The Commodore - Avast!

[Cathy Wilde]

Seems like a good topic for Talk Like A Pirate Day ....

So this box-playing pal of mine is just tearing up Billy McComiskey's tune "The Commodore", and I want to play along. I've got the tune almost to her speed (the F-sharp runs up to the half-holed Fnats in the B part are still dodgy, but they're coming) ... but, while it sounds OK on the flute, it basically sounds like an accordion tune played on the flute.

So my questions ... 1) Does anyone here play The Commodore? 2) If so, do you have any suggestions for flute-ifying it just a little bit? The one logical place I see for a roll in the B part is on a C natural, and ... well. Erm, uh ..... Still haven't got a sufficient workaround for those; the C-tap thing ain't cutting it against the accordion's triplet.

Arrrr, I'd be grateful to ye. It's a great one, and I'd like to play it better.

[peeplj]

Cathy, I don't play this tune, but just looking at the dots, how about instead of that off-beat C-natural roll following the E, you do E and C-natural and then follow it with a Cnat-D-E triplet coming up to the G?

I'll have to try this tune when I get home--looks like a good one!

--James

[bradhurley]

I didn't know that was one of Billy's tunes.

I first heard it from Dave Clark, a brilliant fiddler who lives in Montreal when he's not being chased by polar bears up in the Arctic, but it was also recorded by Claire Mann on her most recent CD. To be honest I don't care much for her rendition of it (too modern and driving for my taste), but I'll post an MP3 of how she plays it so you can get the gist of how one flute player tackled it.

http://homepage.mac.com/bhurley/.Public ... remann.mp3

I don't play it yet myself; it's been on my "must learn" list for a couple of years but other tunes keep bumping it back down

[Cathy Wilde]

Oh, wow. That is different, indeed. But very interesting ... and instructive! Argh, there are those darned D roll/cranlike objects at the ends of phrases. People who can do that in time and rhythm at speed are freaks of nature, I'm convinced (my attempts at those things sound like my fingers are being stuck in an electrical socket full of chewing gum).

I was told that Billy named it after the old Commodore Hotel in Washington, D.C. -- I believe a bunch of the D.C./Baltimore sorts used to hang out there.

Hmmm. Fascinating. I doubt we'll ever approach it quite like that (we're more Sean McGlynn/Paddy O'Brien in this session -- in other words, the antithesis of modern and driving ), but it's really neat to hear another perspective -- exactly what I was hoping for.

I can learn a lot from this. Thank you so much!

[johnkerr]

The Commodore was actually co-written by Billy McComiskey and Brendan Mulvihill, back in the day when they played together with Andy O'Brien in The Irish Tradition. I've often heard that the F natural in the second part was Brendan's idea; in my opinion that note pretty much makes the tune. The Commodore in the title was a hotel in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington DC, in the bottom of which sat a pub called The Dubliner in which The Irish Tradition was the house band for many years back in the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s. The Dubliner pub is still there today, and the hotel is too, but it's now called the Phoenix Park and from what I hear is considerably more upscale than it was when it was The Commodore.

Being that I play Irish music in DC, I pretty much had to learn this tune, even though it's not at all flute-friendly. I remember trying to figure it out from an Augusta concert tape on an old half-speed cassette recorder over 10 years ago. The Tradition had recorded it on their very first LP (not one of the two that later came out on Green Linnet), but that one was a very limited edition of only a few hundred copies. I didn't have it then, although I do have a bootleg of it now. AFAIK there were no other recordings of the tune then, and naturally ABCs on the 'net were non-existent. Someone did put an ABC of it up on thesession.org a few years ago that is close to the way I have it but not exactly.

From Brad's recording, it seems like Claire Mann arpeggiates her way around the long C naturals in the second part. That's one way around it, although I'm with Brad in thinking that her setting of the tune is not all that great. What I do on that bit is a quick Cnat-D-Cnat triplet. Rhythmically it's like this in ABC (using that transcription from thesession.org as a starting point):

FAde =f2d=f | e=c(3=cd=c DEG=c |

The triplet needs to be very crisply executed. Some may find that hard to do, but I don't. Using the oxx ooo fingering for C natural, all you need to do is tap the three fingers of the right hand over the bottom holes simultaneously. Moving those three fingers in lockstep is a good thing to be able to pull off (IIRC that's how Brad taps his rolls), and with a bit of practice it shouldn't be all that hard to perfect.

