Mick O’Brian – My 10 favorite musicians in 10 days.

Sep 15, 2011 | ,

Could I really write these posts without mentioning the man who originally taught me? Of course not! He’s a musician that few outside the traditional music scene would recognise easily but he’s a man who has been one of my main influences even though the last time he taught me must have been fifteen years ago. Hopefully he doesn’t read that as I’m sure he’d rather not remember how long ago that was.

I’m talking about Mick O’Brian in this post. Not because he taught me but because he was one of the reasons I fell in love with the sound of the pipes. I heard his amazing skill echoing around the corridors of the school and the infectious and full sound of the full set always made me stop for a moment in admiration even from a very early age.

Mick O’Brian is from a very musical family and in fact I’ve had the pleasure of playing music with his brother John recently in a small pub on the quay in Dublin called the Ferryman on a Saturday night. Like Maurice Lennon who featured in Tuesdays post, Mick has music in his blood and it really shows.

Mick has recorded four albums that I’m aware of. The first one has to be my favourite though. Called the May morning Dew it actually features a slow air by the same name that is still my favourite air of all and it’s one I continue to play more than any other at gigs. I love this album because it has a nice variation of whistle and pipes. It also benefits from backing by a very nice guitar player and the selection of tunes is brilliant.

Some of my favourite tunes are definitely Bumper Squire Jones-An Sean Duine-O’Sullivan’s March. These start off with lovely basy guitar playing and drones but with the second tune the lack of the guitar and the extensive use of the regulators providing chordal accompaniment really lightens the tone. The technique could be more complicated in these tunes but it doesn’t need to be. If you listen carefully you’ll notice that he uses grace notes sparingly but there’s a pattern to them. For example, sometimes there at the start of a note and other times they help to break a note in two for effect. Sometimes he only does it every second note or sometimes he’ll put the grace note exactly in the same place as the tune comes back around again. I wonder at times if he realises he’s doing it. It’s something I’ve tried to aspire to occasionally but I find it takes a lot of concentration. It’s often easier to spoil a tune with over complication than it is to break it down to that level of sophistication while keeping it that light and simple. Sorry. I’m probably making no sense at all. Ok. I’ll try to explain this once more. In these tunes Mick could have put in triplets and crans all over the place but although these feature in certain parts, their underutilized and instead more subtle forms of ornamentation can be heard. Even when you don’t recognise the piping skill demonstrated in his playing you’ll still appreciate the flow of the tune as a result of his style.

I’d like to mention one more of my favourites from the same album. It’s a set called Micko Russel’s-Moneymusk. I just love the piano that’s backing these tunes. Seriously, if you have never heard this CD, please go buy it today and listen to that track. Its number 7. You’ll love the piano on it.

One of his later CD’s was the ancient voice of Ireland. This was done for RTE I think and from what I gather; Mick may not have had as much input into the resulting arrangements however I have to say that it’s one of my favourite albums to listen to when I just want to relax for a while. One of the tracks is a bit strange but I like listening to the instrumental versions of these commonly known Irish songs. For example, I love the sound of the pipes in She moved through the fair. I also love the melody of The Coolin but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like that tune.

I have to admit, I have something bad to say. I’m sorry but I’m not a huge fan of the CD’s that Mick O’Brien has done in collaboration with Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh. Musically, their very good and for purist Irish traditional musicians their brilliant. However, and I have to be very clear here, In my opinion as someone who likes nice backing by other instruments such as the guitar, I find the two albums Kitty Lie Over and Deadly Buzz just a little dead for my taste. I listen to them, their lovely tunes and both musicians are brilliant, and they just don’t rank up there in my favourites.

Finally, it’s only fair that I show a video of both Mick O’Brien & Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh as well.

Julie Fowlis – My 10 favorite musicians in 10 days.

Sep 14, 2011 | ,

We’re on day three now. Sorry to those who have been checking for these posts in the mornings. I don’t get time to adequately research each musician until late in the evenings and I’d hate to write a post without trying to give you as much information as I can as I wouldn’t be doing the musicians justice if I was only writing a quick note about each one.

Tonight, I’ve decided to tell you about another singer. People who know me very well will be surprised I think at the number of singers I plan to cover in this top ten as my main love in music is instrumentals. I prefer tunes to songs any day but the singers I’ve been introduced to especially over the past six years have really changed my perspective and opinions.

