About Our Sessions

At many Irish traditional sessions the music is played at a fast tempo, which can be intimidating for newer players. Instead, our sessions are ‘softer and slower’ to facilitate the learning process in a friendly and supportive environment. Also, unlike many Irish sessions, those players who need to read the music can use it at the session, although ultimately our goal is to get everyone playing the music in the aural tradition so they can join other sessions. We limit the tunes to those on our tune list, which is updated periodically (see Tune List tab). This allows participants to practise the tunes between sessions. Learn as many or as few as you like!

Trad Slow Sessions take place around once a month on Friday evenings at 6.30 – 7.45 pm in the school, and both New School students and external students/players are welcome. All sessions are supervised by a New School trad teacher.

Students who are currently enrolled with the New School are asked to contribute €3 at each session, and external students/players are asked to contribute €6, to help us to cover expenses.

A taste of one of our Trad Slow Sessions,
this one supervised by Harry Long.
Video by Evan Ram.

Safety & COVID-19

The health and safety of both students and staff at the New School is of the utmost importance to us, and we have made a number of changes to the school, its equipment and our policies to make in-school tuition (tuition taking place on the New School premises) safe during the time of COVID-19. These include:

• Perspex screens in every classroom.
• Installation of HEPA air filtration/purification units where necessary. *
• Antiseptic dispensers available throughout the school.
• Cleaning and disinfection of both classroom instruments and furniture between lessons and classes.
• Regular cleaning of public spaces.

*   Trad Slow Sessions take place in the school’s largest classroom, where a HEPA unit is installed.

See our COVID-19 Safety Policy page for more information on what we have done, as well as the protocols we expect all in-school students and visitors to follow.

Trad Slow Session Details

• Where Waltons New School of Music
  69 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2 (see map below)
• When Fridays, 6.30 – 8 pm
• Dates See Dates tab for this year’s dates.
• Fees €3 (New School students) • €6 (external students/players)
• Level All levels are welcome, although students with some previous training (private tuition or one of our Introducing group courses) will benefit the most.
• Booking Advance booking is not required.
• Payment Please pay on the day, at least 15 minutes before the Session begins. We accept cash or card payments.
• COVID Trad Slow Sessions take place in our largest classroom where a HEPA air filtration/purification unit is installed. We also ask all participants to read and understand our COVID-19 Safety Policy before attending sessions and to follow all of our safety protocols.

Location

2024-2025 Trad Slow Session Dates

18 October 2024
15 November 2024
6 December 2024
7 February 2025
7 March 2025
4 April 2025
23 May 2025
20 June 2025

Trad Slow Session Tune List & PDFs

Printed sheet music, in pdf format and including note names and guitar chords, for all of the Trad Slow Session tunes listed below is available by clicking on the links. You can print pages directly from the website or download them for printing later. When printing a downloaded page, please select ‘Actual Size’ or 100% under ‘Page Size & Handling’ for best results.