Review: Macdara O Raghallaigh

Subject: RE: Review: Macdara O Raghallaigh
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 10:56 PM

That sounds very interesting and rewarding. I bet early music (Gregorian chant, say) would sound good on it.

I just found a way to make an instrument louder. I placed my husband's bodhran on a wooden table, stuck my dulcimer onto it with bluetack and played away.

Catters - please no jokes about "At last a good use for a bodhran." I love bodhran.

I'm going out of town now, so if you post the picture soon, I'll miss it. Don't think I'm not interested.

Subject: RE: Review: Macdara O Raghallaigh
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 10:52 AM

Yes, I'm playing it, but it's a very very simple lyre. Small, very quiet and only 7 strings (thus only 7 notes). Closest comparable instrument would be the Finnish Kantele.


Maybe I'll take a photo of it. You can play a couple of very simple (7 note!) tunes on it. I've also tried using a guitar slide on it, playing it as a kind of caveman's lapsteel, which works, but needs amplification.

It was basically a beginner's wordcarving course, as it were. I'd been wanting to do a course like that for a year or two, and my lovely girlfriend booked me on the course for a birthday present. Hard work, but a lot of fun. (Said girlfriend then booked herself on a "detective novel writing" course for the same weekend.) Next year, the same tutor will be running a similar weekend course into making a "Sutton Hoo" style lute...

I loved West Dean college though - really fun place.

Subject: RE: Review: Macdara O Raghallaigh
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 10:32 AM

Never mind about another recording of a fiddler. I wanna hear all about the lyre. Are you playing it yet?

Subject: Review: Macdara O Raghallaigh
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 10:03 AM

Actually, this isn't a review so much as a glowing recommendation for the album Ego Trip by Macdara O Raghallaigh. Apparently he played in Camden last week when I couldn't go. (Too busy making a lyre at a weekend workshop course in West Dean!)

A great album of solo Irish fiddling (a really larger-than-life "you're in the room" type recording to tickle your earbuds as well)

http://macdara.bandcamp.com/album/ego-trip

Came out earlier this year, but I only just stumbled across it while idly browsing on Bandcamp.