One such singer that really opened my ears was Julie Fowlis. As soon as I heard her I was instantly attracted to the recognisable Scottish rhythms and melodies. I also love that she doesn’t ever sing in English but instead sings in her native language Scots Gaelic. Unfortunately this is very different to Irish Gaelic therefore I’m unable to understand anything she sings but that really doesn’t matter. I can sit and listen for hours to her voice, the melodies, the musical arrangements of the backing instruments and as I said earlier, the very obvious Scottish rhythms. It’s said that Scottish tunes and songs are more rhythmic and less melodic than Irish equivalents however Julie’s choice of music blows this notion out of the water. Take for example the song Hug Air A Bhonald Mhoir from the album Cuilidh. This is upbeat but has a really lovely tune behind it. It would be in 4 4 time but it isn’t strictly. I have absolutely no idea what she’s singing about. All her songs might be about the joys of milking cows but it really doesn’t matter.

Julie is also a very nice whistle player. Track 6 on the same album Cuilidh and track 3 on the album Mar a tha mo chridhe feature her on the whistle however it’s very funny to look through the album listing as I write this as on each CD she just calls them jigs and reels or set of jigs. She seems to be like most of us traditional musicians. She doesn’t know the names of the tunes!

One of my favourite songs by Julie Fowlis has to be on her latest CD Uam. It’s called Thig Am Bàta. I have to admit, the main reason I like it so much is because of the arrangement. It just has Julie singing and a bodhran player backing. The rhythm makes the bodhran player’s job a little difficult but he really excels. I don’t think I’ve heard many bodhran players that could have pulled that off. Of course, dragging myself away from the Bodhran for a moment, another one of my favourites has to be Puirt from the album Mar a tha mo chridhe. I love the way this song changes beat three times and the tunes at each change always sound refreshing. I’d love to know what those pipes are accompanying her. I know I should instantly recognise them but I can’t for some reason. However, the below video shows her playing the pipes. Tony Byrne is listed as an accompanist? That’s cool. I haven’t seen him in about a year. I played a few sessions with him not so long ago around Dublin. He’s a hell of a guitar player.

Ok. I think I’ve said about enough in this post. Let me leave you with the last video of Julie. Listen to how fast she’s singing and the skill of staying in tune at that speed! It has to be very difficult.

Maurice Lennon – My 10 favorite musicians in 10 days.

Sep 13, 2011 | ,

Today I wasn’t really sure who to pick. There are just so many musicians that really stand out but I really want to tell you about a musician I have had the fortune to play music with a lot up until he moved to America about two years ago.

He is acknowledged as being one of the most talented fiddle players in Ireland and stands among the greats such as Eileen Ivers, Cathal Hayden and Gerry O’Connor.

He was a founding member of the legendary Stockton’s Wing and has toured the world playing for dignitaries in some of the nicest venues a musician could ever dream about.

He’s the kind of person that composes successful tunes played by hundreds of musicians while putting his shoes on in the morning. I kid you not! He’s just that good.

I’m of course talking about Maurice Lennon. Originally from Leitrim he is a master of the Fiddle and one of the most gifted composers I think I’ll ever have the fortune to meet. I am absolutely serious about that. Some people write tunes but Maurice seems to just know the way the notes want to be played. I’ll give you an example so you don’t think I’m talking rubbish. One Sunday I turned up to a session in the Rathmines Innin Dublin. Maurice was playing there as usual. When things started to quieten down a bit he took out the viola and began playing a tune on his own. The tune was called Master Shanleys and from what I gather, he wrote it that day. The tune was written in memory of Michael Shanley, a teacher and later the head master in his local school in Kiltyclogher. I could be wrong because Maurice told me about this about three years ago but Maurice walked miles to this man’s house to play music with his family. To again show that his tunes become widely appreciated this tune featured on the latest Lunasa CD the Leitrim Equasian. Sorry, I cant find a recording at the moment.

Two of my favourite tunes ever have to be two composed by Maurice lennon. The first is called If ever you were mine and the second is called Maeves dance. Like almost all of the tunes composed by Maurice Lennon there is meaning behind these tunes. Maeves dance for example was composed after Maurice watched a documentary that told of an Irish family who emigrated to Australia when their Daughter, Maeve was only six. After a short time passed, she was tragically hit by a car and was killed instantly. However, this is not what the documentary focused on. Instead, it focused on an imaginary world that Maeve created and wrote about in great detail in her diary. Maurice was captivated by this world and the second tune, recognised by its waltz tempo was the result of the inspiration he got from this world.

A few years ago I recorded both of these tuens and posted them to my website. Their not half as good as when Maurice plays them but hopefully they’ll be ok. Use this link to listen to the recording.

Kate rusby – My 10 favorite musicians in 10 days.

