Good post, Sport. I agree with you, though I think another reason that swing and dance generally go hand-in-hand with each other is pure catchiness. A lot of 4/4 dance music Ive heard is based on a syncopated rhythm. For instance, 20s swing(ding, KA-ding, ding KA-ding), Cajun(DICK-a DICK-a DICK-a etc), Cape Breton. All of these have a pattern of a heavily emphasised note followed by a lightly emphasised note, generally achieved by some combination of swinging the heavy note and playing it more loudly than the other less emphasised note. Anyhow, when done well, the result is quite catchy, as Im sure may of you have noticed.
And btw, I think there are still a lot of musicians who play with swing. It may not be a universal thing aymore(if it ever actually was), but swing is still very common.
Actually, around here, people always play with swing at sessions, even if they dont normally. Its sort of a default; at sessions you play with swing. I guess it isnt like this elsewhere?
There arent any apostrophes in this post because the button for it on the keyboard issnt working.
[quote=“energy”]Good post, Sport. I agree with you, though I think another reason that swing and dance generally go hand-in-hand with each other is pure catchiness.
Exactly. It’s very catchy indeed. When I play Cape Breton tunes on (Scottish) pipes, I tend to tap my feet in a swing rhythm while playing. For a reel, I tap my right heel, then my right toes, then my left toes. This results in a “DUM-da-Dum” or “strong-weak-moderate” kind of swing rhythm. When I try this with Irish tunes (and, for the record, I usually don’t), they also become inherently swingy.
Interesting that players where you live play with a lot of swing. Yes, I guess these days it really is pretty much a matter of personal preference. As far as I recall, I have never been to a session in the States or Ireland where the musicians played with any swing. Pity. It would make for a nice change of pace.
Interesting comparison, Brad. You are right, the O’Raghallaigh rendition of the tune sounds very different from the Bothy Band version. Me, I like swing!
I’ve thought about it somemore lately, and I think I’ve some kinda of a hypothesis on why the reels got straighter.
I realised that when tunes are played more swung, it creates a interesting phenomenon - the swung tunes sound slower than they actually are. So maybe when the bands and everything came up with an approach to propel the music with speed and strummy guitarism, they may have eventually droped the swing as it wasn’t in line with their music making philosophy. A tune played with equal tempo, but straight and driving sounded faster than a tune played with swing. Moreover I think it is definitely more convenient to play a tune without swing when you’re buzzing along at a quick pace. (though this might have been secondary or maybe even not a factor with regards to the highly technical band musicians) So does this hypothesis hold water?
That’s odd, I always felt the opposite. If I play a tune straight, it just seems a bit boringer unless I speed it up. The sing adds a certain amount of energy, and energy can make the thing feel “faster” than it really is.
And more directly, I find that if I want to play faster, I have to lose some of the swing. It’s just harder for me to keep the short notes short at rip-roaring speed. I always figured this was the reason that speed and straightness were correlated in regional styles.
Yeah I think swinging adds energy too, but in my opinion more like “potential energy” rather than the “kinetic energy” of the straight Bothy drive. I’ve loved Ronan Browne and Peter O’Loughlin’s CD, and Paddy Canny’s playing more and more because of this, they tend to achieve this lovely grinding, momentum the the music thats provides a high level of energy without cranking up the tempo. Its like energy thats wound up in a spring or something. It does seem less “in-your-face” than the approach of the newer, popular band musicians which I find less listenable for long term periods.
For all practical purposes, the Cape Breton strathspey is pointed-as-hell, and the GHB/Army/RSPBA strathspey style is just a little pointier than that.
A Strathspey is short for “Strathspey Reel.” It is a style of reel. A pointed style of reel. They usually in GHB collections write reels out in 2/2 and dot and cut every other 1/8th note in the construction. All a “strathspey” is, is a Scottish reel slowed down. (A bit oversimplified.)
Scottish style fiddling however, and piping, play hornpipes “rounded” and faster than their reels. It’s almost opposite of the Irish approach. If you flatten out a hornpipe you get a reel written out in full 8 bar parts, or you could think of 4 bar parts with second endings, and then doubled up. It’s a little different construction but it works essentially as a reel at that point.
There are, having said this, in the Irish school two types of reels based on how they are written usually, how the notes fly off, and those are “Ceildh Style” which lumpity lumpity a bit and tend to be slower, with more cumbersome melodies, usually stripped down and hammered out from box playing. There are also, usually simple construction reels from 4 bar parts based around rhythmic two or three note constructions that obviously come from more traditional embellishments that fly off the fingers smooth and furiously, and not sometimes as easy to dance to for the general codgerly ceilidh crowd. Hard-core, hard shoe Flatley types however, can really pound these out.
Which brings us to jigs, which can be played as marches, and often are, and sound more like Scottish Country dances than jigs.
There are, having said this, in the Irish school two types of reels based on how they are written usually, how the notes fly off, and those are “Ceildh Style” which lumpity lumpity a bit and tend to be slower, with more cumbersome melodies, usually stripped down and hammered out from box playing. There are also, usually simple construction reels from 4 bar parts based around rhythmic two or three note constructions that obviously come from more traditional embellishments that
I never heard of this. If it is true, what is the source of this information?
What Irish school?
Royce, your notes on reels make a lot of sense. I have been trying to learn on my own how to discern various types of reels and of course, its clouded by the many versions that different people play them. In my way of expressing it, some reels fit well in a “fast hornpipe” approach, while others simply want a really strong downbeat followed by a sweeping set of notes. For example, I play Junior’s Girl with the Golden Hair in the former style, while “Man of the House” wants the latter. Of the latter, I always imagine a fiddle, first and foremost and the bowing action setting up the sweep and creating a strong one-feel only . Man of the House sounds weird and too slow if you try and force-fit the hornpipe-y style onto it.
Still learning…
Your notes about Strathspeys were welcome as well. As we now have a piper in the band (GHBer), he has played some strathspeys in piping style and it really contrasts with the way the local Scottish Fiddle Orchestra plays them. The snaps are much faster and seemingly part of the florid ornamentation of the piping technique, while the orchestra plays the snaps a lot slower and very mannered. Most of this is due to the instruments being used, I reckon, but it sure is different. I am guessing that the use of the term pointed might mean this, not sure.
Well…I’m not sure I’d go quite that far. True, usually on the first strathspey in a set, many CB players do tend to start off on the slow side with a pretty pointed approach. This, however, seems to be a relatively modern development, say within the last 60-75 years. In any case, when you get to the last couple of strathspeys before transitioning into a reel (the point which Hamish Moore once described as “the magic moment in old Scottish music”) they do tend to be played at a very rapid pace with a very strong 4/4 rhythm as opposed to the RSPBA style which can quite often be subdivided into more of a 12/8-feeling rhythm. Listening to old CB fiddlers like Alex Francis MacKay and Buddy MacMaster bears this out. CB pipers Barry Shears and Alex MacKenzie also play strathspeys with a faster, more rounded 4/4 rhythm as do some younger Scottish fiddlers like Ronan Martin and Deidre Morrison and pipers such as Fred Morrison and Fin Moore.
