Anyone interested in perusing and playing any of my traditional Irish compositions can do so at http://www.lemccullough.com. . . hit the Music tab, and the Tune Index link is at top left.
All 142 compositions to date are printed in music notation. . . audio clips for about 80 tunes, with more coming day-by-day.
Actually, to be fully accurate there are 142 and-a-half. . . composed the first part of a jig for a 7-year-old music student yesterday. . . she gets the second part when she learns the first. . . it’s like dessert after eating your vegetables kinda thing. . . or maybe I’ll let her compose the B part, get those creativity juices flowing early.
Thanks to Ms. Lesl Harker for transcribing and setup of the tunes using the space-age Tune-O-Tron process and world-of-tomorrow ABC Convert-A-Matic technology developed by Mr. Paul Schwartz at concertina.net. Lesl has two amazing tunebooks of Mike Rafferty flute tunes, BTW, at http://www.firescribble.net/rafferty/.
What a resource! Great stuff here…
Check it out, people.
By all means check out the other part of LEs website-- he’s not just about Irish music. Last winter we saw his play Orphan Train at the NY State Theater Institute, and loved it.
Pat, all the tunes are in PDF form. . . had to put them on several pages, cause it just got too unwieldy, but there’s an index and you can just whip them off the page, I believe or print them. . . and, Paul, ORPHAN TRAIN is gonna be back at NYSTI April 16-25. . . i’ll see you then and we can have a session with Ray, George et al at Jose Malone’s – be a LOTTTTT warmer than last time! (and yes, i’ve tweaked the ending… more suspense)
ok, it’s probably me; I’m exhausted, but I can get the FANTASTIC audio clips but don’t see anyway to access notation. At least I get the really good part…
Apologies for my cyber-confusion about them being html not PDf – but hey, i just grabbed the image right off the page and it appeared as a jpg which could be printed and utilized.
5-Second Consumer Preference Survey: would folks find it useful if I published all the ABC notation to the tunes on a separate page? Give a shout back if yes.
okay, 2 responses out of 7,970 users – The Fipple People Have Spoken!
Works for me. . . i’ll get cracking on arranging the file with the ABCs. . . should I just send it to you guys as is as an attachment? They’re not arranged alphabetically, but you could figure it out, right?
I know of what I thought was a Tom Russell song with that or a similar title - was that actually LE’s work, or are they different works on a similar theme?
The ORPHAN TRAIN Paul is referring to is a play, a musical. I wrote the book, Michael Barry Greer wrote the lyrics, Doug Katsaros composed the music, and we’ve had it performed a few times over the last few years. Yeh, Tom Russell song is great, and there are bunches of books on the subject, usually for kids. Our musical is about the founder, Charles Brace, and is for adults and kids.
Not to be overly picky (and slightly off-topic) but to give credit where it’s due, “Rider on an Orphan Train” as sung by Tom Russell was written (and nicely performed) by David Massengill. Very good, and powerful, song.
Another vote in favor of abc availability – even just a link on the site to the entire tunebook in abc format would be great. Abc has the advantage that one can listen to get a rough idea of what the tune sounds like, and also one can easily convert to PDF.
Please keep the recordings coming too, btw. I’ve enjoyed the one’s I’ve found very much, and they’re much preferable to listening to a computer render abc!
Please say hello for me to my former pupil and the best whistle player/dance teacher in Portland, Ms. Geraldine Murray, when you see her next. The tune “Geraldine’s Wedding” was composed for her and Kurt. http://www.murrayirishdance.com
In a couple weeks should have many more audio clips, just home studio versions, but you’ll be able to hear the tunes as rendered humanly. . . once you hear them, you can start making your own variations.
Eureka! Today, the musical notation (in good old fashioned style like I’m used to) came up when I clicked the tunes. I learn by a combination of ear and reading and really appreciate having both to learn from. Also, there’s almost no overlap with the tunes in your Tutor. Thanks again.
