Widely popular is still great for me. We have an older crew that run a monthly session here (on hold) and I think the leader is maybe just bored with all the hits, understandably. So he comes up with all these obscure tunes that are hard to research. cheeky guy. Reminds me a bit of you. haha
I’ve got Sligo Maid sounding alright so maybe Green Mtn will be a good follow up. Guess I’ll just choose a version at random.
Try this one?
That guy is a shredding box player!! Any chance you know what similar sheet music would go with that? I can’t learn by ear at this stage.
That guy is a shredding box player!!
Andrew is alright 
This should be a fair approximation of the average version:
T: The Green Mountain
R: reel
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Dmaj
B|AF~F2 AFEF|DF~F2 ABde|f2df efdB|Adfd efdB|
AF~F2 ~E2 FE|DF~F2 ABde|f2df efdB|AFEF D3:|
e|faaf bfaf|defd e2de|~f2 df efdB|Adfd efde|
faaf bfaf|defd e2de|f2df efdB|AFEF D3:|
I had sort of expected this thread would become an exchange of ideas for new tunes but it has gone very quiet.
Meanwhile I continue to hoover up tunes, here’s one I picked up yesterday, from a lovely flute and fiddle duet of Marie and Tim McHugh. There are plenty of different versions of O’Sullivan’s March, many in G, this one is different and, I think, a quite nice, handy little tune.
I just started learning this set of Conal O’Grada’s playing The Green Mountain and Vincent Broderick’s The Rookery.
The set of dots that comes closest to his playing The Green Mountain in my mind is Norbeck’s using the standard A part and the one he’s noted as a variation for the B, if my memory serves. If you are unfamiliar with Norbeck’s I highly recommend a google search. As much as I love TheSession.org, sorting through the various submissions is sometimes too much.
Now, if you really want an adventure you can Skype lessons with the man himself, there’s a post a few down from here with his contact info! 
But I, like some others on this site, have become distracted with the current virus situation and have been playing less. Kudos to those who can take advantage of this time to play. I keep reminding myself that music is supposed to alter my brain chemistry in positive ways, so my withdrawel is odd. I think I have played less in the past 2 months than I have at any time in the past 30 years.
Though I have been reminding myself that the flute and whistle are good workouts for lung health. At my age, I am assuming sessions will be off limits until the vaccine comes out whenever that is.
I am playing more than usual. But for me (knock on wood) nothing has changed much so far. I work from home (my wife, too) and so far, we still got work. Before all that I left the house maybe every 3 days. Now just once a week. Not that much of a change.
After “Green mountain”, I tried my best at “City of Savannah” on my flute. Lovely tune. Next I wanna learn the first tune here – played by Vinnie Kilduff (one of my favourite players).
https://youtu.be/X17HLvE7MWY
Rather than “new tunes” I’m daily plugging away at the old ones, the common session tunes that I’ve either forgot (not having played them for 30 years) or never learned.
I’m doing more Irish trad playing than I’ve done for ages, just me in the back room and the mellowest whistle I have, my home-made Mezzo A. (Mellowness required because my wife is working from home during the crisis.)
Currently I’m running through 30 or so reels daily, getting them up to speed.
The settings I was provided are uneven. Some fall nicely under my flute/pipes/whistle fingers, others bear the stamp of being from other instruments or even other traditions and require fluterising.
When I was doing a lot of teaching that was the aspect of playing flute/whistle that was the most unknown and biggest challenge to the students: the fact that the received settings they were trying to play were unsuited to flute/whistle. I would devote time getting them to recognise what a flute-friendly setting felt like to play, how nicely it felt under the fingers and how well it flowed, and give them the permission and validation to alter received settings to suit the flute (or whistle).
[quote=“Mr.Gumby”]I had sort of expected this thread would become an exchange of ideas for new tunes but it has gone very quiet.
I also thought that it would snowball. Maybe others like myself are keeping the computer shut since it only seems to exude bad news these days. I just jotted down the Green Mtn notes that you provided yesterday. Hoping to give it a preliminary whirl this morning over coffee in the shop.
As far as playing goes, I have Sligo Maid sounding pretty nice and almost to speed and I’ve started Cooley’s reel to play along with it and Wise maid as a trio.
