Hey, I started dabbled on the whistle a couple of months ago while waiting for the right funding and the right opportunity to learn the tenor banjo. I love ITM, and have a local session I plan on eventually joining in on. Anyway, I’ll finally be getting my first tenor on tuesday, so I’ve really started to buckle down on learning the music. I’m practicing the tunes on mandolin until tuesday, but I’ve run across something that’s nagging me.
I’m pretty sure I read somewhere (maybe here?) that ITM is unlike old-time (which is the style I’m coming from) and other types of music in that repeats occur three times instead of twice. Am I remembering this right, or am I completely mistaken?
If it is three times, and I have a jig with an A and B part, should it be played like this:
AAA
BBB
Or like this:
AA
BB
AA
BB
AA
BB
In other words, does each part repeat three times, or does the entire song repeat 3 times?
EDIT: I just realized that I wrote this a bit confusing. What I mean is three times TOTAL, not literally 3 repeats, making it four times per section.
Wow, nope, it is absolutely not true. Your standard Irish tune repeats twice, or possibly doesn’t repeat at all, or maybe some combination. (I can think of tunes that go ABB or AAB or even ABCC / ABBC.) I can’t think of a single Irish tune that repeats a section three times, though. (I suppose someone will probably name a few just to show me up.)
Newfoundland and Quebecois tunes, now they will occasionally have a part which is repeated three times. (“Hound’s Tune”, Emile Benoit’s version of "Julia Delany’, and “La Belle Catherine” come to mind.)
That’s good to know. I’d certainly never noticed anything like that when listening to the music, but I wanted to check anyway. I guess I must have skimmed a topic somewhere and completely mis-read something.
the majority of 2-part (equal parts, that is) tunes will be
aa
bb
aa
bb
but every area is different. the only way to know for sure is to go to sessions and learn what is played locally. or get a teacher who plays locally. or both
and there are other considerations, like some tunes are always played with a specific variation the second time through. you may learn a tune as written from www.thesession.org only to find when played with others some significant differences.
Depends somewhat on the tune as well. Some tunes are played “single”, meaning each eight bar segment is played only once before moving on to the next part. Reels in particular appear to be subject to this phenomenon.
Then the whole tune may be repeated, usually for a total of 3 iterations, but sometimes more; there’s no rule that says you have to play a tune only two or three times, although some sessions will have such an expectation. The older irish musicians I’ve been around aren’t in a terrible hurry to play everything they know so they will sometimes play a tune they like 4, 5, or even 6 times. Another session I frequent will play a tune as many as 8 or 10 times in order to give those who are unfamiliar with it a chance to learn it - at a regular tempo, too, this is not a “slow session”. Good for building that ear learning ability you need in order to be a good traditional irish musician.
In general, though, a typical two part tune will be played
There are only very few exceptions to the rule for example Lord McDonald which goes AA BB CC BB before going back to A for a full repeat of the previous.
The Trip to Durrow started as a two part tune but collecting for Ceol Rinnce vol 1 Tommy Reck gave Breandan Breathnach a part he had heard as an alternative second part. Breandan included in the Trip to Durrow as a three part in CRE1. Since then you’ll find it played AABC but also AABCBC or ABC.
But these tunes are very much the exception although some players may add a touch of their own like Bobby Casey who always played a third part to ‘Old Hag you’ve Killed Me’ but only doing so the last time around.
You may have read or heard something that was done for set dancing. Set dances have a very specific number of steps/beats, and these don’t always perfectly match the number of beats in tunes played AA BB. Depending on the set of tunes selected, you may see an A or B part doubled once or twice to come out to exactly the correct number of beats for the set dance, e.g. AAA BB. Otherwise, it is as others have noted here, mainly AA BB.