100 Popular Irish Session Tunes Book and CD Together

by Dave Mallinson

Also available on this web site the Book alone and The Soundtrack CD alone.

Bearing in mind that one of Dave Mallinson's life rules is “Never say never”, 100 Popular Irish Session Tunes is the last in the series.

Although the series comprises 600 tunes, this last book is still packed with popular standards. The Green Mountain, George White’s and The Bank of Turf are all perfect examples. Reels, jigs, hornpipes, polkas, slides, slip jigs, and barn dances are to be found in the book with the usual importance given to reels followed by jigs.

Six books of 100 Irish tunes plus six accompanying CDs have been a mega project. that if Mally had known at the outset what an enormous task he was setting himself, he may never have started. It has taken around 20 years to complete plus 15 years before that studying the music when producing books such as these would never have entered my head.

To be fair, the books’ development was nothing like as precise as this.

Mally didn’t wake up one morning and say to himself “I think I’ll produce six Irish music books”.

The books developed steadily over time, born out of my impatience to learn more and more tunes as quickly as possible. He found he kept forgetting tunes he had learned earlier, particularly the setting he had worked out to suit his style of playing and his instrument, (He still forgets nowadays but on a larger scale). Because of this, David Mallinson started jotting the tunes down for easy revision. Then he saw a gap in the market and he published 100 Essential Irish Session Tunes from his crib sheets.

It was a much bigger success than he had imagined, so he continued the series.

He said he didn’t intend to bring out accompanying CDs but he had such a lot of requests for them that, in the end, he relented and produced the recordings, that took 13 years.

Now the project is finished.

He is glad he has done it and he is pleased with the end product although hewould have liked to have had more talent to put into the soundtracks, but it’s difficult when you don’t start young.

However, he feels that he has been paid a great compliment by the fact that companies in Ireland have copied my products, some tunes note for note.

The tune settings in this book are all ‘session friendly’, i.e. you can learn them exactly as written and know that you will have a perfectly acceptable version.

However, Mally would consider it unwise to learn a tune from only one source and he would suggest strongly that, when learning a new tune, you pay heed to other books, recordings, and live performances. It is important to note that the settings in this book are greatly influenced by the instrument I play, the D/G melodeon (an accordion system rarely found in Irish music circles - B/C and C sharp/D are the norm).

He has made a conscious effort to allow this to happen in order to give the book its own unique character.

100 Popular Irish Session Tunes Book only or Book and CD or CD only by Dave Mallinson