Try Sligo Maid with George White’s Favourite
[fixed typo]
A great classic set Mr. Gumby. 
I’m actually having a harder time with The Rookery on whistle, while The Green Mountain sort of jumps right out. (said by a person who hasn’t played much in weeks but gave it a shot this morning.)
Some of the tune suggestions get made in other threads here so possibly members don’t want to make duplicate comments. Current situation allows for plenty of time though to get to the tunes even the difficult ones.
I can’t tell if you’re messing with me or not? That’s a great sounding tune but sounds like it would be a bear to learn at any speed. I could be wrong
I can’t tell if you’re messing with me or not?
Only a little bit. Sligo maid and George White are as classic a combination as Cooley and the Wise Maid, Wandering Minstrel and Fasten the Leg. If you’re playing with people you don’t know and haven’t agreed on the next tune, everybody would instinctively know where to go, around here anyway. George White’s is not particularly complicated, pretty much a straight forward reel in G, worth playing.
With regards to Richard’s remarks, I always learn tunes in a way that suits my way of playing/instrument(s) learning tunes any other way is usually not productive. I learn tunes I take a shine to, some may not get a lot of playing but I’d have them well enough to ‘bring them up’ if the need arises. Tunes get refined over time as they get played more often, I think of it as them ‘being lived in’, you get to feel comfortable inside them and are able to move around in them a bit.
I see repertoire as fleeting, out of all the tunes I have there’s a core body I learned early on that I can always fall back on for safety although there are tunes I learned more recently that I consider ‘safe tunes’ that I can play when under pressure without making too much of a mess. Out of the whole body of tunes there’s the group of tunes of the day as it were that I play regularly at a particular time, because I was reminded of them or heard them somewhere, anything that may have brought them to the fore. It’s a rotation, some come floating to the top and get played for a while before they get replaced again.
I play for my own amusement. I have mostly gone out of playing in public , except for occasions I feel I can’t refuse when asked : Na Piobairi Uilleann had me do a tionól concert and a Willie week piping concert in recent years but I recently turned down an invitation to take the Cobblestone’s piping hot seat (they got Emer Mayock instead to fill the slot) . Did two spots with Josephine Marsh and Mick Kinsella last year in memory of Kitty Hayes but other than that I limit things to the odd informal tune with friends. So in that sense I don’t need to keep a ‘set list’ and have no need to keep up with anyone else’s repertoire and just play whatever takes my fancy at a given time. Which leads to a degree of disorganisation but that’s fine too.
George White’s Favourite is one of those tunes which, once you get the hang of it, fits really easily on a wide variety of instruments. It’s a great tune, and one of the standards. I reckon if you have a concerted crack at it, you’d get it, at speed, in reasonably short time.
Another tune which is quite nice on both flute an whistle (as well as other instruments) is Jennifer Molloy. I picked it up first from a recording by Tom McHale on Soundcloud, years ago. (see here for the whole set of recordings. Good stuff to listen to during your lockdown). Last month I heard Liz and Yvonne Kane play it (last night out before the lockdown, last chance saloon) and it’s been on rotation since. It’s a Paddy Kelly tune.
[fixed typo]
Beautiful playing there. Thanks for that. 
It goes back to this thread or even earlier. I downloaded the lot at the time. A good time to revisit that music.
[/quote]
George White’s Favourite is one of those tunes which, once you get the hang of it, fits really easily on a wide variety of instruments. It’s a great tune, and one of the standards. I reckon if you have a concerted crack at it, you’d get it, at speed, in reasonably short time.[/quote]
I think you may be right. I wasn’t familiar with this tune so I looked up several recordings (which are played by good musicians at speed) and it just seemed intimidating. I imagine that if I slowed it down and broke the tune into bits it would be manageable.
Quite some time ago I started a thread on learning the Tam Lin reel. It was a struggle to get the right rhythm until I realized that the version of the tune I liked was very different than the tabs I was trying to learn. I changed it up and it came together for me. Early days. I still suck at that one but will maybe tackle it again.
Ah. I have simple piece of advice concerning learning the Tam Lin reel - don’t. 