Stellar clip Brad.
Now see… this is why I so love this place.
Great thread all.
I agree, Brad, that it sounds better (the breathing is completely unnoticeable unless you’re listening for it) to just take a real breath and leave the note out rather than try to take really quick breaths and try to squeeze the note back in. Very nice.
Thanks all; I just want to say that I much prefer the way Jem plays the third part compared with the way I play it…my wild little flips on the second-octave a, g, and f in the third part are a throwback to when I first learned this tune in the 1980s (I remember hearing it on a Touchstone album), at a time when I was shoveling in as much ornamentation as I could. I’ve cleaned up my playing a lot since then, but vestiges of my old bad habits still hang on in a few places in some tunes and that is one of them 
I take a lot more breaths that Jem does in this tune.
I don’t try to “sneak in” breaths in between notes, but rather like to make the breathing spots big, in an old-time flutey sort of way, leaving out an eighth-note to make room.
This tune is a challenge, and when I worked it up I had to restructure it a bit in order to make it “flutey” enough.
A general rule, for the honking flute style, is to take breaths on a D when possible.
Some players tend to take breaths in the same places in a phrase every time the phrase comes up, so that the breathing spots become part of the arrangement. Other players like to breath in different spots each time so that the totality of the tune comes through.
I tend to prefer the former.
So in the first bar of the second part of Moincoin, I always take a breath:
(B C# d triplet) e (pat) e (breath) g
If I ever get the technical wherewithal to post sound clips I will.
Fellow fans of Michael Clarkson may want to listen to the version he posted today to his “podbean” site:
http://irishflute.podbean.com/2008/04/20/the-mooncoin/
As usual, he has an amazing take on this tune!
Thanks Brad (BTW, are you related to the Leicester Hurleys?). Interesting to get different reactions. As should be apparent, I only just revived this tune for the purpose of this thread and it wasn’t at all settled when I did either of those audio clips. The first was a deliberate look at breathing place/phrasing possibilities: the second was what just came out kinda organically an hour or so later without further (or any!) deliberate cogitation. Having played it on and off for a couple of days, the video clip (I’m leaving it sideways - I think it’s actually quite a good angle for looking at the fingers and I don’t have any software to rotate it with… Oh, and any comments on it/its usefulness, folks?) seems to represent how it has settled in for me - though as Pancelticpiper suggests, I don’t necessarily breathe in exactly the same places consistently on repeated playing. I wasn’t necessarily working particularly hard at long phrases either - again, just how it seems to be happening for me in response to the demands of the tune. I certainly use short phrases/ frequent breathing in other tunes at times.
As for “sneaking in” the breaths, again, that wasn’t deliberately trying to get all the written notes in religiously, just how it seems to be coming - and I may well do some more deliberate thinking about it now in the light of this excellent thread. I think this thread is, if unspokenly so, as much about the process of developing a technical approach to and an interpretation of a tune as it is about the up front specifics we have been discussing and illustrating.
I don’t mean this to seem defensive (I don’t feel that way about learning from all this!), but the dots I have for The Mooncoin actually start with a semiquaver pair as the upbeat, so by retaining that pattern (must have been notated from some old master at some point) and breathing on the 2nd quaver of the 2nd triplet of the last bar of each phrase (as many of you suggest), then putting both remaining notes in as semiquavers rather than quavers as the upbeat to the next phrase seems musically legitimate to me: whether it is ultimately the best effect is another question.
Brad, I too greatly enjoyed your clip. Brilliant sound. I know exactly what you mean in the quote above! Been there, probably still shows! I certainly went through a phase of trying to play everything totally tongue free and as ornamented as possible. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing from a learning curve point of view - it certainly makes you develop the techniques - but whether it is aesthetically pleasant for listeners is another matter. It’s a bit like the playing everything massively too fast that most non-native Irish players go through with ITM, when they mishear/misunderstand the effects of excellent rhythm that give an illusion of super-fast pace - and from which indeed many never escape! Back to The Mooncoin - that stepped pedal point passage in the C music is, IMO, one of those places in ITM where one really should tongue (or “glottal” if that’s your preference) - I’m not saying NOT to try separating the repeated notes with cuts or turning them into short rolls or whatever, some of the time, but on balance it works out very awkward (at least to do the whole sequence thus) and it is musically more effective to tongue them most of the time.
Finally, I’ve just listened to the “podbean” rendition as Brad suggests - surely no coincidence he’s done it just now? I have to say that while some of his melodic variants are interesting, I really don’t like it!