News and Updates
June 2009
Interest in Celtic music in Melbourne and Victoria just seems to keep growing. There are well attended sessions every day of week somewhere in Victoria. To learn more about the session scene in the great Melbourne area go to the Trad Irish Sessions page of the website. We continue to get several new players joining our Fr Flanagan's sessions every month which is terrific.
With winter upon us, it is a great time to practice your music and learn some new tunes. In the Practice Tools section of the website I have several computer programs that Slow Down Music from CD or recordings. I have just added a new one called FlexiMusic Wave Editor. It is an easy to use audio editor for professionals, home users and music lovers. It handles large audio files to Edit, Record and Play. You can apply special effects such as fade, equalize, echo, reverb, modulate, and stretch/shrink the wave. A great feature is the ability to convert wav to mp3, mp3 to wav, wav to wma, wav to snd and raw files. FlexiMusic Wave Editor has a trail download and you can purchase it for just US$20 (approximately AU$25).
Click on the names below to read more about these programs.
Amazing Slow Downer
Audacity
Fleximusic Wave Editor
Annual Winter Sunday Session July 19, 2009 from 3 pm - 6:00 pm at Fr Flanagan's. We would like to encourage everyone to join us for a typical session followed by the famous $10 steak dinner at 6 pm. If you don't eat steak you can order from the menu. Family and friends are very welcome. We would like to see as many folks as possible join us for the meal to show our continued support for Fr Flanagan's as a session venue. If you can't join us for the meal, but would like to play music we will start playing around 3 pm. Please be sure to bring your instruments. We hope this provides an opportunity for those players who find it hard to come out at night to join us during this weekend daytime session. It should be a wonderful afternoon of music, song and good cheer.
The big music events in June are the National Celtic Festival at Portarlington , the Billy Moran Commemorative Celebration at the Quiet Man and the Kilmore Celtic Festival. In July, the Lake School will Launch its 2010 program at which Paddy Fitzgerald will be inducted as a Legend of the Lake. There is more information about all of these events below.
Please note that there are 5 Tuesdays in June so we will have the usual 2 Beginner Sessions and 2 Intermediate Sessions and the last session we will do a combined Slow/Intermediate at which we will play very slowly during the first half of the night and speed up the pace after 9:30.
Beginner Session tune list
We have created a list of 25 tunes that we play on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of every month for the beginner session. Click here to get a list of the tunes.
Flanagan's Mob Tune Set List
To get the most up-to-date Flanagan's Mob tune set list which we use for our performances click here or download a copy by clicking on one of these formats PDF or MSWord.
Celtic Music Events
Billy Moran Commemorative Celebration June 5 - 8 at The Quite Man Irish Pub. It will be a celebration of traditional Irish music, song and dance, with sessions all weekend.The Quiet Man is at 271 Racecourse Road Flemington. For more information go to their website http://www.thequietman.com.au/ or email themorans23@bigpond.com
The National Celtic Festival will be held over the June 5th–8th weekend in beautiful Portarlington, on the Bellarine Peninsula, Victoria. This festival just gets better every year. Some great international and many local performers, some of whom have played at our session. For more information on the festival and to book tickets go to their website: http://www.nationalcelticfestival.com/
Vince, Tony and Cora will be singing Songs of Kilmore at the Kilmore Celtic Festival
Kilmore Celtic Festival will be held during the last weekend in June starting on Friday 26th and ending Sunday the 28th. This year the program will feature Vince Brophy and Friends (ie, Tony McDonald and Cora Browne) singing Songs of Kilmore. Other well known musicians performing includ Saoirse,Bhan Tre, Rant and Braemer. There will also be Workshops by Vince Brophy on Guitar and Ade Kelly on the Bodhran. For additional information on the weekend go to the Festival's website: http://www.kilmore.info/
The 11th Lake School program launch will take place at Micky Bourke’s Koroit Hotel on Saturday July 4 from 7pm. .The night will include the induction of Paddy Fitzgerald as a Legend of the Lake - he will be inducted by Mary Fiorini-Lowell (Mary Bourke). Dennis Taberner, Margie Brophy and Christine Meagher will also be inducted as Life Members of the Lake School.
The night will feature a bracket by the current Paddy O'Neill Award Band - DRAM The cost is $25 per head
The 11th Lake School of Celtic Music Song & Dance will be held on January 3-8, 2010.
For more information about the Launch or the School contact Felix Meagher on 0413 801 294 or felix@bushwahzee.com or go to www.lakeschool.bushwahzee.com
June 2009
Fr Flanagan's Pub, Tuesday, 7:30 - 11:00 pm
Slow: June 2
Intermediate: June 9
Slow: June 16
Intermediate: June 23
Slow/Intermediate June 30
Tune of the Month
Tune for June 2009 will be the same as May's because we are still working on improving the tunes from the last two months. So continue to practice Some Say the Devil is Dead and Frank's Reel. Some Say the Devil is Dead is a commonly played as a polka or barn dance. The sheet music can be found on page one of the Slow Session Sheet Music Booklet.
Tune for April 2009 was Frank's Reel. This is the tune that Colin MacLeod and Rory Sinclair play with Spootishkerry. The sheet music for this tune and last months tune are on the last page of the Slow Session Tunes Handout Booklet. Click on it to download the file.
Click on the tune names to hear them played slowly.
For additional information about Celtic music events in the greater Melbourne area check out the Blarney Bulletin. If you would like to get on the Blarney Bulletin mailing list send Kevin McCarthy an email (macca@blarneybulletin.com).
If you are a fiddler you definitely should check out Sean Kenan's website which is chock full of fiddle news and events. He also maintains an updated list of all types of music sessions in Victoria.
We highly recommend The Session website ( http://thesession.org ). This is without a doubt the best site on the web if you are looking for tunes or music played at sessions. It also provides an excellent forum for discussing all sorts of issues related to playing music at Irish sessions.