St Patrick’s Day Essay and Podcast#28

There comes a time when existential blues happen to any blog. I think it is the discontented feeling of doing the same thing again and again that gives rise to this feeling. And it is good to be someone who gives you the latest in our music community. But I found out that this blog has grown into  a more structure routine-without my overt opinions. And I feel that like any relationship, things have to change. Perhaps stir on a different direction. Maybe spice things up a bit. I also realized that my mind has become cluttered as I am thinking of so many things these days. Perhaps it’s the new work that I found. It’s blowing me into a different direction. So yes things have become less personal and more sterile. It is time to shake the apple tree until the fruits fall.

We all grow. Perhaps we grow together or apart. It’s the same with friends. There are those we meet for the first who give their best foot forward. Always smiling and friendly. Then one day things become confusing. Unlike friendship, music gives us a choice. Either we listen to the same artist or probably explore other styles. But life is always like that. It is full of uncertainty. We offend someone though we don’t mean to. Or it could be all in our heads. Who knows? Sometimes we do embarrassing things and we make a fool of ourselves. In the end our greatest adversary is our own minds. I know it is hard to let go of someone’s approval; especially if that person means a lot to you. But like anything else in this world, nothing stays forever. Whether we like it or not. So things have to change.

I’ve finished uploading the radio show from last Saturday. I am happy being an online DJ. It’s something different from the usual blogging that I do. And I don’t want to impose myself on anyone. That is why I am doing less promotion on my personal page because if people really like what you do, there is no need to tell them ‘hey listen to me, what I do is cool.” And it should not be an obligatory thing because friendship should be about freedom. I’ve learned that the more we force or expect people for their time, attention and effort, the more we are imposing ourselves to them and friendship becomes strain. And the other party will start feeling trapped.

So I think whatever it is you are doing, whatever it is you are passionate about; just do it. And people will just come along. I have more than seven hundred friends in my facebook personal page. I only correspond to around five percent. But I can’t delete those who added me from my previous job. I can’t delete those who added me for the sake of Celtic music. I don’t think it is necessary. But sometimes the feeds can be too much.

I think when you are an artist, the greatest asset that you have is not really your style or talent. Everyone has style and talent. It is either you are very good or good enough. It is what you say or the ‘unique’ things you bring to the table that makes you remarkable. I am just a blogger. I am not a ‘writer.’ But I think I have something to say(like all the bloggers out there). I have opinions. I have visions and things that not everyone thinks about. And this side doesn’t really get itself known because I have followed a strict rule of doing ‘just that.’ But this is not work. This is not something I owe anyone. This is my house. And I think it is time to say whatever I want to say. And even though we can’t please everyone, as long as we are happy with what we do then we are alright.

Oh and happy St. Patrick’s celebration to all of you.

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Sounds you should hear.

It’s been ages since I visited my soundcloud stream page. I found several artists you will enjoy. One is Scottish singer/harpist AnnaMcLuckie. Her vocal style is contemporary. She puts a cool spin to pop tunes.

I like demo tunes from established musicians. We all know that these demos or ‘live’ recordings will find their way into an album but it is always good to see the progress of the music. This time it’s Sir Phillip McHugh (slip jig) performed by Enda Seery: Vincenzo Di Mauro C Flute and James Hughes: Fiddle tuned to C.

And the last but not the least is something from Scottish piper/flutist Fraser Fifield.

Anticipation Building for The Buachaills

Aaron Dolan – Uilleann Pipes, Whistles, Vocals.

 Chris Carey – Drums , Percussion , Vocals.

 Eoin Murphy -Bouzouki, Mandolin , Guitar , Vocals.

 James Fleming – Bass Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Vocals.

Hometown: Cork

 

I used to plan what I post in the past. I decide what day I should post updates and what type of artist or music it should be. These days I don’t care. There are too many bands and albums out there and not enough time. I also want to point out that these albums are amazing. A lot of time and effort have been crafted in these albums. The only thing is that only few get to see the light of day and make their way into the huge pool of listeners. That is why time is of the essence. Why wait for the album release when bands can announce that they are recording something.

Usually a teaser or one song will already tell you what the band is capable of achieving in terms of craft and music. One example is Little Creatures by The Buachaills. A brief info about the track follows:

The last song on The Buachaills up-coming album “At Your Call” which features a poem from James Stephens, “Little Things”. The Buachaills are Aaron Dolan, Chris Carey, Eoin Murphy and James Fleming. The Buachaills are one of Ireland’s top folk acts blending traditional Irish music with contemporary folk/rock sounds and are the official House band of Thomond Park Stadium.

