you halfway fake it until you learn the tunes.

Definitely start thinking about the modes as soon as you can, though, because it will add much more color to your accompaniment, and it'll reduce the risk of an errant major V chord jumping up and biting you in the bum!

Aside from learning the style of playing, does anyone have recommendations regarding selecting a good versatile portable keyboard to take to a session.

You might search for clips of Cape Breton fiddler Jerry Holland. Most of his CD recordings feature piano. For a completely different feel, the Alasdair Fraser CD called Skyedance features keyboardist Paul Machlis.

I was talking to a ceilidh guitar player, and he made the comment that the chords you play don't really matter. And then a friend took a bouzouki course with a famous player, who said the same thing. I don't think they mean it totally doesn't matter, but that the groove is about 95% of what you're doing, and as long as your chords don't clash it will work.

I too am searching for some kind of accompaniment patterns that could be used with the tin whistle. I don't play in sessions so my interest is just in putting together some songs at home. I have research Bodhrán loops and I've found a few companies that have them but they don't seem to break it down into type of song. They just give some beats.

My idea was to put some Bodhran loops on and then record myself playing tin whistle and then add in some piano or guitar using the keyboard (I don't play guitar). I'm just getting started in this.

If I can't find suitable loops then I thought about learning some basic Bodhrán patterns and playing that on the keyboard and making my own drum loop track. But that's a bit more complicated and I know it wouldn't sound realistic. This is just for my personal enjoyment.

I saw a book on guitar called "Celtic Back-Up". Some of that might translate to piano, or I could play the guitar part on my keyboard. I haven't purchased it yet.

For the keyboard question: I use a Yamaha PSR-S900. I'm happy with it as it does multi-track recording and has lots of instruments and styles. There is a cheaper version, maybe smaller too, the PSR-S700. The 10 is the newer model (910 & 710).

You might want to look at this book, which is both instrument and genre generic:

http://www.amazon.com/Mel-Celtic-Back-U ... 0786640650

He walks you through a number of exercises to help you learn how to do it.

Yes that's the book I was referring to. I thought it was for guitar though, I must have mixed it up with another book.

I think I will give this book a try. I know attending sessions is the way to go but I have to find some first (I'm in France).

I've been having fun playing along with Jules Bitter's "beats," though you may find they take a little getting used to at first. It'd be nice to know where Tempos 1, 2, 3, & 4 fall on the metronome, though I suppose I could figure it out with mine -- but I'd rather put my energy into just playing along

http://www.whistle-flute.com/?Shop:CDR_The_Irish_Beat_Conductor

Yeah. Chris's book is definitely for any instrument. He keeps everything pretty abstract.

Because it's not specific to any instrument or any style of music, it's not a "how to do it" book, as much as a "how to figure out how" book.