Timewaver is a tune book of 70 original tunes.
In October 2023, it will be 35 years since I first felt the spell of tune writing take up home in me.
In dedicating the first of these 70 tunes, ‘The Donegal Lass’ to Eithne Vallely, my teacher in The Armagh Pipers Club, i would discover the world through writing and it would find me and an old fire would begin to burn that has kept me warm on the coldest and darkest of nights ever since.
It’s a tall order, but I’ve done my best to articulate with a little narrative what inspired the writing and naming of each tune, and although most of the recorded tunes in the collection were not played on a D whistle or flute, for ease of learning and passing on, they are notated here to be played in concert pitch.
The 70 tunes are a mixture of recorded material, scattered across 12 albums, including 3 ‘solo’ recordings, 5 Flook albums, a KAN album, and other offerings from musical friends, peers and bands I admire. There is also a chapter of unrecorded or newly composed tunes, some of which have never been played in a live setting, including the most recent of the lot, ‘Timewaver’. All the recorded tunes have references to the original keys and the albums they were played on. They are, in their truest form, uncluttered with ornamentation or technique as I strongly believe that every tune is encoded with a unique personality and the real joy in playing instrumental music is connecting the notes and the space between into something new, learning how to glide, making them your own.