So please don’t go around saying something is STUPID just cos ye don’t agree with it..that is supreme arrogance,remember everything is there for a reason and don’t forget the correllation between dance and music/pipes in Ireland may not be the same as ye are blasting away on yer Borderpipes or whatever in Glasgow.
No not arrogance but temperance. I was agreeing that a set tempo is good as a guide but just a guide. Maybe that statement is all I should of said as it might have caused less confusion.I started off danced and played the bagpipes, and I still have my highland dancing qualifications (I’ll bring them along some Tuesday ) I’ve also step danced too. I know this may not qualify me to comment on Irish music and dancing but I do appreciate the link between dancing and music.
My main instrument is the penny whistle though and the majority of the tunes I play are either Scottish puirts (songs for dancing), reels, jigs and their Irish counterparts. You can play too fast and you can play too slow but the only thing that matters is that you play it clearly that’s all I am saying. Saying that you must stick to a certain speed is the point of contention I have. All the limits and boundaries on this music may help preserve it in an exacting state but it that what you want to do?
Do you want where you play and teach to be a home of Irish music or where Irish music lives?
BTW I thought dynamite was for blasting
Disclamer: Please take everything I say with a pinch of salt as I have a habit of voicing a veiw that may or may not be mine just to get people to better qualify their responses
Breathnach quoted a 17th or 16th century source, with the unforgettable name of Richard Head (Butthead’s great²³ uncle?), “In every field a fiddle, and the lasses footing it until they are all of a foam.” He also compared the sound to a “key scraping on a gridiron.” The Pastoral pipes were an 18th century invention, unless you buy Grattan Flood’s nonsense about Shakespeare mentioning them in the Merchant of Venice.
The old harpers played airs, descriptive pieces, O’Carolan’s music, and certain types of program music, accompanying the poets and such. These are the truly old harpers, that Bunting collected music from. Their tradition basically died out in the days before the famine. I can’t recollect much of any reference to their playing for dancing; certainly it would have to be soft shoe stuff in drawing rooms, and for only a couple or two. For sure they couldn’t play for big group dances like the Rince Fada and the like, and indeed the old harpers considered themselves the elite of musicians, above playing for commoners.
Reg Hall in his liner notes for “Round the House and Mind the Dresser” lumps the waltz in with all the non-native dances that swamped the country in the late 19th, the mazurka, varsovienna, barndance, and so on. He says the waltz had a currency in Irish ballroom dancing (or wherever it was done) before making its way to country cabins. Buy this CD, it’s great, and read what Reg has to say, he knows his stuff front and back.
Just the sort of egocentric response I’d expect. You, you you, it’s always about you. As far as you’re concerned.
Fact is, you never even wondered that you could be comfortable throwing out a bpm less than half the speed quoted by authoritative sources or other players and even other players in this forum, and even suspect that your were talking an entirely different time base. Keen to argue your point, but entirely clueless to the fact that you were hardly as far off as the figures being thrown back and forth suggested. That by nature is egocentric.
The most telling part of your sarcasm of course is the fact that if, as you claim, you’re counting all four beats in 4/4, you’re doing exactly as I said you should do in order to come up with the proper bpm for an Irish reel notated in 4/4. What I actually said apparently suggests that you are not one of the lazy ones, 180 degrees to the opposite of your rebuttal.
Or perhaps, you are claiming to count a proper 4/4 measure, and still come up with a speed of 90 bpm. In which case, you aren’t a lazy counter, just a lazy player. That’s a New Orleans funeral procession on it’s way to the gravesite.
It is also possible that you actually think you’re counting out quarter notes but you’re really only counting out every other one, and though you’re thinking one, two, three, four, you’re really spreading that over two measures. If so, this would not only be physically lazy, but intellectually lazy as well.
But my main point addressed the differences between notating and thus counting out bpm between Scottish lowland and Scottish Highland or GHB customs and Irish traditional notation and customs. So again, any reference to laziness really had little to do with you personally, which, since you take such great personal exception, is by definition egocentric on your part.
