Mike Rafferty book

[Lee Stanford]

This looks like a nice book with 300 transcriptions.

http://www.firescribble.net/rafferty/index.html

It was written by one of Rafferty's students, who has a music page here.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default ... dID=107984

Some of his playing is quite nice.

For those of you who do not know about soundclick dot com, it's a great (free) page to put up some tunes. It's kind of like a myspace page without all the "myspaciness"

Lee

[s1m0n]

It was written by one of Rafferty's students, who has a music page here.

lesl also has a profile here on the chap & nipple.

[Denny]

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=560899

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=523460

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=470173

[drewr]

Hmmm... too bad this didn't come with recordings of the tunes, but I guess that would probably mean something like 15 CDs.

Unless you have recordings of these tunes already, or have a pretty good idea what they sound like, I don't know about the learning value of this book. Pretty hard to figure out a tune with just the dots. Even with musical scores on TheSession.com you can translate them to MIDI pretty easily (although the result is usually quite lacking).

[Cayden]

Unless you have recordings of these tunes already, or have a pretty good idea what they sound like, I don't know about the learning value of this book. Pretty hard to figure out a tune with just the dots. Even with musical scores on TheSession.com you can translate them to MIDI pretty easily (although the result is usually quite lacking).

I suppose you could look at it as a collection of settings associated with one particular person. It's not a tutor but anyone familiar with Irish music can learn the settings and make them their own.

[dontf]

is this a wind up? seems like the reasonable thing to do is get ahold of Mike's CD's and listen to them, then decide if you'd like to know what he's doing. If you do, Buy the book!

[matahari_1946]

I took Mike Rafferty's class in the Catskills last month and was able to meet Lesl as well. She's a wonderful flute player and a very nice person! I like Mike's style of playing and after a week of classes I was more than happy to buy the book. If nothing else, it's a great collection of tunes.

[Jumbuk]

Unless you have recordings of these tunes already, or have a pretty good idea what they sound like, I don't know about the learning value of this book. Pretty hard to figure out a tune with just the dots. Even with musical scores on TheSession.com you can translate them to MIDI pretty easily (although the result is usually quite lacking).

I have Lesl's book. The real value of a book like this is that they are flute versions of the tunes - sure, just one player's settings (and one out of several for that player), but it just makes it a little easier to have flute articulations marked rather than fiddler's.

You can get many of the tunes off his Dangerous Reel CD. And of course most of us would have heard lots of the other tunes at sessions or on CDs.

[joshD]

I have this book and it Rocks!!!!!!!!

His settings are great and allot of times never heard

[David Levine]

Hmmm... too bad this didn't come with recordings of the tunes, but I guess that would probably mean something like 15 CDs.

Ten CDs anyway. But just get just one Rafferty CD and that will give you a good idea of his style. His playing is very spare, rock-solid steady, and lovely. He only has three or four CDs out and each one is a gem and well worth having.

The book itself was a labor of love. These are not homogenized versions of old chestnuts but exact transcriptions of one man's playing, rooted in the East Galway style. His playing, in the slower Easy Galway tradition, is very accessible- deceptively so. Those of us who know the man and his music have enormous respect for him. I've had the book for a year or so and I find myself referring to it often.

[Jack Bradshaw]

Ten CDs anyway. But just get just one Rafferty CD and that will give you a good idea of his style. His playing is very spare, rock-solid steady, and lovely. He only has three or four CDs out and each one is a gem and well worth having.

What David said......

PS...like that avatar.....so youthful...

[Lee Stanford]

Hmmm... too bad this didn't come with recordings of the tunes, but I guess that would probably mean something like 15 CDs.

Unless you have recordings of these tunes already, or have a pretty good idea what they sound like, I don't know about the learning value of this book. Pretty hard to figure out a tune with just the dots. Even with musical scores on TheSession.com you can translate them to MIDI pretty easily (although the result is usually quite lacking).

If you can read music, you can certainly get the tune, and from there memorize it easily enough to get your eyes back out of the music. Next step would be to get your hands on the recordings to cop all the stylistic things players do that make the tune their own.

For me, the beauty lies in nice question and answer phrasing and lilt. So yes, just going from dot to dot like a player piano does nothing for the living musicality.

I came from a classical background and spent my whole life so far buried in sheet music. I've spent the past couple of years almost completely learning tunes from recordings and it has done absolute wonders for my ear.

Books are good "companions."

[Lee Stanford]

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=560899

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=523460

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=470173

oops. You're all over it!