intro
Welcome!
On this page you’ll find resources and links to accompany the workshop Playing for Irish Set Dances | The Kilfenora Plain Set, hosted by Maldon Meehan and Betsy Branch.
This workshop is part of a series leading up to the 3rd Friday Céilí on May 15th. For this céilí we’ll have an open band, and we’re inviting both adult and youth musicians to join us. You’re welcome to play for any of the sets, whether or not you’ve attended the workshops.
During the workshops we’ll be crowd-sourcing tunes from participants and finding common repertoire that suits the dances, the regional styles, and the lift of each set or county. We are delighted to be teaching this series and genuinely excited to see what grows from this project.
When it comes to set dancing, sometimes it’s the player who makes the dance—and sometimes it’s the tune itself. More often than not, it’s both.
On this resource page are a few links and examples of music and musicians for the Kilfenora Plain Set and for Clare set dancing in general.
Right now our workshop is focused on the Kilfenora Plains Set, but some of these tunes can also work nicely for other Clare sets.
- Kilfenora Plain – Clare
- Caledonian – Clare
- Clare Plain – Clare
- Corofin Plain – Clare
- Lancers – Clare
- Mazurka – Clare
- Labasheeda – Clare
playlists
I have extensive Spotify and YouTube playlist resources available. You’ll find direct links to the Clare and Kilfenora resources if you’d like to save them to your own accounts. They’re also embedded here so you can play them right on this page.
- Spotify: Music for Clare Sets
- Spotify: Kilfenora Reel Set
- Spotify: Musicicans and music from Clare
- Youtube: Music | Clare Musicians & Tunes
- Youtube: Set Dancing | Clare Sets
recources
Recources:
- Folder: “Music for May 15 Ceili.”
- 2025 May 15th Ceili Tune/Dance List – Work in progress
- Playing for Irish Set Dancing – document with links specific to this workshop.
Set in General Dancing:
- Most Popluar Set dances as of October 2025
- List of All The Set dances by county – Links in the document take you to the instructions for the dance and in some cases sugested tunes for the dances. Very much work in progress and overwhelming, but it’s great to see them arranged by county.
- Clare Resources – links to musicians, music and video playlists. This document has direct links to current bands playing fo rthe Connemara set and more.
- Irish dance styles and tune types -All the types of Irish dance.
- Nerdy spreadsheet of # of bars and tune combinations – might be help full for picking out bar lenghts that don’t line up well.
- Dance Minder – Michael Harrison’s site. The most comprenhinsive collection of Irish set dance insgructions wiht links to videos, instructions and musicial recourses.
Kilfenora Set – Callers notes, links and more. This is a document that I use when calling and teaching the Kilfenora Plain Set. You will see this dance writen as “Kilfenora”, The Kilfenora Plain Set and Kilfenora Plain. It’s all the same set.
Clare Dancers:
- Aidan Vaughan – A page on Aidan Vaughan.
- Willie Keane – A page Willie with videos.
- Paddy Neylon
tunes
Kilfenora Plain Set
Folder “Music for May 15 Ceili.” – all practice recordings can be found in this folder.
Céilí Bands
Links go directly to where they are dancing/playing the Kilfenora Plain Set if you want to dive into the dances more. The tunes are not listed, but you may know some of them and want to included them in your own Connemara set list. Please let us know tunes you find.