And more to the point, you no doubt count jigs out in 4/4 rather than 6/8 for instance, because it’s harder to count out the full beat in each measure, two groups of 1/8th notes, than it is to drop into left, right, left, right march meter counting only the beginning note in each group. That by definition is lazy, and throws a different “metric accent” or “groove” or “pulse” into the genre, simply by virtue of the fact that you as a player aren’t able or willing to put as much effort in hammering out the basic rhythm of the piece as would a dancer or good drummer. (If there is such a thing as the latter…) You force an accent on note 1 and 4 constantly, where the dance or the tune itself may want to bring out syncopated emphasis on beat 1 and 3 IE: X0X000 X0X000 (two measures in 6/8 time) as opposed to the inevitably forced and deadpan X00X00 X00X00 you get when you count only the easily tapped out left, right, left, right sort of beats that fall on one and four.
Going back to reel, a dancer counts two groups of 4 1/8th notes every measure. Not all beats are always tapped or stepped, but all beats are present to be measured and used. Of those 8, if you’re only counting out two of them, that by definition is lazy. You’re doing a fraction of the work a dancer or drummer is doing in terms of hammering out or even thinking out the basic beat. All I’ve suggested is that counting out at least four of those 8, every downbeat, which would be counting a full bar in 4/4, not shortcutting it into 2/2, which again, tends to impose a loping, constipated emphasis or a left, right, left, right, march structure into a reel. Even more than a jig, the reel presents opportunities to swing emphasis onto upnotes for a light, flat-out, straight-ahead, syncopated powerhouse of a feel. If you’re physically counting in 4/4, and at least mentally noting every upbeat as you raise your foot to tap, or even if not physically tapping at all, you naturally fall into clean, somtimes blinding speed for free because you are thinking, counting and playing a reel the way it is being danced.
If you want to argue that you like the 2/2 emphasis, and you only play reels in that style, the Cape Breton, Shetland, or even more pointed Scottish style, then go ahead and count them like that. But you won’t get a flat-out Irish reel going that way, and that is also why some people simply can’t fathom how some other people can play so “fast.” It isn’t just “fast,” it’s a particular way of counting out, thinking out, playing out, and “expressing” a melodic line that naturally falls into this blinding speed in a way very similar to the same tune wanting to “dance” at a particular speed.
I know you’re a fantastic piper and a wonderful human being, you can count and play any way you want, but haven’t you just gone well out of your way to invite unnecessary hostility here, when, as I say, it has has very little to do with you at all?
Royce
(And I am a pretty damned interesting guy. Thanks.)
My old pipe instructor (Highland Pipes) used to complain about the demanding dancers who would always try to tell him, the musician, what speed to play at, he would say “time me” and he would play it exactly to time, which was never quick enough for the dancers. This being said, he would always say it was most important to “put the music in the music”. This doesn’t always come out the exact way it was written.
Granted you should be aware of the timing standards but they should be used more as a guide than a rule.
This is putting the cart before the horse. If you agree to play for the dancers, you must then play for the dancers, not for yourself. The piper may call the tune, but the dancers always set the pace, or you don’t belong there.
djm wrote:…“This is putting the cart before the horse. If you agree to play for the dancers, you must then play for the dancers, not for yourself. The piper may call the tune, but the dancers always set the pace, or you don’t belong there.”
Absolutely. As a recovering GHB’r, I chose to pipe for dancers instead of in a band. I felt it was more challenging and thusly, rewarding. But the name of the game is DANCER. They dictate what tempo they require you to play at and it is up to you to meet them there. In competition, it is paramount to meet and support the dancer’s tempo as it can mean the difference between winning and losing. But that was a long time ago, and my memory of it grows dimmer with each passing second.
Geeze yes. As a guy who’s play for a few Highland dancers in his time, every single Grande Dame of Highland Dance has a different idea of the correct “tempo.” That’s further broken down into diva and devo preferences, and though they’re stuck with you on the day with whatever comes out, if you’re not cooperating with their “school” you don’t get asked back. Sometimes you get substituted out at the first break.