Alternatively, you could shorten up your phrasing there and put in a breath, like this: FAde =f2d=f | ezz=c DEG=c, maybe sliding into the C natural right after the breath by pulling off a B into the half-hole C natural fingering. I guess this would be the Micho Russell minimalist approach to the tune, but one of the things I'm learning lately is that oftentimes shorter phrases are better than long ones anyway.

If I can find some time in the next day or so, I'll try to record this the way I play it and put it up for folks to listen to. (Although with my luck it will end up sounding like bluegrass, in payback for all my ranting of late...)

[Cathy Wilde]

The Commodore was actually co-written by Billy McComiskey and Brendan Mulvihill, back in the day when they played together with Andy O'Brien in The Irish Tradition. I've often heard that the F natural in the second part was Brendan's idea; in my opinion that note pretty much makes the tune. The Commodore in the title was a hotel in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington DC, in the bottom of which sat a pub called The Dubliner in which The Irish Tradition was the house band for many years back in the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s. The Dubliner pub is still there today, and the hotel is too, but it's now called the Phoenix Park and from what I hear is considerably more upscale than it was when it was The Commodore.

Being that I play Irish music in DC, I pretty much had to learn this tune, even though it's not at all flute-friendly. I remember trying to figure it out from an Augusta concert tape on an old half-speed cassette recorder over 10 years ago. The Tradition had recorded it on their very first LP (not one of the two that later came out on Green Linnet), but that one was a very limited edition of only a few hundred copies. I didn't have it then, although I do have a bootleg of it now. AFAIK there were no other recordings of the tune then, and naturally ABCs on the 'net were non-existent. Someone did put an ABC of it up on thesession.org a few years ago that is close to the way I have it but not exactly.

From Brad's recording, it seems like Calire Mann arpeggiates her way around the long C naturals in the second part. That's one way around it, although I'm with Brad in thinking that her setting of the tune is not all that great. What I do on that bit is a quick Cnat-D-Cnat triplet. Rhythmically it's like this in ABC (using that transcription from thesession.org as a starting point):

FAde =f2d=f | e=c(3=cd=c DEG=c |

The triplet needs to be very crisply executed. Some may find that hard to do, but I don't. Using the oxx ooo fingering for C natural, all you need to do is tap the three fingers of the right hand over the bottom holes simultaneously. Moving those three fingers in lockstep is a good thing to be able to pull off (IIRC that's how Brad taps his rolls), and with a bit of practice it shouldn't be all that hard to perfect.

Alternatively, you could shorten up your phrasing there and put in a breath, like this: FAde =f2d=f | ezz=c DEG=c, maybe sliding into the C natural right after the breath by pulling off a B into the half-hole C natural fingering. I guess this would be the Micho Russell minimalist approach to the tune, but one of the things I'm learning lately is that oftentimes shorter phrases are better than long ones anyway.

If I can find some time in the next day or so, I'll try to record this the way I play it and put it up for folks to listen to. (Although with my luck it will end up sounding like bluegrass, in payback for all my ranting of late...)

John, that would be wonderful! And thanks for the additional background. I got the tune from Beverly Buchanan who got it from Billy; Bev's now-husband, Dan Cummins, was in that neighborhood at some point when he played with Ellis Island. I was sketchy on the details, so that helps a lot.

In fact, I think they played it at Augusta this year too -- yes, they did, I'm sure of it. McComiskey and Mick Maloney and Jimmy Keane and Ivan Goff ... and ... and ... oh, heck, a whole gang of them roared through a giant set at the Thursday night concert, and it was in there. Totally brilliant.

I'm presently playing it as FAde =f3d | e =c3~ etc. with an ooo oxx fingering on the C natural and just tapping my index finger for a triplet, but it sounds squidgy and fakey, so I'll try your idea for sure! I'm also interested in that earlier transcription -- the F natural roll is not so much fun on a keyless flute or whistle (I agree, BTW, the F natural is sheer genius); me wants my keyed flute back!