Sep 12, 2011 | ,

For the next two weeks I will focus on my ten favourite Irish traditional or folk musicians. Of course, with music tastes change and the musician I loved listening to last month might be the one I only listen to in passing this month. That’s simply the nature of music I think. However, the musicians that really earn a place in my top ten are the ones that I go back to time and time again either because I love their arrangements or I continue to be inspired by their style of playing. Inspired is not used lightly. Musicians have inspired my playing from the first day I picked up an instrument. Some musicians that I listened and learn from for example use a technique called tight piping. It’s where notes are not played in legato, their more staccato. In non-musical terms that mean that instead of flowing notes one after another you might hear a tiny pause or small popping sound between each note. That’s not an entirely accurate description but it will hopefully be adequate for this post. Sometimes, in my opinion, a musician’s style of playing is the culmination of the musicians that have inspired him or her. This leads to what is hopefully an entirely unique style that becomes like a signature for that person.

The first musician I would like to introduce you to is Kate Rusby. This woman is an English folk singer who gave me a new appreciation for singing and the instrumental arrangements that accompany it. From the first time I listened to her I really liked the way she portrayed feeling and a sense of the meaning behind each song she sang. For example, in the album underneath the stars in the song Sweet Williams ghost, she sings of how a woman is called to her lovers grave by his ghost only to be told that they must part for the last time. The woman overcome with grief lies down on the grave, stretches out her limbs and cries. The way Kate sings this by elongating the word cries by subtly dragging out the r adds power and meaning to the words.

Kate Rusby seems to be as comfortable with fast songs as she is with portraying feeling in the slower songs she sings. With accompaniment by infamous musicians such as John McKusker and Michael McGoldrick she is one of the only singers I know who can add jazzy rhythms into folk songs. A song that really explains this better than I can with words is Sir Eglamore from the albums Hour glass and again on Ten.

Before I get to my favourite songs by Kate Rusby, I’d just like to say that one of my all time hates has to be Drowned lovers from the album Hour glass. I have to write one song that I don’t like to just be fair about the whole thing. When a musician brings out 8 or more albums then I think their doing really well if there’s just one that I don’t really like.

A few of Kate Rusbies songs really stand out for me as favourites. Mary Blaize from the album The girl who couldn’t fly, The blind harper from the album Underneith the stars and last but certainly not least because I love her voice in it and the powerful drums in the background, I am stretched out on your grave from the album Hour glass.

Listen to Sir Eglamore sung by Kate Rusby on Youtube:

Coming up after the break.

Sep 9, 2011 |

I have a bit of a surprise for those of you who read the blog that are music lovers.

For the next two weeks, I will write about my ten favorite Irish musicians. Each blog post will explain why I like them, the kind of music they play, their styles and I’ll hopefully find one or more Youtube recordings of each one so as you can hear for your self what makes them so good in my opinion.

Thanks to Abby for the inspiration behind this idea.

The posts will start on Monday morning so I’ll see you then. Until Monday, Have a great weekend! I most certainly plan to. I’ve had a busy few weeks so I’m looking forward to taking it easy.

Uilleann pipe slow air in Italy 2011

Uilleann pipe slow air in Italy 2011

Sep 7, 2011 | , ,

This video was recorded in Padova in Italy during September 2011. Myself Darragh Ó Héiligh on the Uilleann pipes and whistle and Andrew Grafton on Guitar and vocals performed together while playing music with the Willin fools.

The heat was incredible but the audience were lovely. It’s always a pleasure to play music in Italy and it’s the reason I return a few times a year with the Willin fools.

Uilleann pipe slow air in Italy 2011

Uilleann pipe slow air in Italy 2011

Sep 7, 2011 | , ,

This video was recorded in Padova in Italy during September 2011. Myself Darragh Ó Héiligh on the Uilleann pipes and whistle and Andrew Grafton on Guitar and vocals performed together while playing music with the Willin fools.

The heat was incredible but the audience were lovely. It’s always a pleasure to play music in Italy and it’s the reason I return a few times a year with the Willin fools.

A year ago without Ike

Sep 7, 2011 | ,

I have read a few blogs lately where the writers speak of training with their guide dogs and their thought’s looking back on it one year on. I’ve found some of the posts interesting however for me what is more hard hitting in terms of my experience is my time without a dog. What I was doing this time last year when using the Cain, the challenges, the benefits, the risks and the restrictions. I think I’ll possibly only do two of these posts. One now and one around December. The reason why will become clearer in a moment I hope.

