Is it acceptable to take something that’s in 6/8, like a very slow jig, and take the figures of three eighth notes, and turn them into triplets so that you have something equivalent in 4/4 time?
Or should I lengthen some notes to turn it into 4/4 time?
Or am I totally full of peat moss, and I should quit trying to screw around with perfectly good music?
thanks,
ants
third
Well, as far as theoretically goes, if you can ask the question, you’ve already answered it.
Can you do it without changing the tunes to the point they lose their identity? I doubt it, but if it floats yer boat, you’ll harm none by trying, I suppose.
The actual rhythm of a jig is only approximated using music notation, remember. There is no way to accurately notate the lilt of the tune.
–James
yes, in melodic (modal) traditions
notation should serve as a sample abstraction
only
creativity in melodic traditions
relies on the option to stretch notes
(to the cutting edge, if wished)
without losing the overall timing
without this creativity you are dancing in a museum
If you had a slip jig in 12/8 time it would be counted in 4, with each 3 beats getting one count.
hmm… it’s not a jig or anything ITM, just a simple tune in 6/8.. was just a weird idea anyway. thanks, folks.
My weakest area of music is probably in analyzing rhythm. I play a lot of synchopated stuff on autopilot on the guitar, and I have a heck of a time transcribing it. Last night I was trying to write out my basic version of “Sweet Georgia Brown” for the whistle, and it took quite a while to get some parts of it notated–and it’s still only approximate.
So, assuming it’s not a jig, what would the difference be between a measure of four triplets in 4/4 and two measures of 6/8–also assuming that both are all eighth notes? Is it simply a question of where the beats fall?
While I’m at it, in ITM, does everything in 6/8 get played as a jig–even something relatively slow, like “Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore” or “The Flower of Sweet Strabane”, or are songs exempt?
This is true of the way we standardly notate tunes. But it’s not clear to me that we couldn’t notate lilt if we were prepared to get the notation very complicated, as complicated as it takes. I’ve often seen it asserted that we can’t, but I’ve never seen anyone explain why it isn’t possible. (In fact, I don’t know what a proof would look like, but I’d love to see someone try.) In theory, we can subdivide a bar as finely as we want and annotate the tiniest rhythmic displacements. If it’s only an approximation, just go to the next finest subdivision, then the next, … and so on. Use dots as freely as you need, and so on …
In practice, I suspect that perfectly accurate results would be practically unreadable. But I remember reading years ago that swing syncopation couldn’t be notated accurately but had to be rendered as 8th notes. This is obviously false. For a swing feel just play as even triplets omitting the middle note in each triplet. That’s at least very close and, if you were to go to the next level, even tiny rhythmic displacements could be accommodated, as when one pushes or drags the beat. It’s just that a compromise has to be reached between readability and accuracy. I use this example because it shows how soon we hoist the white flag and go for an approximation together with marginal directions.
I actually think we do the music greater justice by simply admitting that’s it’s very, very rhythmically subtle than we do by mystifying it by talking as though the rhythms were somehow (literally) magical.
If in practice there is no difference who is right, it might be thought that this is really a non-issue. I think that would be wrong. Notating every tune right down to the tiniest detail would be counterproductive, that’s for sure, even if it is indeed possible. But it matters for two reasons. One is the question of respect I just mentioned. But the other reason why it would be good to have exact notations of at least a few bars is that we would have an accurate record for posterity should recorded examples be lost of how it was played. I’d love to know what music made before the days of recording actually sounded like.
My dear Polonius,
It is recorded in the surviving un notated
folk music of many places.
Try aboriginal music in your own back yard.
Go to an East Indian wedding and hear the women song.
Follow this stream to a Macedonian affair.
Come come my dear Polonius
You are in a portion of Gondwana
Girded by the Indian and the South Pacific
Seas …
Follow the Bob Ross philosophy. “It’s your world. Color it any way you like.”
Ron
Ants, 6/8 time is actually two different time signatures, and thus anything written in 6/8 can be interpreted in one of two ways:
Fast 6/8-This is what all the IrTrad players refer to as jig rhythm. There are two emphasized beats per bar, each beat being subdivided by three (ONE two three, FOUR five six). Or think of two sets of three eighth notes (i.e. a triplet figure without the three above it. It is played exactly the same as a triplet figure in 2/4 time).
This is also referred to as “playing in two.” Notated music sometimes will have “Fast 6/8” written above it so that the player will understand that it is meant to be played in two as opposed to six.
Slow 6/8- All six beats receive the same emphasis-ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX (i.e. each eighth note receives one full beat and thus is NOT played as a triplet rhythm.) You can play anything in fast 6/8 in slow 6/8 and vice versa, but it will completely change the feel of the piece.
It is a very useful teaching trick with young band students…
Hope this helps-this is difficult to explain without written notation.
Ah, but is it? I love a great deal of the unnotated musics of this and other regions as they are played today. That wasn’t my concern. I’m curious to know what those same musics sounded like 300 years ago. Perhaps the same; perhaps not. Nothing I said was meant to detract from the value and worth of these traditions, as they come down to us in the present.
Folk traditions are always in a state of flux, according to what evidence there is on these matters, yet the folk in the tradition tend to talk as though the currently received traditional styles were frozen in time. As far as having a universe of sounds to nourish the spirit is concerned, I’m content to live in the present. I don’t want or need to be greedy—a musical glutton who wants it all and is never satisfied. I just have a personal interest in rates of cultural change, before and after contact with other cultures, and this is something I can’t assess as accurately as I’d like in music.
You could do what you’re proposing. Its called “arranging”. No big whoop. Keep in mind that any notated sound, weather it be the standard fly-speck of music or the loops and swirls of a persons signature, is only a visual reference for an aural result. You first have to know and understand what the player or reader is going to interpret by seeing your part. Take for instance a tune written as a reel versus the same tune written as a hornpipe. Both will be in 4/4 or Common time, but the beaming of most reels seems to be two sets four 8th notes per beam while the hornpipes will be four sets of two 8th notes. What’s the difference? Where you feel the pulse of the music (two vs. four pulses per bar). Also in hornpipes the first bar or two is usually notated with dotted 8th-16th rhythms to indicate the “swung” lilt of the melodic line. They only do the first few notes of a piece for a couple of reasons. First, it saves time in notating the work. Second, it is much easier to read and when dealing with such an abstract (like a dot on a page representing a musical thought or emotion) less is more. The responsibility is on the player for inserting all the extra nuances that will make a line music rather than just pitch in time.
As for your quandary of 6/8 vs. 4/4 with triplets, be aware of the major, minor and secondary beats. The down beat should be considered the most important rhythmic anchor of each bar. How you split up the bars will impact the piece."
6/8 feel like
1,2,3 4,5,6 | 1,2,3 4,5,6
4/4 with triplets Feels like
1,2,3 4,5,6 7,8,9 10,11,12 | 1,2,3 4,5,6 7,8,9 10,11,12
Synchronization-wise they will both time out to be the same. Emphasis/feeling-wise, they’re different.
As far as hyper notating a melody to be an absolutely perfect representation of a melodic line, it’s about like overdoing English for the same result. Take for example, the name “JOHN” If you wanted to, you could annotate this by writing down exactly what your mouth does…
DZZHHHAAAAAAAAAHHHHNN. It’s more accurate maybe but it doesn’t help the performance.
Best of Luck! 
Scott McCallister
Exactly right. But the two ways of notating serve different purposes. The musical equivalent of ‘John’ works fine for someone who already understands how the notes are to be interpreted but not so well for someone learning the language from outside the culture. Here a more phonetic guidlenine is useful. But when you get to know the conventions you can dispense with it.
On the real topic of this thread, great post BTW, Scott. Someone could figure out a lot of this stuff by playing around with the time time signatures on an electronic keyboard. I have one that won’t officially let me layer in anything but 4/4, as far as I can tell. But I can easily compose and arrange in 6/8 and other signatures just by subdividing as I see fit and producing a doctored click track with accents where I want them. The workstation tells me I’m doing one thing; I’m thinking another. But it works easily enough.
You can invoke precedent: The Connaught Heifers is The Frieze Breeches converted to reel rhythm by the judicious addition of a few notes. Or maybe vice versa, mutatis mutandis.
well, we took an American folk traditional song - “The Boatman” (or Boatman Dance) and we play it first as a waltz, then as some jazzed up swing tune (I have no idea what timing we are using on that!) and finally as the “accepted” version in 4/4 timing.
Of course, we routinely throw “major” songs into minor keys, too.
We’re weird. 
Missy
Hi ants,
One problem you might face is the length of the phrases in the tune. Double jigs often have phrases on the order of two measures or so, and you’re talking about compressing every two measures into a single 4/4 measure.
You may also end up wrestling with note density. For example, look at the foxhunter’s jig. This is a slip-jig in 9/8, but also played faster as a single jig-type thing, with each 9/8 measure squeezed into a 3/4 measure. But not all the notes are left in; this isn’t just a slip jig on fast-forward, but converted to a different type of tune.
Converting a tune by adding more notes may avoid both these problems.
Caj
The Chieftains have done this with great success. Their track: “Sea Image” uses this very type of thing on the jig “The Rolling Wave”. They start it out first as a slip jig, then a regular jig, and then into a reel. It never looses it’s identity though the timing changes twice. VERY artfully done.
B~
I’ve heard plenty of very good musicians do this, just playing around. A strathspey played as a tango is a real kick! I’m incredibly impressed by (and jealous of) people who can do that sort of thing on the fly. But arranging it would work too. You can get some very interesting takes on a tune that way. You probably would also gain a greater understanding of the tune, why it’s in 6/8 to begin with, and lots of other things.
Will it be traditional? Of course not. Will it be fun? Probably. I say go for it and have fun.
Steven