IRISH DANCING MUSIC REVIEW

Here are some ideas if you are having trouble figuring out what kind of music to use to practice. These CD's are used because they contain music that we like to dance to but also because they are either traditional or they are reminiscent of the sound that we are used to hearing. The blue kell at the bottom of the page will connect you to the  leahy website. Please let me know if you do not want  your compact disk on  my site and I will remove it instantly! kim

Title : Dance Music of Ireland: jigs and reels
Artists: various
This CD has 14 tracks all of which are compulsory peices that every irish dancer must learn. There is an excellent mix of beginer, intermedeate and advanced tracks.
Tracks 5 and 6 are good for more advanced dancers, while tracks 3 and 8 are good for beginers. tracks 7 and 11 are good for  the intermedeate dancers. this is an excellent CD both to practice with and to use when teaching others.

Title : Leahy
Artist : Leahy
While this CD centres mainly on the swift fiddling of  lead fiddler Donnell Leahy, this particular CD is very popular in irish dance circles. On this CD the tracks to use for dancing are: track one,B Minor; track three, McBrides; track five, The Call to Dance and track nine, Colm Quigley. This CD's only drawback is that is that it is
mostly for seinor dancers because these peices are all meant to be danced in hardshoes.

Title: The Roots of Riverdance
Artist: various artists
Ever wonder what exactly influenced the music for Riverdance as far as other styles of music go? Well look no further! Bill Whelan, the composer who brought you the  Riverdance soundtrack which he wrote now brings you a brand new collection of his work. This collection is titled :The Roots of Riverdance. While most of this CD contains vocals, there are some very good pieces to work with off this CD. For beginers, track one titled:Timedance is a good idea, but use only the first and third parts of the music as the middle piece is slower. For the more advanced dancers, try track six titled: Bridge Attack. This track has a " ReelAround the Sun" feel to it and also has a similar sound. Two tracks from "Riverdance" are also included on this CD and again both are good for the more advanced dancers.

Title: Blackwater
Artist: Altan
This CD also features some honpipes which should be learned only upon completion of the four compulsory dances. There are also three songs on here which (while enjoyable) are not realy danceable. The rest of these pieces are traditional. Be cautious however as some of these pieces are combinations of hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys and reels. Though this is a wonderful CD, it is full of more complex pieces.

Title:Volume One: Sound Magic
Artist: Afro-Celt Sound System
The biggest drawback to this CD is that hardly any of the pieces are danceable. But the three that are danceable are realy nice pieces of music. Track six, titled " Dark moon, high tide ( including the farewell to erieann) is a free form slip jig with a light, graceful and lively quality to it. The other two pieces are a pair of very swift reels titled
"Whirl-Y-Reel-1" and "Whirl-Y-Reel-2". Both reels are good to use for either speed or endurance training or for polishing your competition steps.

Title:Traditonal music of Ireland
Artists:Various

This CD has a few vocals, and most of the selections on here are either
seinor or intermediate jigs and reels. There is only one beginner selection on here, but it is good for those dancers who are just starting
out with the dancing. This CD is better for improvised dances, like when you are sitting inside on a rainy day and want to have a little fun.

Title: The Big Squeeze:Masters of the Celtic Acordion
Artist(s): Various

This CD is from the same collection as the "Jigs and Reels", "playing with fire", and
"Traditional music of Ireland". Like the other cd's this one is excellent!!  There are lots of jigs and reels on here and there is a good balance between the three levels.
Most of the music on here has an easy count. There are one or two slow ones on here so if you watch for tracks 11 and 15, you should be just fine. The last three tracks on here are all quite fast and track 18 is a live set.

Title: Playing with Fire:Contemporary Celtic Instrumentals
Artist(s): Various

Track one on here is famillar  since this reel is also on track 12 on the " Dance of the
Celts" CD. Track two is an advanced slip jigwhich is also good for the intermediate dancers to use in order to work on their speed. Track three on here is a favorite seinor peice to use in their open classes in competition.Track four on this CD is good for the beginner. Tracks five and six are better for cooling down. Track seven is
often times used as an open class solo, while track eight contains  " Andy Renwick's
ferret" which we better know as "The Call to Dance". The last track on here is a live set which is fun to dance to.

Title: Dance of the Celts
Artist(s): Various

Now here is a five star Irish dance CD for everyone!! Even if you do not know how to Irish dance, this CDis a must  for any celtic music lover's collection. Most of these peices are very easy to dance to. Track one and two are excellent on here while track seven is much slower . Track twelve is a fairly famillar reel since we have heard it on  the "Playing with Fire" CD. Over all this CD is wonderful and these peices are very easy to follow.