Rowyn's belated St. Patrick's Day Picks

I picked these last week but didn't have time to write them up until today.

Altan : Tommy Bhetty's Waltz (moderate waltz, 145 bpm)
Altan is one of my favourite Celtic bands, and they don't play many waltzes, but this one is lovely. The song was written by Tommy 'Bhetty' Maguire, a fiddler from Kinawley, County Fermanagh, and was in the soundtrack for the movie Good Will Hunting, though not on the official CD release. The whole album, The Red Crow, is also available on eMusic.

Emer Kenny : The Chase (cross-step waltz, 120 bpm)
If you've been to a Jammix or Friday Night Waltz, you've probably heard this played. It's based on a traditional Irish tune, the Foxhunter's Jig, but updated with new-agey vocals and a steady, trance-like beat which makes it very danceable. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good download source, so the link is for the album on Amazon.

Clannad : Caide Sin Do'n Te Sin (cross-step waltz, 120 bpm)
Even though this is the same tempo as "The Chase," it has a much mellower feel. The Gaelic refrain "caide sin do'n te sin nach mbaineann sin do" translates to something like "what is that to anyone else." Apparently the tune is in a 'hexatonic' scale, which has six pitches per octave. Again, no good place to download, so the link is to the CD. You can hear Altan's version of the song, which is very different, on last.fm.

Ronan Hardiman : Siamsa, Cry of the Celts (polkas, 118 and 126 bpm)
Both of these are polkas from the Lord of the Dance soundtrack -- hardly traditional, but Irish-inspired. "Siamsa" is bubbly and infectious and great fun to dance to. The feel of the beat changes a few times (I don't know enough music theory to describe this more accurately), but that's part of what makes it exciting. "Cry of the Celts" is also catchy and energetic, with some nice fiddling. It's the tune Richard Powers plays -- heavily edited, of course -- for the Kerry Polka Sets he often teaches around St. Patrick's Day.

Graham's St. Patrick's Day Picks

In honor of the day, here are some danceable Irish tunes and songs. Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!

Niamh Parsons: Blackbirds and Thrushes (fast waltz, 195 bpm)
This is a great waltz, made even more interesting by the phrasing, which switches between 5-bar and 7-bar phrases (there may be some other types in there, too). Some folks might like to slow it down a tad, though.

Fresh Fish: Jessica's / Martin O'Connor's Polkas (136 bpm)
A lovely polka set from a great contra dance band. I was very disappointed when I started trying to find links to it and discovered it's out of print and there's nothing to link to. The piano player's website says to "stay tuned for a possible reissue" of the Turning of the Tide CD. Just wanted to mention these tunes anyway, though.

Nancy Kerr & John Fagan: Dance to Your Daddy (cross-step waltz or polka in 3, 122 bpm)
This is some fantastic fiddling here; it's not often you hear a slip reel (in 12/8, the way a slip jig is in 9/8). It's got a polka feel but is still effectively in 3 for dancing purposes, so take your pick, or alternate. You can hear the full track on last.fm.

Off Kilter: Follow Me Up to Carlow (polka, 149 bpm)
You can decide if you want to leave the trick ending and watch the dancers fumble or not. Fun song, though. I don't see a good place to download their music, so the link is to the CD. You can also hear it if you browse around their site (which has frames, so I can't link directly to anything).

Brave Combo: A Little Bit Irish (waltz, 240 bpm)
As long as they've got a song actually about St. Patrick's Day, we might as well include it, though it's so fast they may have been thinking slow jig rather than waltz. You can hear the song (and lots of others) on their site, and I thought at one point they had free downloads there, too, but I can't find them now.

Editing St. Teresa

Joan Osborne - "St. Teresa"
(Hear it on last.fm, buy it on Amazon or iTunes.)

Rowyn gets the credit for introducing me to this great song, but I'm the one writing about it because I recently used it as practice to learn some basic music editing. (It's 5:20 in the original version, which is a bit much at nearly 170 bpm.)

I'd post my new version here and get feedback on it, but I expect it's not altered enough for someone not to make a copyright fuss about it, so I won't. Talk to me privately if you want to hear it, though. Here's what I did, in case anyone wants some ideas (changes arranged from better to sketchier):

• Removed one verse (2nd) and chorus (1st). That seemed the most expendable part, musically, and it kept the transitions easier.
• Removed first part of the intro, so it starts with the mandolin part. As much as I love the solo (oud? steel guitar?) at the beginning, it seemed easier to do this than to break up the long mandolin section.
• Completely changed the ending. Cut off the last chorus and pasted together a few things after the "tell me" bridge, including the end of the mandolin line and the first few bars that got cut from the beginning. I was trying to get enough stuff there to have a fade out such that you get a little of the falling off a cliff feeling from the dramatic "tell me" line, but not so much that it's an unpleasant end to the dance.

