Beginning Irish Session Tunes

Do you want to play in Irish sessions around town? This class will focus on easier and well known session tunes to ease less experienced players into an Irish session. We’ll start out playing slowly with a goal to get up to speed. Students will get comfortable with playing tunes by ear, without sheet music by singing the melodies before playing, identifying keys and modes, figuring out the forms of tunes, finding common melodic patterns, and other techniques to make learning the melody easier.

This class pairs well with the Celtic Ensemble or the Swallow Hill Irish Jam.

Prerequisites: Students need to be able to play melodies on their instrument. This means playing individual notes, not just strumming chords/rhythm. Common keys are D major, G major, A minor, and E minor; for example, students should be able to play a full D major scale, G major scale, etc.

Check out this video of the Irish Session Tunes class on a field trip to play at a local pub with other Irish Session players!

See this video for another example of an Irish session - we will be playing easier tunes than they are, but you can get a sense of what the style of the music is like.

Recommended Instruments: Fiddle, Flutes, Whistles, Accordions, Mandolin (Bouzoukis welcome!), Banjo, Uillean pipes; (View the current and needed instruments for all of our ensembles here.)

* Other instruments are welcome to join, but please talk to Miriam first by emailing [email protected]

Help us get in tune by registering early!
To support our teachers and better accommodate the needs of our classes, we ask that students register at least 48 hours in advance of the class, lesson, and/or workshop.

Cost includes $15 School support fee. Learn more about that fee here

Miriam Rosenblum

IRISH TIN WHISTLE, RECORDER

Miriam has been teaching recorder and Irish tin whistle in Denver since the late 1980s, both at Swallow Hill and in her home studio. In 2015 she started Colorado’s first Suzuki recorder studio. Miriam loves teaching and seeing the joy that playing music brings to her students’ lives. Her students have called her patient, encouraging, knowledgeable and fun! She has degrees in music (oboe performance) from Yale and from the University of New York at Stonybrook. Miriam currently plays klezmer clarinet in local bands The Lost Tribe and The Klez Dispensers, as well as recorder with the baroque quartet Semplice. You’ll also find her playing tin whistle in various Irish sessions around town. When she’s not playing music, Miriam loves to hang out with her grandkids and backpack in the beautiful mountains of Colorado.