If you get any playback errors, please let me know ([email protected]) and I'll fix them. Some of the older recordings seem to have gone a bit rusty. I know how they feel.

Hello. This site contains recordings I have made as a source of tunes for people who play the flute, or other instruments for that matter. They are often just versions of tunes as I remember them but, as my memory isn’t the best, in some cases I cheat and find the dots online. As often as not, the online versions and the dots inside my head aren't quite the same so there may be a sort of 'average' appearing.

I usually play the tunes once through slowly (ish) to make them easier to learn, then I have a bit of a run at them to give another view of them. I hope this approach is OK. If anyone has any comments, or tune suggestions, please get in touch ([email protected]).

Thanks, Michael Clarkson (Belfast). 

Here's a jig I first heard on the record Ceol Aduaidh by Frankie Kennedy and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh. Didn't realise it was in O'Neill's Dance Muisc Ireland (DMI), where it lives at No.84. I wonder what other things about the world I haven't realised yet.

The DMI version is more or less what I hear played at sessions. Maybe just with a-g-e more often than a-e-e to start the second part, and not so many G sharps.

This version is pretty close to flddle player Fred Finn's version in the more than excellent book Trip to Sligo, apart from a few variations caused by whatever eye-failures and brain-wobbles occured across the 8 inch chasm between the book and my head.

The session.org has an entry for it here under the name "Paddy Jim Frank's". It's also related to The Navvy in The Shore. Regarding these names, you can take your pick. Just like the Navvy on the Shore might do; even a pick from 2 shovels.

Here's another great tune for the flute. It's been popular enough to have been included on 20 commercial recordings to date (see here for details).

I'm not in the habit of posting 5 tunes in 1 day (or even in 1 year), but I've been putting together a digital download album of sets of tunes from this site (recorded on a "real" microphone and mildly treated using audio software. The album will conntain 15 tracks (31 tunes in all) and an accompanying booklet containing transcriptions of all the tunes, background information on them, clickable links to old recordings etc., and other stuff like that, as well as links to the tunes on this site so that I'll be able to add more information in future. After choosing and recording all of the tunes I realised that some of them had never made it here, hence their hasty addition today. Didn't want to link into thin air in the ether.

The album should be ready in a few weeks.

Here's a great old reel for the flute.  

You can see what thesession.org has to say about it here.

Here's a good flute tune from Co. Galway. I first heard it played on this record by flute player Gabriel O'Sullivan.

There are a couple of versions of it and some background info. here.

This is a tune from the Glencolmcille area of Donegal, named after the fiddle player Patrick "Paddy the Cooper" Breslin.

You can find information about Patrick Breslin here.

Here's a tune I first learned from the book The Northern Fiddler which includes a version from John Doherty.

The Tommy Taylor in the alternative title was a dancer from Teelin in Donegal.

Here's a reel I heard from the playing of James Byrne from Glemcolmcille. It's the first tune on an album of his music that can be got here.

Some other information about it can be found here.

Here's the first tune on a recording of the same name of Johnnie Maguire, the Co. Cavan, and then Belfast, whistle player, who was Seán Maguire's father.

He decribes it as "an old traditional reel I used to hear my father play". So it's Seán's granda's tune, or maybe he inherited it from the extreme olden days in Co. Cavan.

The ever excellent The Session site has details of the recording here, including links to tune info and arguments about John/Johnnie/Seán/McGuire/Maguire's name. Endless hours of fun to be had.

The transcription below comes from the Traditional Tune Archive.