Even Highland dancers clap you the cue as to just how fast they want you to break into the reel, and there isn’t a celi dance group who doesn’t shout “faster” or “slower” as they go until they’re happy with the pace, per dance, per tune chosen. It’ll vary all night, and as others have mentioned, most of the time, it’s faster than the player might otherwise wish to go and sacrifices often have to be made in perfect execution and pristine, elaborate embellishment, just to keep the melody driving the dance.
It’s all about the dance, and if you can’t dance to it, it’s pointless playing for dancer.
Which brings us back to the way dance music is played in general. I don’t necessarily dislike certain pipers or modern pseudo-ITM bands because of the way they play their instruments, but because they have lost the dance feeling of the music. Regardless of how fast or slow you play it, its still dance music, and if it doesn’t at least get people’s toes tapping, let alone jumping out of their seats to move, then it just isn’t ITM anymore - might as well be Scottish, with those sledgehammer rhythms.
Just read Royce’s comments… Inhale… Exhale… count to 10. OK…
I’m just very tired of having people show up at sessions playing reels at 120 (or 240) bpm sounding like a sewing machine attached to square wave oscillator telling me “that’s how its supposed to be played”. Garbage.
I count my reels with two groups of 4 notes per measure, but I’m flexible to move the emphasis around to on/off beats to go with the flow. That “flow” is real different when playing for step dancers that need the strong on-beats, than, for example, with a tenor banjo player in a non-step dance setting, where thing may be more syncopated. Sometimes I run into a step dancer that can interact with the flexible on/off beat sycopation, but many are confused by it.
Jigs I count in 6, but tap my foot in two groups of 3. I’m flexible in emphasis, generally empahasize 1 and 4, but when playing regs may also put some sub-emphasis on the 3 and 6.
My all-time favorite session player is Mick O’Brien. To my ear, the swing and pace of the tunes on “Kitty Lie Over” is the perfect embodiment of the beauty inherent in this music. My favorite solo piper is Brian McNamara, also not a speed-demon.
I’m not even sure what this thread is about anymore…
Step dancing is another thing. I find some step dancing “schools” perform the same basic steps as anyone else, but more like Scottish Country dancing than anything else. I suppose that still falls into the notion of playing for the dance though, even if the pulse and tempo may be slower than some other interpretation of the same tune and dance.
Jigs are another thing in step dancing and/or hard-shoe, because the so-called “triple” jigs are stepped out with so many more steps that you do in fact play them at a funeral pace–or more like what I’d call a “quickstep” or perhaps “Morris Dance…”
Anyway, you end up playing at tempos for dancers, but I do tend to agree that if you have the groove and the fingers when playing alone you might as well fire up the tune to a bright but comfortable tempo. Sessions are individual and if you are session Nazi Commandant I suppose that puts you in charge, but if you’re one of one or two whiners about tempos being too fast then maybe look for another session.
Set dancers (of which I do not count myself as by any stretch)use the following rythm which ye may find helpful.
“Hop234567 123 And123”
Now if ye tap this out gently with your feet(please, not distracting great clod hoppers) ye will find ye are dancing to the music,not only that ye are at Reel Tempo!
I can just imagine the scene around the world at the moment with pipers skipping around their living rooms and cats scurrying for cover and partners convinced that their loved ones have finally gone over to the fairies
Slan go foill
Liam
ps I havnae clue where this thread is going to ,been to,come frae again,but who cares…
Just to say… you don’t get dancers [or trad musicians] in every part of Ireland. Far from it.
And plenty of trad players in Ireland would never, ever play for dancers.
I’m not saying anyone is right or wrong, here…its a free country, that’s all. And if people there object to any one thing, then its rulemakers and snobs.
Or is that 2 things
) I’ve also step danced too. I know this may not qualify me to comment on Irish music and dancing but I do appreciate the link between dancing and music.