So thank you for the tips! And thank you for the recording offer. Finally .... no worries if you sound like Bluegrass. As long as you don't mind moving to Kentucky, I know a band that'll hire you in a heartbeat.

Thanks, everyone. This is great.

[StephenR]

Nice tune. Don't play, but just had a peek at in on thesession.org site. The arpeggio thing from Claire seems like a reasonable solution. I find that sometimes playing more notes rather than roles can add a nice dimension to flute versions. If you want to put a roll there to keep in rhythm with another player, you might try substituting an e roll which should harmonize. You could even hold on to the f nat awhile and carry the high d over the bar to add a little spice before an e roll. Don't know for sure how it would work with the version you play, but a valid experiment anyway.

Stephen Rapp

[johnkerr]

Okay, I recorded The Commodore twice through and got Tony Higgins to post it on the Clips & Snips Flute Page.

http://tinwhistletunes.com/clipssnip/flute.html

Look for the file named The Commodore with my name next to it.

It's a bit rough, but you'll get the idea. One thing I noticed as I was playing it was that I was tonguing a bit at the start of the Cnat-D-Cnat triplets, which helps crispen them a bit. It's a tip I got from John Skelton years ago at Swannanoa. His "dirty little secret" is that he tongues usually at the start of his rolls - makes them come out clearer.

Hey Cath - I know Dan Cummins. Tell him I said hello next time you see him! I kind of figured you might know him, since there aren't all that many Irish musicians in Kentucky...

[bradhurley]

Nice, John! I see that Claire Mann is playing it backwards (starting with the B part and ending with the A part), and in fact I've heard other people do that as well so I was never sure which was which. It's like that Vincent Broderick tune, the Coachman's Whip: Patrick Street recorded it with the A and B parts reversed so a lot of people still play it backwards.

For that pesky C, I would just do a roll on C (what I call a short roll and what other people call an off-beat roll), fingered thusly:

ooo ooo (the cut)
oxx ooo (the note)
oxx xxo (the tap)
oxx ooo (the note)

Basically what John's describing but with just two fingers on the right hand for the tap, not three.

[Ro3b]

Ooh, I like what Clare does with that tune! I'm going to steal some of her licks. I'm all about modern and driving.

I play a few different things for the passage in question:

FAde =fedf|ecBc gcBG

FAde e=ffd|deec fg~g2

Or if I'm feeling really antisocial:

FAde =f^f=fd|ecac gcGc

[johnkerr]

It would be interesting to try to figure out how this tune got switched around. Maybe it just got so modern and driving that the B part just ended up driving right over the A part. (Would that then make the A part roadkill?) But as I said before, for a long time there weren't any recordings of the tune aside from that early Irish Tradition LP that only had a pressing of a few hundred copies. So presumably it only existed within the orbit of sessions that Billy or Brendan played at, and from there maybe someone taped it, learned it and started playing it, and it began to spread. The first recording of it that I became aware of was on Alan Kelly's CD Out of the Blue, which came out maybe 10 years ago. So somehow by then the tune had made it across the pond. Alan had the parts in the same order as Billy and Brendan wrote them, so I guess it was someone over in the land where they drive on the left who made the switch. There are five recordings listed on thesession.org that contain the tune. Neither the Irish Tradition or Alan Kelly are on the list, but Claire Mann is. I haven't heard any of the other four, but I'm almost certain that two of them (James Keane and Cherish the Ladies) would have gotten the tune straight from Billy and Brendan, so I doubt they've switched the parts around. Obviously I don't know about the others.

Brad, what order does Dave Clark play the parts in?

[bradhurley]

Brad, what order does Dave Clark play the parts in?

I'm pretty sure he plays them in the right order but it's been awhile since I've heard him play it (and he's in the Arctic right now...I wasn't kidding about the polar bears).

