Flutility: Irish session tunes for the flute

Flutility is a traditional Irish flute music project recorded and released in 1994. Intended to help expand repertoire, it has proved to be popular has been circulated freely amongst traditional musicians in Scotland, UK, Ireland and USA.

This online release is available for free download on The Flow. Release details and project background are below.

1. The Abbey Reel or The Moher Reel | Reel
2. The Humours of Loughrea | Reel
3. Love at the Endings* (Ed Reavey) | Reel
4. The Lads of Loais* or The Lads of Leith | Reel
   3 and 4 were played together in a solo set by fiddler Michael Queally of Clare band Moher. The tunes don't fit the flute range and what I play reflects this. The Lads of Leith appears in Kerr's Merry Melodies, published in the 1870s and is essentially the same tune as The Lads of Loais. I used to play these together in a set with The Green Gates (5).
5. The Green Gates | Reel
6. The Cuckoo's Nest | Hornpipe
7. The Ivyleaf | Reel
8. Mary MacMahon | Reel
9. The Congress Reel | Reel
10. The Dusty Windowsill or Austin Barret's (John Harling) | Jig
11. The Mullingar Races* | Reel
12. The Boys on the Hilltop | Reel
    11 and 12 are a set put together by Fred Finn and Peter Horan. I like to play these with The Mountain Top and The Five Mile Chase, a set recorded by Eddie Cahill.
13. The Jug of Punch or Tuttle’s | Reel.
14. Johnny “Watt” Henry’s Favourite | Reel.
15. The Handsome Sally | Reel
16. The Road to Ballymac | Reel.
    13-16 are a set I play in sessions. Tuttle's (as I learned it) is a Dm version of the better-known Dunmore Lasses. There is another tune by the name of the Jug of Punch I believe. The next two reels come from a set played by Matt Molloy on Stony Steps. The Road to Ballymac became popular for a while after being recorded by Seamus Maguire and John Lee on The Missing Reel, a gem of a recording that features some unusual Leitrim tunes.
17. Dinkie’s or Dinkie Dorian’s | Reel.
    A popular Donegal tune.
18. The Coachman’s Whip (Vincent Broderick) | Reel.
    The two parts are very similar. You need to be on your toes to remember where you are in the tune, but it creates a drive, hence the title maybe.
19. Crowley’s Reel No. 1 | Reel
20. Crowley’s Reel No. 2* | Reel.
    Two tunes popularly played together and often referred to as Crowley's Reels. I don't know who Crowley was, if he wrote them or just popularised them. Beware the similarity between the first reel and Billy Brocker. Beware, too a separate tune called Crowley's Reels, which is really a strange coming together of two other reels, Miss Paterson's Slipper and The Roscommon Reel. And to confuse matters further, there is another reel called Master Crowley's. Possibly the same Crowley is associated with them all.
21. The Sweet Flowers of Milltown | Schottische & Reel
22. Bunker Hill | Reel
23. In and Out the Harbour or Upstairs in a Tent or Tie the Bonnet | Reel
    From the playing of Michael Tubridy. This tune has many titles and is played in Scotland as Jenny Tie Your Bonnet Tight.
24. The Glentown Reel or The Gleanntán Reel or Geoghan's | Reel
    This is a two part version of a Scottish four part tune, Lord MacDonald's Reel. As the third and first parts are identical and the fourth part is played just an octave down, the similarities are very close.
25. The Laurel Bush or The Laurel Tree | Reel
    Two main versions exist of The Laurel Bush. I prefer this one as it contains more interest in the B part. In the other version the melody stays high both times around. See The Session for a discussion. The tune is related to the Scots reel Locheil's Awa' Tae France.
26. The Monaghan Twig | Reel
27. The Piper on Horseback | Reel
    These two tunes were learned as a set from Belfast sessions. The Monaghan Twig is a strange title. I have seen it referred to as The Mountain Twig and there is another, possibly related tune called The Monaghan Switch associated with Donegal fiddler Johnny Doherty. It is sometimes played as a fling in Ireland and appears in various Scottish collections as a strathspey, Alisdair MacAlisdair. The Piper on Horseback may refer to Piper Jackson, who travelled around Ireland in the 18th Century and produced a book of tunes, some of which bear his name and are still popular. There may be another tune that goes by the same name. I should add that somewhere in developing my version of the tune I have come to flatten the c sharps on descending phrases of the tune and restore them on ascending phrases. It makes sense to me, your mileage may vary.
28. The Old Pigeon on the Gate | Reel
    As popularised by Cathal McConnell I believe.
29. Langstrom's Pony | Jig
30. Scotch Mary/Irish Molly | Reels
31. Irish Molly | Reel
    These two closely related tunes were done in the same take. Scotch Mary is the Irish version, Irish Molly the Scots version; there is something appealing about the cross referencing of the titles. In Ireland the tune also has other names, including Ireland Green.

These MP3 downloads are free, but if you like what you hear then clicking on a sponsored link or the PayPal Donate button puts a few coins in the jar. The tracks are presented here for download in the spirit in which they were recorded: to help others learn good tunes and to spread them in sessions.

These tracks are released under a Creative Commons (CC) licence, which means that you can freely play them, copy them or pass them on in the same spirit in which they were produced, but not profit from them, change them or claim copyright. Click on the icon to read the small print and if in doubt, you can always ask me.


Flutility by Gordon Turnbull is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 UK: Scotland License

All of the tunes were learned from a mixture of sessions, books and recordings unless otherwise stated. These are as I played them at the time and I may play them differently now. Those marked {*} have been adapted to fit on the flute. See Andrew Kuntz's Fiddler's Companion and The Session for discussion and written music for these and other tunes.

The project consists of tunes mostly played at least twice: once slowly and once at regular session speed. The versions that were recorded represent how I played the tunes at the time. Your local session may play them differently and indeed so might I today. Lots of different versions of tunes exist happily together in traditional music. Tune titles are as I learned them. It may be that they are also known by other titles.

Flutility has very humble origins. I was approached by uilleann piper Duncan McInnes to put some tunes I play onto a cassette for him to learn. He gave me a C90 and over a number of weeks I recorded tunes and sets that I like to play or ones he heard me play in sessions that he specifically requested.

Tunes which might have copyright issues have been omitted for obvious reasons. I have chosen to include some tunes that have been credited to composers on the general understanding that the composers are happy for these to be circulated. If you think that there may be a copyright problem about any of these tunes, please let me know and I will fix it.

For the technically-minded, this is a fairly rough and ready recording made in my kitchen. I used a Panasonic double cassette machine, a tie clip microphone and did just a rough tuning check before playing. I have to thank Lesl Harker for converting the tapes to digital format and putting them on CD for me. There has been no other editing or production work.

I hope you enjoy the music and find it useful. Let me know how you get on.



  back to top