This time last year I was just back into my first week of work after being away in Salu in Spain for two weeks. I had retired Freddie three months previous and I had yet to visit him. I was actually surprised at how much I missed him but that’s not the focus of this post so I’ll keep moving. I came back to reasonably good weather but as always happens around September and the start of October the wind was really starting to pick up. Me and wind don’t mix at all. It’s just a bad combination. It’s harder to walk straight when there’s strong wind and the amount of audible information I can pick up about the environment I’m walking through is drastically reduced. When using a guide dog the issue of wind causing disorientation isn’t as big a deal because the dog will keep you on the straight and narrow but with a Cain it’s not easy for me at all.

I was only really starting to settle into using the Cain at this stage. I was adamant that I wouldn’t get lazy and fall into habits of using sighted guides or anything like that so armed with the Cain and the K-Sonar I battled my way through. I remember one morning I got completely confused and ended up crossing two roads instead of just one. I knew the road was wider than it should have been and before I knew it I was on the wrong side of Kildare Street.

My social life took a nose dive as well. I hate to depend on people so when people from work asked me to join them for lunch I declined because I didn’t want to walk at my slower pace and have to so obviously follow along. I also stopped doing simple things like walking into town in Drogheda on Saturdays because it just wasn’t worth the hassle. There were a few places I hated walking around. The path just before the pedestrian gate into the bus station on the way toward the Dublin road was one, finding the crossing at the North road in front of the Trinity arms was another. I also hated walking past St. Peter’s church on West Street and the open spaces before the path in the train station in Drogheda were very off putting as well. There were just parts that I really hated to walk around but I had no choice. Routes that took twenty minutes with a guide dog took half an hour or more. Streets that I breezed through with the guide dog were a source of mounting stress and apprehension with the Cain. I just hated the entire time. That might sound like a poor me post but it’s really not. Please don’t take it as that. I’m one of the lucky ones. Believe me. I continued to get out. I continued to work every day. I continued to do almost everything that I could with the dog. I continued to travel. I continued to play music. I just did it all with more difficulty, less independence and less mobility. There are people who for having a guide dog is their source of freedom. Again, I am one of the very lucky ones and I was very aware of this for the entire time I was waiting for Ike.

It’s worth occasionally looking back at last year at that wait between Freddie and Ike to appreciate how much things have changed and how much life has returned to normal again.

One thing that’s very important to say and I wish more guide dog owners, instructors and even journalists who interview people with guide dogs would say is: Having a guide dog means different things to different people. The empowerment, freedom, mobility, independence, flexibility and efficiency that guide dogs bring to their users are simply immeasurable even to other guide dog users. To some having a guide dog is the best thing ever. To others having a guide dog is completely unsuitable and would never work. Everything about a guide dog and the handler is different to any other team. Every guide dog that handler uses will completely change the dynamic. There are just too many variables that come into play in this partnership. I really think this is something that people would benefit from being aware of at times.

App of the day 10: Twitter.

Aug 26, 2011 | ,

We’re finally on day ten of the iPhone apps. Today, let’s look at Twitter. Let’s face it, we use that a lot more than most websites or social media applications. It’s only fitting then that there’s so much choice.

The main Twitter apps that I have used are: Echofon, Tweetlist and of course, the official Twitter app.

Each app has its positives and negatives but there’s no doubting that each of them have a place on most of our iPhone.

Firstly, let’s look at Echofon. This got a lot of bad press over the past six or eight months. In IOS 4 a bug was introduced when using Echofon for Voiceover users that caused Echofon to crash when a user tried to swipe to the search field from the top of the screen. This problem does not seem to exist in IOS5 so it might be worth giving Echofon another look when IOS5 is released in September. Echofon supports the following features:
Firstly, Echofon is great when you regularly move between devices to read tweets. It works on the iPhone, the Mac and Windows so when you’ve read a few tweets and you want to continue from another device you can pick up where you left off. This is a major selling point of Echofon pro.
Echofon supports lists and allows you to modify and create lists from within the application.
The app comes in a free version that includes ads and limits certain features and a pro version that costs €3.99. Both versions now come with push notification. Push notification is not something that is available with all twitter clients on the iPhone.
Echofon does not require you to enable geo tagging every time you want to show your location. It is on enabled or disabled globally but you have the option of turning it off temporarily in a tweet you are composing if you need to.
Echofon has probably the nicest interface for reading and replying to tweets of any of the other twitter clients for the iPhone.
Unfortunately Echofon does not show real names. It only shows the Twitter username when reading through the list.

