Irish Music History

No Comments Written by Etienne Laurin on 2010/12/28 in Music.

There is a plethora of traditional Irish tunes available online from sources such as youtube or thesession.org. It is hard to find two recordings or transcriptions of the same tune that are actually the same tune. Because there are so many local variations, interchangeable parts and modern adaptations, finding the original version of a tune can be hard. How did the composer want the tune to be played? What notes and ornaments did he or she have in mind?

Danny boy is an example of a song that has a tumultuous history. The lyrics were added to a melody called Londonderry Air, which got its name because it was an untitled tune transcribed by someone from County Londonderry. But the tune did have a name: The Young Man’s Dream. On his website, Michael Robinson reveals the details on the history of this classic air (a fascinating read).

The book A History of Irish Music by William H. Grattan Flood lists most of the earliest collections of irish music from 1725 to 1887. These collections are all public domain.

Some are freely available from the IMSLP in PDF format:

Many other collections are available online on the IMCO but they require a proprietary plugin.

Recordings from the early ⅩⅩ century are also easy to find on the web:

Nothing short of a working time machine will make me hear the original versions of all the songs that were composed before music could be faithfully recorded.  But going through all these early transcriptions and recordings has given me another viewpoint on Irish music. It has also taught me new tunes and some lovely variations.


New Whistles

No Comments Written by Etienne Laurin on 2010/12/05 in Music.

I just added a new set of whistles to my collection!

I ordered them ten days ago from the Irish Whistle Shop. It’s a set of seven nickel-plated whistle bodies, one head and a plastic fipple. There is one body for each key between E (high) and B♭ (low). They were made by David O’Brien, serial number 773.

To give you an idea of how it sounds, here is the Song of the Garden played in the key of D (Source).

I love the sound, it’s very different than the sound I get from my Feadog whistle. The whistles require a little more breath and a lot more pressure. They have a wide bore and are very loud, especially in the second register.

On the Feadog, I have to blow the low E and the high B very softly to get a nice tone, but my new O’Brien in D will let me blow as hard as I want, all the way up to the high D. The Feadog has a breathy, lacking tone on the cross-fingered C♮. The same fingering on the O’Brien D sounds a lot better and it even has a thumb-hole for playing the C♮ perfectly. I play the recorder as well, so the thumb-hole is not a problem for me.

I tried the O’Brien whistle in all the keys I got. They all sound great except for the B♭, which is out of tune with itself harder to play in tune. I suspect I may be able to fix that by using the unusual ajustable window size (also known as embouchure size). Otherwise, The ajustable window size seems like a completely useless feature. Changing it by more than a few milimeters can make the whistle go out of tune or gives a horrible tone to either the first or the second register.

I highly recommend that you check out the Irish Whistle Shop and David O’Brien if you ever want to buy a good quality whistle from nice folks. Overall, my new instrument is now the favourite of my collection. But I am eagerly waiting for a Sindt whistle which is a lot more similar to the Feadog that I am used to playing, but, I believe, will have none of it’s flaws.

I’m editing this post to mention that, although I bought them second-hand, these whistles seem to have never been played before! I’ve owned them for less than a week and there are already large red marks around the finger holes where the nickel has rubbed off, letting the copper show. There was not even a hint of copper around any of the holes when I first received the whistles.