Friday, 24th November 2006

Another week. Another couple of sessions. The Wednesday Irish session at the Anchor in Wingham was nearly back to full strength but missing a few still. Another visit from Susannah, the Slovakian Irish fiddler with the hairy boots. She seemed to wonder why we always played just Irish Music in an Irish session! No real answer is there? We did point out that there were other mixed sessions and that Irish tended to be purer. Does anybody else's session tend towards a educational experience for esoteric facts? It seems that every week there is a fairly academic discussion about anything under the sun that isn't usually related to music. Is it a feature of Irish Sessions?

There will be a session (Irish) at the Anchor in Faversham on Sunday - the regular last-Sunday-of-the-month bash. Hopefully, Andybanjo will be back with us if he's well again.

Thursday's mixed lumpy was made all the more lumpy by the thumper and at one point I could have sworn that it was the Kilfenora Ceilidh Band (it's that piano) playing. That caused unbridled mirth in our corner. Gradually introducing more tunes such as Roxborough Castle and a few more Irish-y sets (not too many - just enough to make it mixed). The latest is one of those rare sets of tunes - all in the same key but with enough difference to make it interesting. The set in question is Tripping Upstairs / Father O'Flynn (or Top of the Cork Road) / Paddy Clancy's. Nice - all in D.

Thanks to John for doing a good QA job on my website (see Links), especially the tunes. Paul the banjo spotted a couple of dodgy tabs which were caused by a) the key being wrong (such as Apples in Winter in E Dorian instead of E Minor as it should be) and b) the m2g program doing something weird with E Dorian and sharpening all the G notes! Ho Hum. Must email him.