When you slow down a reel, do you give it a bouncy feel, like a dotted rhythm, or a hornpipe rhythm? When I first tried to play along with a fiddler, any time he slowed down a reel in order to help me out, I was confused by the rhythm he played and couldn’t follow him. I know, I know, this is a music reader’s mistake, but it took another music reader to explain to me what I was doing wrong. I wonder if that’s how everyone plays reels slowly.
When I think of how you sing Star of the County Down, I think that bouncy rhythm is correct, but I want to see if that is the consensus.
The reel “Broken Pledge” is great played slow (see, for instance, Old Blind Dogs Close to the Bome) and is popular at sessions played at normal reel tempo.
In our group we play the Musical Priest very slow at first, like a hornpipe, and go into a very the fast version.
The slow part is fun because we can add all kinds of ornementations.
I was told many years ago by a fellow folk musician (not sure who at this late date – Walt Michael, perhaps) that “Star of the County Down” was originally a march. He then proceeded to play it that way, and it makes a very convincing march of the ancient clan variety. I used to sing “My Love Nell” with Waxies’ Dargle, and it is indeed a bouncy tune. But my preference is for “Star of the County Down” sung as a beautiful balladic song and played as a slow air. John Kirk sings it beautifully on a Walt Michael & Company LP (don’t know if it’s on CD). So whether or not the march is indeed the original, it works all three ways.
Tom Bingham tomandceil@bigsplat.net
On 2002-05-04 18:43, Blackbird wrote:
When you slow down a reel, do you give it a bouncy feel, like a dotted rhythm, or a hornpipe rhythm?
When I play reels fast, I usually play them a with bouncy rhythm, which is merely another way of saying that I like to play reels with “swing”!
Conversely, while you can certainly play slow reels with swing also, I often hear them played very straight, with a march-like quality to them. Takes a bit of getting used to.
So, that’s my way of playing 'em: Fast reels are played with swing, slow reels are played straight (most of the time, sometimes with swing).
You can play any dance tune slow. The problem with the fact that many of us now learn tunes from CDs rather than by person-to-person tradition is that people tend to play the tunes as recorded. Thus only some tunes are perceived as ones that you’re “allowed” to play slow.
Pipers especially had a practice of playing jigs both “the jig way” (i.e. at normal dancing tempo) and “the piece way” (i.e. slowed down and generally greatly ornamented). But even modern pipers tend to reserve this treatment to a few tunes which were recorded by older pipers this way, e.g. Nora Chríona.
So I suggest that you experiment with any tune which you like and just see how it comes out, and do your bit to restore the living tradition.
Just for the record, one well-known pair is “the Blackbird” which I think is on Paddy Keenan’s first solo album which has been re-realeased as a CD. He plays it the piece way and then as a set dance. Another is “Fainne Geal an Lae” which kids in Ireland learn as a rather dreary march tune on tin whistle in primary school, but which was a goose-flesh-provoking revelation when I first heard it sung by Al O’Donnell as the melody for Patrick Kavanagh’s poem “Raglan Road”. The Irish title means “the bright dawn”, and “the Dawning of the Day” occurs in the refrain, so presumabley Kavanagh had the tune in mind when he wrote the poem. There may well be traditional Irish words to the song, but I don’t know of any.
On 2002-05-04 18:43, Blackbird wrote:
When you slow down a reel, do you give it a bouncy feel, like a dotted rhythm, or a hornpipe rhythm?
When I play reels fast, I usually play them a with bouncy rhythm, which is merely another way of saying that I like to play reels with “swing”!
Conversely, while you can certainly play slow reels with swing also, I often hear them played very straight, with a march-like quality to them. Takes a bit of getting used to.
So, that’s my way of playing 'em: Fast reels are played with swing, slow reels are played straight (most of the time, sometimes with swing).
Jens
I tend toward the exact opposite i.e. I swing 'em slow and square 'em up fast.The bounce comes from heavily accenting beats 2 & 4.Some reels such as Drowsy Maggie I prefer not to swing at any tempo.Listen to the way Martin Hayes plays The reel on the Burl which has a similar A part to drowsy M.,lots of bounce,hardly any swing and a very slow tempo for a reel of this type.Any hornpipe can be a reel but the dotted note is dificult to maintain and less effective at fast tempo to a point where bounce eventually must prevail over swing e.g. Fishers hornpipe. Peace, Mike
[ This Message was edited by: mike.r on 2002-05-07 07:39 ]
