I’ve recently read a couple of little things that got me wondering about how ITM musicians choose tunes they play in sets. Thus, a string of questions: What do you look for when putting together sets? How do you determine what tunes will flow together well? Do you look at key, rhythm, topic, “feel,” all of the above? Is it done on the spot or planned? When we do sets for dances at our local ceili, we choose tunes quickly before a dance and they’re dependent mostly on which tunes are known by the most musicians.
Any thoughts about this?
Susan
This is a common question & it’s one of personal taste. There are a couple of ways of looking at it, I’ll list the ways I like - then rip apart the ones I think are dumb. One approach is to look at the ending note of one tune to see if it goes in to the first note of another it’s even better when there is a key change “Man of the House/the Providence Reel” & “Copperplate/Ah Surely” are both good examples of these kinds of sets. Then you can look at it with some theory, the mixolydian mode with it’s lowered 7th lends itslef to the dominant 7th chord. In english after a Dmix tune a tnue in G would sound nice.
On the other hand, stringing together similar tunes in the same key can be confusing & it be boring to listen to. Think of your tunes as colors, each one has it’s own little thing, you wouldn’t paint a picture in all shades of brown (unless you were a subtle genius & knew how to). There’s also the tactic of stringing tunes that have similar phrases “Lark in the Morning/Haste to the Wedding” comes to mind. These two tunes are from different stocks. Just cause they both have a lot of AFA AFA BGB BGB stuff going on in them doesn’t make them a happy pair. But it’s all opinion anyway.
Try to keep rhythms the same reels:reels, jigs:jigs, but even this has exceptions - slip jigs can be played after a double jig, but warn any dancers (actually don’t, have the piss out of them instead) Starting a set of reels with a double jig can be nice, but again warn everyone & don’t do it all the time. It’s all about surprise & variety. Going from a reel to a jig sounds like a trainwreck & should be avoided.
It’s something that comes with learning more tunes & experience. You can always mimick the well known Coleman/Bothy/Altan etc sets most people should know those & come to expect them to be played together. What ever you do never cement two tunes together forever, again variety is the spice of this music.
Having to form ad-hoc sets based on what everyone knows is a common enough situation and depending on the extent of everyone’s repertoire, can be severely limiting at one end of the scale or an exercise in total spontaneity at the other.
Free from such constraints, I look for tunes that I find compatible (and any number of reasons might make me decide that two tunes were incompatible were each other, reasons that other people might not share at all), or tunes which for whatever reason I associate with each other, and which combine to give a satisfying progression in terms of key change, melodic progression, or (especially for dances) sudden lift…
You can make a satisfying set out of just about anything if you keep these factors in mind and make the transition from one to the other convincingly - which might involve truncating the end of one in order to start the next with a bang, etc.
Having said that, the art of making sets that you like is probably equal parts instinct, experience and trial and error.
JUst to add my $.02USD, it may also depend on the tradition from which you’re playing: Irish, Scots, Cape Breton, for example. If I understand correctly, Scots and Cape Breton sets (for they are closely related traditions) tend for the most part to be in the same key, whereas the Irish set is more likely to involve key changes. This has borne out in my own experience in playing and discussion with musicians from all three styles. Of course, these are tendencies and not necessarily carved in stone.
Two cents the poorer for it,
N
If i understand it right (and i wouldn’t bet any money that i do), a Scottish set is a different animal altogether: it’s all in the same key (or mode), you start with a slow tune and then play a couple or more fast tunes after it. Irish session sets are built on similarity or contrast, but the key of the individual tunes seems to be very low in the factors that cause tunes to get setted together.
For Irish session sets: i think it’s useful for the beginner to start thinking in terms of sets when practicing. When you notice that 2 tunes sound well together, practice them as a set. You never know when someone will ask you to start a set, and it’s good to have a couple of them safely tucked under your belt.
g
Someone did once give me a few general rules for things to avoid in sets, but I’m so hopeless at even figuring out what key a tune is in, I’m afraid I didn’t pay full attention.
I think one of his points was that you should usually avoid following a tune in one key by another in its relative minor. So going from G to E minor would tend to not work very well (if I’m correct that Em is the relative minor of G; I haven’t a clue!). I know from experience that going from G to A minor often sounds pretty good.
Speaking of sets, the latest Sliabh Notes album (excellent by the way, includes Matt Molloy and Kevin Burke on a few tracks and overall is just full of great playing and some gorgeous singing) has a great set of very commonly played tunes that I never would have thought of putting together this way: The Providence → The Man of the House → Speed the Plough. They do an especially nice little transition from Man of the House to Speed the Plough.
“I think one of his points was that you should usually avoid following a tune in one key by another in its relative minor. So going from G to E minor would tend to not work very well”
I wholeheartedly disagree, but that’s exactly the point of this music. I think switches to relative minors/majors are ok. The direct major/minor change isn’t as nice (Dminor to DMajor) but still is OK in my book if done tastefully.
One thing I wish would stop happening is people who play the same tune in different keys. Ya know, when someone plays “Tam Lin” in 10 different keys. Or the Foxhunter’s Reel in G then (oh wait, what a suprise) A. That drives me bananas, but then again many people love that. It’s just so predictable & I’ve already mentioned the surprise aspect so…
But isn’t that the only point of doint Tam Lin? They start in Dm, then jump to Am, then jump to Em then… they run out of fiddle strings! 
This is not really on topic, but there is a freeware program called SetMaker that looks like it might help keep up with tunes that are candidates for sets and to produce a set list once you decide what to select. Never tried it, but just ran across it not long ago. Price is right.