The lively beat accentuated by beautiful melodies and irresistible uilleann pipes really tell you a lot about them. It sounds so unique yet so contemporary that you can play it in your car stereo or anywhere.  

https://www.facebook.com/thebuachaills

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Eoin Murphy said that the debut album “At your call”will be released worldwide on May 10th. Good for him to tell us about it this early. Anticipation is building. This is definitely something I look forward to!

Watch Out for the Forthcoming Album by Guitar, Bouzouki Player Michael McCague

Michael McCague in In Derry

Michael McCague:Musician, Composer, Recording Artist and Mathematics Major.

Music follows Mathematical laws. And Traditional Irish musicians like Michael McCague can attest to this. After all, he is a Mathematics major. When he is not into academic things, he plays music with his brother Donal. It’s through Donal that I discovered him. I have seen most of their videos consisting mainly of fiddle(Donal) and Guitar(Michael) duets.

His style is hypnotic and rhythmic. Although I am yet to hear his solo album, his name has been all over the traditional Irish music map.  I you haven’t heard of him, then look for recordings by the following:

Idir – by At First Light (arrangement, guitar and bouzouki)

Bits N Pieces – Donal Mc Cague (arranger, guitar, bouzouki, piano, tenor guitar)

Banjo – Stevie Dunne – (arrangement, guitar, bouzouki)

Its Not Racket Science – At The Racket (arrangement, guitar, tenor guitar, bouzouki)

Sheridan’s Guesthouse – Dave Sheridan – (arranger, bouzouki, guitar)

Edel Fox & Ronan Flaherty (guitar, bouzouki, arranger)

Idir – by At First Light (arrangement, guitar and bouzouki)
Bits N Pieces – Donal Mc Cague (arranger, guitar, bouzouki, piano, tenor guitar)
Banjo – Stevie Dunne – (arrangement, guitar, bouzouki)
Its Not Racket Science – At The Racket (arrangement, guitar, tenor guitar, bouzouki)
Sheridan’s Guesthouse – Dave Sheridan – (arranger, bouzouki, guitar)
Edel Fox & Ronan Flaherty (guitar, bouzouki, arranger)

You can also read an update about the forthcoming album through his TradConnect blog:

http://tradconnect.com/profiles/blogs/album-update

Videos with Michael playing:

Bodhrán Theory and Technique-Where the best bodhran tutors hangout

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Bodhrán Theory and Technique-Where the best bodhran tutors hangout

Only a few hours joining the page called Bodhrán Theory and Technique and I got an awesome welcome. Bodhran masters like Jacob McCauley, Matthew Bell and Australian percussionist Jeremy Sibson are frequent visitors. Members post amazing links that newcomers can learn. I think my journey as a bodhran student is more on info gathering. I want to share the discovery to other aspiring musicians. Of course the perks of learning the instrument is being able to play in a local Celtic band. And I already got an invite from my friend Ralph who plays the tin whistle in his own band.

I will be interviewing bodhran teachers in my upcoming posts. In the meantime, I invite you to visit Bodhrán Theory and Technique. Feel at home and post your ideas.

Disclaimer from the page: Bodhrán Theory and Technique group is for the open discussion, critique of language, concepts, theory used associated with and the analysis of technique and the sharing of exercises, lessons for the furthering of the art of playing music of any kind on the Bodhrán.

Anything that is not a discussion on the aforementioned may end up being removed!

Don’t worry it still can be fun!

Haha I like the idea of fun while learning.

Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bodhran.tnt/

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Ireland Timelapse from Lucie S on Vimeo.

My friend Jeremy King of Poitin shared this amazing video made by her friend(an uilleann piper, she’s Czech, works as a vet in Ireland, (that’s a story in itself, isn’t it!?)  called Lucie Šmahelová . She’s just made this beautiful video of the places around where she lives).

Enjoy!!!!

Reflections in Fingerstyle: The Robert Doyle Interview

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The thing I like about Robert Doyle is that he has a lot to say about creativity. It is always exciting to eavesdrop inside a creative mind and discover what he does in a day-to-day basis when not working on music. This interview sent me looking for his last CD Life in Shadows and played the album once again. I remember the day it got to me. Like music, the artist has many layers. You can read between the lines or you can listen to the songs: They are all a part of him.

You have just released a new single Flags of Belfast with other musicians playing on this track. Are you taking a new direction for the new album?

‘Flags of Belfast’ is a reworking of the melody to ‘Star of the County Down’ with new lyrics. When I began working on it I knew I wanted to add other instrumentation when recording the song. I recorded a lot of demos of the track and some of these were done in Flood Plain Studios here in Dublin which is run by Graham Watson. He suggested trying a second vocal along with uilleann pipes and Aoife Dermody and Eoin Dillon were the perfect choice for this. So yeah there’s going to be some other musicians involved on parts of the album but it will still mostly be a solo record. Sometimes it feels right to have different instruments and then sometimes the music feels better played solo.

You mentioned the new album will be released in 2015. How’s the recording going?

I had hoped to have the album ready by the end of this year but that probably won’t happen now so 2015 is more realistic. From a recording perspective the last single was interesting for me because I got a new preamp for the home studio which now lets me record a guitar sound I’m happy with. This was always a problem in the past. So for the single I recorded the guitar and vocal myself and then we put the other parts down in Flood Plain. This gives me some flexibility for the next record that I didn’t have before. So for now I plan to record most of the album myself and for any extra instrumentation I’d like to work with Graham again. This will be a totally different recording process to last time when I only recorded two of the tracks myself and the rest with an engineer. There are a number of advantages and disadvantages to recording yourself and I’ve been debating these with myself over the years. We’ll soon see if I’ve made the right choice this time round!553461_376232242408880_1434945284_n

How will the tracks differ from your last album Life in Shadows in terms of arrangements and lyrics?

At this stage I still have a lot of work to do on writing and arranging. Like the last album it’ll be a mix of original and traditional music but there’ll be a different feel because hopefully I’m a better musician now and this should show in the music. I have about 15 or 16 separate ideas that I’m working on. Some of that material will get cut and hopefully there’ll be a good album in what’s left. Also there’ll be more songs in English this time. In the past I was mostly interested in singing in Irish but there’ll definitely be more English on this record. There’ll be some new instrumental pieces and I want to push those arrangements further on this record. I love to improvise when playing fingerstyle because you have the chance to play basslines, harmony and melody altogether so I’ll improvise around the themes and try to work out the arrangements that way.

Aside from music, what are the other projects you are working on? Can you tell us a bit about your day job?

Work and music takes up a lot of time so aside from that I don’t have any other projects. There are other important things in life though so I hope I make time for them too. The day job is in IT and this comes in useful when invariably you have technical problems in the studio. Obviously not being a full time musician means you can’t spend as much time as you’d like on the music but you try to use the time you have and always stay with it. It would be great to have time to play more gigs and record more often but the important thing is to keep playing music.

After the last album what has changed so far?

Well I think I’ve learnt a lot since then. Each project is a great learning experience and it’s worth all the work for that alone. There was a big jump from the EP I released in 2008 to the album in 2011 and I think it’ll be a similar step this time. Overall I was very happy with the last record. It was great to get a positive reception and some good coverage and radio play. Of course listening back there’s some things that I’d have done differently both in the recording and post-production but that’s all part of it.

What do you plan to accomplish musically this year?

Work on the album is the priority now and if I can get a good piece of it recorded by the end of the year I’ll be happy with that. I’m also working on a collaboration with a bouzouki player based around some traditional songs which hopefully will get to involve other musicians too.

Where can listeners buy your last album Life in Shadows?

The CD is available from Claddagh Records and will soon be for sale again directly from www.robertdoyle.net. A digital download is available from iTunes, Amazon and eMusic.

What other instruments do you play?

I’m learning to play some piano at the moment. It’s not serious piano study but I’m enjoying playing some chords and seeing how they’re built on a different instrument. It would have been great to learn piano when I was starting out all those years ago because as a guitar player you’re often trying to play like a piano player if that makes any sense! I think it’s important to not get too obsessed with the instrument you’re playing so spending some time on another instrument is something I’d recommend.

https://itunes.apple.com/ie/album/flags-of-belfast-single/id775461242

Robert Doyle – guitar and vocal
Aoife Dermody – vocal
Eoin Dillon – uilleann pipes

http://www.robertdoyle.net

Flags of Belfast

Boundaries are drawn
On council walls
Divisions are made easily
When a vote was called
The decision did say
The flag won’t fly daily

The Union remains
But the North had changed
Some divisions are the same
Next time you hear the Lagan sound
See the flags of Belfast town

When the protests began
Where are the leaders now
Heard with nothing to say
If there was a chance or a call for calm
It was soon swept away

Living on the sides
Of religious divides
Faith not faded with time
Next time round can you ask the crown
Has she seen the flags of Belfast town

At the start of the night
Through empty streets with dark light
Marches begin to pass
Along an enclave
Calls of an old age
Armed guards to defend both sides

Segregation in schools
Teaches old rules
Lessons begin early
As the children plan
To not let tradition down
And wear the flags in Belfast town

With the city closed
Blockades along the roads
Wasn’t this all a thing of the past
A sectarian divide
A part of city lives
No need to portray any side

Masks leave faces with no names
One after another taking aim
As broken bottles fall all around
The flags of Belfast town

Lyrics printed with permission.