1001 Irish Dance Tunes

In 1907 two Irish-American policemen in Chicago, Captain Francis O'Neill and Sergeant James O'Neill, published The Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems, and you can either buy a reissue of it from Walton's, or download it from the web (it's not copyrighted) and print it out and bind it yourself, which is what I did.

Every day I play a two page spread of them, eleven or twelve, occasionally putting a mark in the table of contents if I like one of them especially well. So far I've played 767 of them now on the flute. Just 234 to go. I'll probably start over again at the beginning, unless I'm totally bored with Irish music by then.

Each of the tunes is short and simple, but they're astonishingly varied and creative, and each of them has a suggestive name, like "The Straw Seat," or "Condon's Frolics," in English and Irish. Here's a link to two reels. There are obviously hours and hours of traditional Irish music on Youtube!

I'm using the tunes as reading and fingering exercises. A lot of them fall exactly in the range of fingerings that I find a bit awkward on the flute, so I'm learning to overcome that awkwardness. I can't play them quite as quickly as they're supposed to be played, but they have charm even when played too slowly.

In general I shy away from exercises. I think it's better to play real music, that was meant to be music, and practice the hard as if they were exercises. That's why the Irish dance tunes are so useful, and fun to play, unlike most exercises. I try to imagine people dancing as I play. Music is for the whole body, not just the ears.