Tune Collection
Reviews
Some
responses to the tune collection...
Paddy's
settings are
always faithful to his sources, while containing his own 'stamp'. There
is
considerable complexity in his settings and variations, lots to think
about. I
am finding myself humming tunes from the collection I haven't thought
about for
a long time. I could not be happier with the collection.
—Frank
Claudy,
Davenport,
IA April
2001
For anyone
interested in
playing and learning to play traditional Irish music I heartily and
unreservedly recommend Paddy O'Brien's Tune Collection which has
recorded 500
reels and jigs on twelve cassette tapes. A book which annotates each
tune with
interesting background information is included. No written music (dots)
are
included, but you will get a great feel for how the music is played.
Paddy
plays a 2-row
1947-vintage B/C Paolo Soprani (swing tuned) throughout (he has the
bassoon
reed turned off, so you hear each tune very clearly and precisely). He
is very
spare with ornamentation and yet he provides some beautiful examples of
melodic
variation on each tune. It's like having a master class in your living
room.
—Chris
Moran,
California
April 2001
Thank you
for the Tune
Collection. I'm on my second round of listening. I refer to your notes
constantly. Your tempo really puts the tunes in the spotlight and I
feel like
I'm hearing some of the old standards for the first time. If listening
wasn't
so enjoyable, I'd almost say that your collection and the notes are a
graduate
level course in Irish music!
—Kevin
Dailey,
Washington DC May 2000
Paddy
O'Brien of Chulrua
possesses one of the largest repertoires of any Irish traditional
musician
today. He gathered this storehouse of music some 3,000 reels, jigs,
hornpipes
and other pieces in the course of four decades of playing and
performing in
both Ireland and America. A former member of Dublin's famed Castle
Ceili Band,
Paddy has played with and learned from many legendary Irish
instrumentalists
and is, at this point in his career, something of a legend himself.
Aspiring
musicians not
lucky enough to study with Paddy personally can still take advantage of
his
massive repertoire by getting The Paddy O'Brien Tune Collection,
which
includes a book and 12 cassettes (10 CDs) of Paddy playing 500 reels
and jigs.
The collection has proved a hit with musicians from as far away as the
Australian outback and is an invaluable source of new repertoire for
players of
all levels. It's not cheap, but it beats the price of airfare to
Minnesota for
personal instruction.
—Don
Meade, The
Irish
Voice, New York NY Vol.13, No.22 May 26- June 1, 1999
Well I
have had my Paddy
O'Brien tapes (called The Paddy O'Brien Collection: A Personal Treasury
of
Irish Jigs and Reels) for almost a month now and I thought I would
share some
of my reaction. When I first got these tapes I realized right away that
they
were wonderful but I'm still in the process of realizing just what a
treasure
they are.
There are
400 reels and
100 jigs on twelve one-hour cassetes, and there is a book with comments
from
Paddy on each tune . Paddy plays each tune unaccompanied (on a B/C
button
accordion) at the normal tempo of a nice sedate session, the tempo that
you
would play for yourself in your own kitchen. He usually plays the
double reels
twice and the single reels three times, enough so you can play along
and get
the sense of the tune and enough so that he can introduce a melodic
variation
or two into the tune.
Since I
got the tapes, I've
been trying to play along with tape #1 every day. I pick one or two
tunes to
really try to learn by stopping the tape after each phrase and by
rewinding and
repeating, but the others I just play along with as I would at a
session. It
takes me a couple of hours to get through the whole tape so I don't
make it
every day, but I really look forward to it. By this method I have
learned, to a
degree, most of the 47 reels on tape #1, and they are really great
tunes. Some
of them I already knew, but even those have slightly different settings
as
played by Paddy.
To Paddy,
the melody comes
first and he doesn't use ornamentation unless it adds to the melody. As
I
played along with some of the tunes that I already knew, I realized
that in
some cases I didn't really know some of the notes. In many reels there
are some
really "choice" notes that connect the phrases and players can often
skip over these notes by putting in a lot of rolls instead. As a player
you
often pride yourself on mastering ornamentation, but in order to put in
a lot
of ornaments you may really be simplifying the underlying melody of the
tune
and losing some of those "choice" notes.
I have a
few treasured
possesions that bring a smile to my heart just to look at them. My old
tattered
copy of Vol. 1 of Breathnach's Ceol Rince in its plain red cover is
one, and my
Paddy O'Brien Tune Collection has joined their ranks. And at the rate
I'm going
I'll be playing them daily for the next year or two. Thank you, Paddy,
and
everyone involved in putting this collection together!
—Mark
Bickford, Ithaca
NY August 1995