Traditional Arts in the Community - Traddodiadau a Syniadau Celf - LEARNING

Since 1994 TASC has been organising Events & Workshops to encourage the use and enjoyment of Folk Music in Mid Wales and the Borders

REGISTERED CHARITY 1042144 admin@tradartsupport.org.uk VIEW SITE MAP

You Tube Channel

VIDEOS

The clips on our video page are a mixture of tunes, musicians, and dancers. Further material is being uploaded to our You Tube channel.

TUNEBOOKS

There are some great sources of tunes out there, such as the Session and the abc tunesearch site. Sometimes, however, the sheer number of them (there's literally hundreds of thousands of abc tunes on the web) can be bewildering. So we've put together a clutch of tunes we've found useful for local ceilidhs, and we also have an impressive collection of tunes from John Messenger, also tried and tested. They're all on our tune page

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STEADY DOES IT

During 2019 we put together a collection for the first of our Steady Sessions in Builth Wells.

COMMUNITY BANDS

There's no better way of extending your music-making than by playing with others, whether it's for the dancers at a ceilidh, the drinkers at a session, or entertaining the passers-by on the street. There are a number of community-based bands in the Mid Wales area, all of which are happy to welcome new members, though a certain level of skill is needed. They're not usually the place to learn to play.
For details go to our Community Bands page.

TUNES PEOPLE PLAY

A dozen years ago we thought it would be interesting to provide a teaching aid for those who wanted to start playing traditional music. The result was the Tunes People Play project. We recorded three local sessions - in Llandinam, Llanidloes and Howey - and produced a book and CD based on tunes as people actually play them in this area. The CD has the tunes played three times, once slowly, second full speed, and third as it was recorded in the session. The booklet also has extensive background notes on the tunes.

Learning More

TUNES

Different people learn in different ways. We have provided a number of tunes with both musical notation and midi files on our tunes page and for those of you who like to see the tunes being played there are clips on our video page. There are, of course, many clips out there on the web.

below: Karen Tweed & John Kirkpatrick with a Severn Suite Workshop in 2006

DANCES

Our dance page is a brief introduction to the different types of folk dance that you are likely to come across in the Mid Wales area. Again, YouTube may be the best place to see some of the actual dances, though we have produced a handy guide to getting started with Country Dances. This is based on a project in Montgomery Primary School in 2015.

below: Dance Workshop at Llandinam Village Hall

FOLK SONG

An even briefer introduction to folk song is found on our song page.

REFLECTIONS

Whatever you're doing it's usually a good idea to think about why and what. Some thoughts to get you thinking, together with links to external sites, are to be found on our thinks page.

above: Shropshire's Fred Jordan
below: Alistair Anderson with a Workshop in 2005 at Llandinam Village Hall