[Cathy Wilde]

Oooh, neat, John! And wow! That is indeed much more flutey -- nice and flowing -- than what I've been doing. I like the way you slide into the F nats a bit; I've been doing a left-handed pseudo-roll on those to support what BEv plays on the box (I see you have an email address here, so I'll send you the mp3 we made of her just for grins). It sounds like I'll have a little bit of straddling the fence to do (once you hear the mp3 you'll know what I mean), but these are great ideas. Ooh, and another John secret, BTW ... sometimes he tongues or throats JUST A BIT in the middle of his rolls too, just to add that bit of a "da-dah" pulse when it's needed.

Also, thanks for the three-fingered tap on C tip. I like it better than the one-fingered tap I was doing with an OXX OXX fingering; sounds "cuttier."

And I will tell Dan hi for you. He's up to his neck right now working on this Irish Festival we're launching in two weeks, but if it goes off it'll be really nice. In fact, Peter Fitzgerald and Martin McCann are coming, too -- and Turlach Boylan and Tommy Martin to boot, so it should be a blast. Maybe you could ride along with the Baltimore boyz?

Again guys, this is brilliant. Thank you SO MUCH.

[johnkerr]

Flute and accordion is a combination you don't hear all that often - unless you come to sessions in DC, where you'll hear so much of it that you may well run screaming from the pub. (Be sure to pay your bill before you do, though.) There's probably a reason for that, maybe because the ornamentation and other stylistic nuances of the two instruments don't seem to mesh up all that well. I haven't done any kind of scientific analysis of this, but I do know that tunes written by box players often need a bit of work to make them flute-friendly. (Maybe box players feel the same way about tunes written by flute players, I don't know.) For instance, there are a lot of great tunes written by Paddy O'Brien of Nenagh, and I play a good few of them. But when I look at how they're written out in the Paddy O'Brien tunebook (which presumably would reflect the way he played them), there are usually quite a few differences with the way I play them on the flute. Maybe that's just the folk process at work, or maybe it reflects some differences in what you can do on the two respective instruments. At any rate, The Commodore was written by a box player, so it's no surprise that box players can do things like roll the F naturals in it while flute players use that F as the beginning of a four-letter vocal ornamentation. So if you're learning tunes off of box players, you may find you'll need to re-work a lot of them to get them to sound good on the flute. Bluegrass on the flute may turn out to be the easier path after all!

Maybe Rob, being both a flute player and a box player, can chime in on this and say whether I'm full of crap or maybe on to something here...

So, is this Kentucky Irish festival a new one this year? I know that Philippe Varlet and Frank Claudy (two other friends of Dan) have been going to Kentucky to play at a festival for the past couple of years. Is this festival perhaps a reworking of that one?

[Cathy Wilde]

Actually, this is a new festival. But Dan and Bev were in charge of the music for the Louisville fests that Frank and Philippe came to, too. The goal here is a smaller fest with more emphasis on traditional music (Louisville and many of the other fests seem to skew more toward cute step-dancing girl fiddlers, rock 'n' roll with bagpipes or God help us, Bluegrass & Irish ("Blurish"? )). It's scary since it's the first year and all, but hopefully the weather will be good, it will be a success, and Frank and Philippe will be able to come next year! They're lovely to listen to.

I know what you mean about differences between flute & box; we do a shedload of Paddy O'Brien originals or "covers" here, too (me loves that tunebook) -- Iniscealtra, Town Teine, Ormond Sound, the GaryKennedy slip jigs, the Girl that Broke My Heart set, etc. (and God help me, I love them al!) -- but indeed, learning to play them more like a flute player is proving pretty challenging, especially in terms of accomplishing "fluteness" while keeping that lovely lift and life in them that Beverly and her box impart ....

Interestingly, Patrick Orceau taught the Fly in the Porter and the Burning Brakes to his fiddle class at Augusta this year (my beloved is a fiddler so that means I'm learning them too), and when I looked, the recording I have of him playing those is very, very, VERY close to the transcriptions in the tunebook. So I suppose it's, as always, trying to match one's style to a given tune in a given situation - assuming, of course, one has a style.

ACK! You're right, it's back to Bluegrass for me. No, to be truthful, playing with Beverly & Dan is like my favorite thing I EVER get to do, so that's really what comes first. I just wish I was better at it and got to do it more often!