Tweetlist also comes in two varieties. The Free app only allows you to use one account and includes advertisements in the interface. The paid version costs €2.33 but allows you to have as many accounts as you can shake a stick at. Some of the features of Tweetlist are below:
You can see users by their display name and not just by their twitter username. This is something that can be configured within the settings.
Replying to a message requires less tapping. There’s one button and no additional menus are shown. This is the same for retweeting and direct messages.
You can easily choose the link to open in a tweet, response or direct message and you can also choose to open this in safari instead of using the basic imbedded browser.
Unfortunately Tweetlist does not have the ability to provide push notifications. These can however be obtained by using a second app called Boxcar. This however has a few limitations. When you tap view when a notification is received, Boxcar opens then redirects you to Tweetlist. You may however not be on the screen where the mention or direct message is shown so the process of navigating to the tweet is significantly slower than when using the native Twitter app or Echofon.

The Twitter app is now reasonably integrated into IOS5, the latest version of the software used on the iPhone. When configuring Twitter preferences in the settings screen, you are given the option to download Twitter directly from the App store. This app is free but lacks some functionality found in both Echofon and Tweetlist. Most significantly compared to Tweetlist, the Twitter ap does not show real names. Accessibility with Voiceover has however undergone a major improvement lately so if you haven’t tried this App in a while it might be worth having another look More features and disadvantages are shown below:
The Twitter app includes the ability to provide push notifications. These allow you to see responses and direct messages when you are not in the Twitter app. For example, if your phone is locked but you receive a DM it will be displayed in a similar way to when a text message is shown.
I like composing tweets in the Twitter app. The options are very easy to find by switching between keyboard and options views.
The main downfall of the Twitter app is although it can be configured to show the full name / real name in the settings, this setting has no impact on the names shown when looking at the main list of tweets. If this one issue was resolved I would probably use Twitter as my main app.

Sorry if this wasn’t as detailed as you might like however please leave a comment with any questions and I’ll try to answer them all. Unfortunately today, I’ve been much busier than I anticipated.

App of the day 9: SSH, RDP, WordPress and Drupal

Aug 25, 2011 | ,

I’m coming to the end of the ten iPhone apps in ten days series so today I thought I’d spoil the system administrators and website developers out there by telling you of four little apps I just couldn’t do without.

If you use a content management system such as WordPress or Drupal you’re going to want to look at the apps for these available on the iPhone. Write posts, approve or reject comments and even look at visitor stats. The wordpress and drupal apps provide quite similar functionality and they’re both very easy to set up.

Looking at wordpress for a moment, this app allows you to write, edit and publish pages and posts, it allows you to reject, delete and approve comments, the app also allows you to attach images and format text in posts and pages with almost all the control you get from the web based editor and if you have the stats plug in installed and your account is connected to wordpress.com you can even look at your site usage statistics. The wordpress app works with sites hosted on wordpress.com and self hosted wordpress sites downloaded from wordpress.org. The app is free although there are more powerful statistics apps with an attached cost that plug in to wordpress if this is important to you.

The apps available for Drupal are either simply called Drupal or iDrupal. Both require additional modules when using both Drupal 6 or seven and both provide very similar functionality to the WordPress app. Because I’ve already covered this, I won’t go into much more detail. Drupal 6 requires modules for uploading images into posts and pages so if possible I’d encourage you to use Drupal 7 with this app.

The next two apps are simply life savers. Fortunately, I haven’t had the need to use them in quite a while but they always stay on my phone for that day that I know will come when I’m away from a computer but a service goes down somewhere or someone’s getting a funky error message that can’t be fixed through the various web control panels that are installed.

The first of these apps is RDP. This is a remote desktop client for the iPhone. Obviously, a Windows desktop was never meant to be viewed through such a small screen so this is usable only for a short time and due to the limitations of using Windows on such a small screen it’s not very nice to use however, it is secure, it is very fast and when it comes right down to it and you have no other choice but to log into a server remotely this is really useful. The app is simply called RDP and it is free from the App store. Unfortunately when you are in an RDP session you will not get any information from Voiceover. This is because for what are likely obvious reasons, the remote Windows interface cannot give any useful information to Voiceover to enable it to read.

Finally the last app for today is SSH terminal. I don’t know how many times this saved me when I first configured these servers. Thanks to the VPN connection on the iPhone I was able to log onto the network and check logs or start and stop services as needed. This app isn’t all that accessible using voiceover with speech output but it’s not through any fault of the app developer or the developers of Voiceover. It’s just the nature of console applications. It’s either all or nothing. You can read the entire screen or you can read nothing. With a Braille display you have a little more control so it’s a lot easier to get tasks done independently.