I’ve been playing the whistle for awhile and have mastered a fair amount of tunes (mastered, at least, to my own satisfaction 
), but am not sure how to go about putting the tunes I know into sets.
I’ve an ankle-high stack of books of tunes and sheet music, all individual tunes.
Any suggestions?
http://www.ceolas.org/pub/tunes/tunes.pdf/POB.pdf
I hope this is of some use.
There’s also the ‘Irish Session Tunes’ series,http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Session-Tunes-Orange-Book/dp/1900428172/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_ These also come with CDs.
There’s some really nice sets in all of these.
Also check out the Foinn Seisiún sets at Comhaltas: http://comhaltas.ie/blog/post/foinn_seisiun_online/
Click on one of the book / CD links to see the tunes. Click on a tune for mp3 and details At the upper right, under Keywords, look for the “Set” link. Click that to see how the tune has been placed in a set.
Are you going along to sessions, CHCBrown? If so, just learn the sets that they play.
This is a topic which really interests me, as I’ve been playing in various ITM groups for the last 30 years in which we’ve tried our hand at creating sets/medleys, and I’ve always taken note of which sets/medleys that I hear others play really “work” for me.
Many of the tune combinations that ITM players habitually play come from old Michael Coleman recordings etc and many don’t seem to make much sense to me personally.
At least two approaches come to mind, as how to go about building sets:
1) pick tunes in keys which create an overall progression that works
2) pick tunes that melodically flow from one to another
For #1, one thinks of the set as a total composition. There are formulaic key changes which nearly always work regardless of which specific tunes are used.
For one such formula, you’ll note how often, in sets, a tune change involves jumping up one note, such as D major/mixolydian to E dorian or G major to A dorian/mixolydian. This rise is somehow inherently exciting and is very common in pop music as well.
A three-tune formula which usually works (almost regardless of which specific tunes are plugged into it) is D maj/mix > E dor > G maj. The tonic continues the rise as you see.
The tunes in such sets need not melodically flow from one to another; indeed there can be a break or silence at a tune juncture.
An example of this might be The Cameronian > Morning Dew > Sally Gardens.
For #2, one is not thinking about the overarching harmonic structure but finding a tune which just happens to sound great coming from another tune melodically.
For example a tune might end on high G and it sounds great to go to a tune that starts on high E (an F# being inserted to smooth it out).
Sometimes you have to play the end phrase of a tune over and over, exploring how to tranisition into various other tunes, until you hit upon something that really works.
For example we play Bunker Hill and it took quite a bit of trying to find a tune that works well in front of it, as Bunker Hill has pickup notes C A and we wanted to find a tune that ended on middle D on the beat before so that we could get those pickup notes in, to get a nice D C A descending thing going into the first beat of Bunker Hill. A Micho Russell reel in D ended up working best.
Sometimes putting together melodies that seem to want to go together creates a set that really doesn’t make much harmonic sense but sounds cool anyway.
I put together The Banner > Sport > Hag with the Money and I just love the “organic” way Sport flows into Hag with the Money, so much so that people are not aware that the tune has changed sometimes. But now the C#s are Cnats and the harmonic structure has changed.
This leads into an intesting thing for me: the different way that Irish players and the old Cape Breton players approached sets. Irish players tend to like key changes so that the different tunes in a set would have different tonics, or in some cases Irish players like to play tunes back-to-back in identical keys with no harmonic shift whatsoever. Many of the old Cape Breton fiddlers would construct sets all in the same key but shifting the mode, taking away sharps as it were, for example
A major > A mixolydian > A dorian.
Interested in this, I put together such a set, of Irish tunes, for my ITM band The Linen Cap > The High Reel > (an A dorian reel I wrote). Plop nearly any traditional reel in A dorian into the final slot to hear how that approach to building a set works. It’s amazingly effective, after the ear gets used to the sound of the Major mode, how that first G natural you hit when you go into the second tune is. Then likewise when C natural appears in the last tune.
This is what I did. I started with a tune I really liked and let other people make suggestions for tunes that might fit with it.
I really like “Kid on the Mountain” and I wanted to put a set together with that melody. I just posted a request for suggestions and got a few from the nice folks here. I then tried putting them together like a puzzle. It is much easier to put together a puzzle with 4 or 5 tunes than one with 3000… LOL
Anyway, I ended up with “Dever the Dancer” - “Kid” - back to “Dever” because that is what I liked the best from the list of suggestions. The tunes are both in Em (or.. help PanCelticPiper… in some mode … LOL) and I just like the way they flow together.
Why not get help from your fellow “Chiffers”.
…john
Putting sets together can be a way of making practice even more fun and interesting.