Optional: You could also slow it down about 5% if you want, but I wouldn't do more than that.

Shostakovich Jazz/Variety Suite

It turns out that the set of Shostakovich pieces commonly known as the Jazz Suite No. 2 is actually the Suite for Variety Stage Orchestra. Either way, it's got a couple really good dance pieces in it, and a few others that are probably worth trying out. You can get the whole set, plus Jazz Suite No. 1, on Amazon or eMusic. Here's what I like from it:

Waltz 2 (of course). Richard used to play this one all the time, but I feel like I haven't heard it as much in the last couple years. Gorgeous waltz, with good jeté waltzes, redowas, and other variations built right in. Note: The version on the album I linked to above is very fast (210 bpm). I'd recommend instead getting one of the ones from the Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack. E.g. there are ones at 176 and 180 bpm.

March. This is the opening piece of the suite, and makes an absolutely delightful polka. It's 3 minutes long, which is probably why I haven't managed to get someone to play it at a dance yet, but it's at a decent tempo (114 bpm) so I don't think 3 minutes would be bad. Again, lots of nice variations, including a bit that would be very good for an extended bout of pivoting, if you like that kind of thing. (Which I do.)

The Lyric Waltz and Waltz 1 are both quite fast (200+ bpm) so they'd need some slowing down.

The Jazz Suite No. 1 has a waltz that's actually a decent tempo (173 bpm) though parts of it really just sound like harmony parts to Waltz 2 of the other suite. There's also a slightly fast polka (134 bpm).

Childsplay Waltzes

Childsplay (on MySpace) is a group of musicians covering a wide range of folk music styles, and connected by one thing: they all play a fiddle made by Bob Childs of Cambridge, MA. I don't know how they got the idea (or managed the logistics) to build a band around that, but they did, and it works. Enough members are multi-instrumentalists that they still have a very rich sound (so it's not too fiddle-heavy).

Their first album was called The Great Waltz, and is actually made up entirely of waltzes. The second one is Heaven and Earth, and is more of a mix of stuff while still having some nice dance tunes. (Both albums are also available on eMusic and iTunes.)

I was measuring the BPM for the ones I wanted to mention here and realized that I didn't have any standard tempo rotary waltzes. All the fast waltzes of theirs that I like are right up there at the top end of the range. I like them that way, though some folks may want to edit them for speed and/or duration. I put the BPM in parentheses after each one.

Cross-Step

• Sunday River (114) As much as I like this one, you could probably edit out a time through the tune to make it a better dance length.
  
• Michael's Mazurka (119) Don't be fooled by the name -- there's nothing mazurky about it, but it's a beautiful cross-step. Also quite long (5:28) but totally worth it. One of my favorites.
  
• Enrichez Vous! (122)
• Waltz of the White Lilies (123) Another one on the long side, but lovely.
  
• The Great Waltz of China (124) Lots of pseudo-oriental harmonies to go with the pun.
  

Fast Rotary

• La Valser Di Mezzanotte (180) I like the variations within this one; it gives you plenty to play with.
  
• Tristesse (182) A bit jazzier than the others.
  
• Kuivatusaluevalssi (182) Gotta love those Finnish names. Also the double bass.
  
• Valse De Bethmale (188) This one is probably just too relaxed-sounding for the speed, but if you're really good at efficient waltzing, you could make it a trance waltz. Just felt like putting it on here, but it's probably not for everyone.
  

Insomniac Blues

A few months ago RA Blues had a live band night (their first, I think). It was a great success, so more's the shame that the venue got lost to tango dancers. Anyway, the band we had was The Insomniacs, from Portland, OR. The three songs I most remembered, and later bought, were:

• Serves Me Right (Serves Me Wrong)
• Stuttering Blues
• I'm Not Sorry

You can get all of these on their "Left Coast Blues" album via Amazon CD, Amazon MP3, or eMusic. You can also listen to some of their songs on their MySpace page or to the whole album on Last.fm. (I just love it when artists are so internet-friendly. It makes these posts so easy.)

Set list: Leap Day 2008 (2/29/08)