How about the following:
The Black Cock of Wickham
Blair Atholl (the second of that name on http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/BLAIR_BLEW.htm)
Boil the Breakfast Early
I like the idea of playing an English, a Scottish, and an Irish reel together, and I think the set works, with the highlighting of c natural a common factor.
I get amusement from putting apparently daft combinations together, such as a Welsh march (the Coronation), followed by a strathspey (Aldivalloch, played slowly), and then a Swedish polska (the Vaestgoetapolska).
Finding what works can take time, but it’s all good practice.
Thanks to everyone for your help and suggestions. Thanks, especially, to pancelticpiper for exactly the kind of theoretical discussion I was looking for.
Songs on my PDA are organized in a peculiar alphabetical order. Some songs are listed by title, other songs by author or artist. It keeps me guessing but still has a nice consistency. Don’t do this.
I think I’ve got a bit of a haphazard way of making sets but it might work equally well for some people: Get to the end of one tune and see which tune you really really want to play next, because chances are it will fit. Some of the sets I’ve played which people have liked especially are ones with no sort of sense to the key progressions, and really big changes in mood between the tunes. Daft combinations which for some reason work - especially if you play with a group of people who get used to that progression. It can sound really cool when everyone does something unpredictable at the same time.
But yeah, I also really like ‘Kid on the Mountain’, and if you want to a sleepy kind of set try: Maids of Mitchelstown (slowly! Hear the Bothy Band version and you’ll never want to play it fast again), The Butterfly, Kid on the Mountain. I like the idea of your march strathspey polska, sackbut. Can we post up more daft sets? This is fun.
A really enjoyable post.
I suspect the Cape Breton thing
reflects an older era where a constant drone
note was preferred or convenient?
You can tell I have a problem, because when I first saw this thread header, I said to myself: “What could be so difficult? Just put the Burkes with the Buekes, the Sindts with the Sindts, and so on.”
Philo
I agree Pancelticpiper’s post is a fantastic summary/piece of advice - thanks, Pan.
In addition to the various ideas that have been suggested above, over the years I have found one way of compiling effective sets has been to find a non-musical theme to link tunes - say related title words or some kind of concept or idea reflected in titles (say e.g. bird tunes, or turf tunes or tea tunes…), or different tunes that share a title (melodically unrelated rather than variant, though sometimes juxtaposing variants can be effective), etc. and see if you can put them together (usually following PanCP’s principles). Of course, if you can’t work the thus-selected possibles into a sequence that links together well melodically/harmonically/rhythmically/atmospherically, scrub it and start over. But it’s amazing how often such an exercise brings up something good, whereas just sitting thinking, “I need some new sets” and scratching your head waiting for random inspiration to strike tends not to achieve anything. This can also work well if you have a tune you’ve found that you just love and are very keen to use but have it standing alone - play association games with its title/provenance and see what tunes searches through tune resources (printed books, online ABC collections etc.) bring up that somehow “connect” conceptually, then see if they’ll also connect musically. If you find say 6 associable tunes, at least a couple of them are bound to be musically compatible.
I was going to post an example, but for some reason I can’t upload the image file to my hosting service at present - will try again later…when I get a chance.
Edit: example now added below…
I think it’s really simple to put the tunes you know into sets. Don’t make it a bit deal. There are at least a few of methods that could be employed. At least a couple are described earlier in this thread. I agree that they are good methods, but my favorite method is a method based on personal feeing and on your total knowledge of Irish music.
Simply start off by playing any tune you know…when done with the tune, what do you feel like playing next? Play that tune. Try to make the 2 tunes flow together. Although there is no need to try to match jigs with jigs or key with key, once you’ve completed the “set” you should try to understand why chose the following [those after the 1st] tunes. This method is my favorite as it is more personal, more spontaneous, more zen, more original, more free, more fun, more artistic…As you may suspect this method is also more difficult when trying to play with other musicians.
Back in the eighties I played in a band with Elspeth Smellie - a wonderful clarsach player (the wee Scottish harp). She wanted to make a set with Fanny Power and Cock Up your Beaver. The rest of us weren’t brave enough. They go well together, but I had to introduce the tunes…
Check out Elspeth’s website: she’s good. And her CD is well worth getting - original creative, extending the tradition with taste and imagination.
(sorry for the x-rated post…)
b
OK, my image host service is running properly again, so here’s my recently compiled set - the primary link idea was geographical. The Sullane is the river flowing through the Ballyvourney area of Co. Cork where the village of Cuil Aodha lies, but there are also Hammy Hamilton connections. Hammy lives in Cuil Aodha, as did Peadar O’Riada (I understand). Having selected the possible tunes, I just tried out playing them in different sequences, checking out how they flowed into each other melodically and key-change atmosphere-wise, and how well the last tune ended the set, and settled on the following sequence:
