I always assumed that, for every repeat sign, you repeat that section once. But then I think I heard other people repeating more times. So, basically, is there any general rule for how many times to repeat?
Can you be more specific? Hard to answer without knowing the music in question or the circumstances.
You’re right … In standard notation, repeats are generally one time (2 iterations), unless otherwise indicated, or unless performance practice for that music dictates otherwise.
When playing a set of Irish tunes for dancers, the A part of the first tune is often played 3x through. The extra iteration serves as an intro.
Part of the confusion may be bad sheet music – I know I’ve seen common tunes on thesession.org where they’ve written out parts as four bars with first and second endings rather than the proper eight bars and a repeat on standard double reels.
In Irish trad, eight bar parts are virtually always played through either once or twice. This isn’t nearly so firm a rule with Canadian trad, but as MTGuru says, the sheet music should tell you if a part is repeated more than twice. (For instance, there’s a great Quebecios reel which is AAABBBBAAACCAAA, with A 4 bars, B 3.5 bars, and C 8 bars.)
eeesh! And you rememer this…how?
Ive noticed a lot of 3 part tunes which will be played AABBAACC rather than just AABBCC as written.
It depends on your interpretation, and how long you want/need to draw the tune out.
Can you give some examples of AABBAACC tunes? I honestly can’t think of any 3 part Irish tunes I would normally play like that. But I’m pretty sleepy at the moment. 
That would be the equivalent of a 2 part tune with alternating B parts on each repetition of the whole tune. Seems strange to me.
It often depends on what the fiddler is used to.
“You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings”, a slow air based on the shanty sung by Bette Midler, as arranged for Bb whistle by www.fullbodyburn.com., has two places where it says “Take repeat twice”.
K.
Umm… mental block now… I had Banish Misfortune going round in my head from a recording i forget now… but there are plenty I think, though its not really a typical tune is some respects
Banish Misfortune is a normal 3-parter AA BB CC. No fuss. The Foxhunter’s slip jig almost does it in that the C music is actually the A music played an octave higher, so AA BB CC DD is really AA BB AA(8va) CC. I’ve come across reels with odd patterns, e.g. Maid of Mount Cisco that is AA B CC - but of course, that’s a modern written tune, not an older trad one.
Then you get problems like The Gravel Walk which is basically “single” - 8-bar sections not repeated because they are really 4-bar repeat sections with 1st and 2nd time endings in the case of the B and D musics: but for some reason it has become common (and irresistible at sessions) to repeat the whole 8 bars of the D music, although this does not really make musical sense. Matt Molloy does not repeat it on his recording on The Stony Steps album, but you will find it in print written out with the extraneous D music repeat because that has now become the tradition!
On the other hand The Sailor’s Bonnet has a 4-bar repeated A music and an 8-bar repeated B music (as played by Michael Coleman) - so ???
The version of The Merry Sisters I have as dots has a 4-bar repeated A music with 1st and 2nd time last bars, an unrepeated 8-bar B music and a 4-bar repeated C music with 2-bar 1st and 2nd time sections. It’s still really just a “single” reel with unrepeated 8-bar sections, but the transcriber found it more economical to write it out as I’ve described due to the amount of internal repetition, which is really what defines it as a “single” reel.
The Black Haired Lass as written out has a 16-bar unrepeated A music plus a normal 8-bar repeated B section, but that long A section really consists of two 4-bar phrases, the first one repeated, the second one only slightly variant from the first and also repeated but with a second-time ending. Aaaaargh.
So, what’s all this analysis worth? In general, learn stuff by ear and it won’t be an issue! But when using the dots, especially from The Session, be wary. There can be different ways of writing out the same thing. The vast majority of tunes are straightforward 8-bar repeated sections, how ever many sections they happen to have. Slip jigs and reels that in origin at least were played single have 4-bar repeated sections, but the “single” reels are often written as 8-bar unrepeated sections. I think there are very few older trad tunes that genuinely have non-standard structures.
There are actually quite a few older tunes like this in the various Sligo 78rpm recordings. Well, okay, most of them are the opposite way around, with the A part 8 bars repeated and the B part just 8 bars (or 4 bars repeated): “Tom Ward’s Downfall”, “Liffey Banks”, “Dunmore Lasses”, etc. Seems like most modern players have normalized them into standard double reels.
There are a few Donegal reels normally played AABBCCBB, the best known being Nine Points of Roguery. Can’t think of others just now but I noticed the other day browsing through the (translated) notes to Ceol Rince na hEireann vol II that John Doherty played Boys of Malin ABCB, although it is generally heard nowadays ABC only.
Also the Coleman tune “Lord Macdonald’s”, which is ABCB.
My disclaimer: I have limited experience. But…
Perhaps this is over simplifying the thing, but I was taught that the general rule is, tunes that are (for the most part):
Irish are AABB or AABBCC
Scottish are AABA or something weird
Welsh are (i’m not even going to guess)
And English are…mmmm…otherwise
My point being that you could usually differentiate between the tunes’ origins by their format.
Is this not the case?
I’ve never heard of such a thing, and the quick sampling of Jonny Hardie (Scottish fiddler) reels I just listened to were all ABAB… just like thousands of Irish reels.
I certainly don’t think there is anything diagnostic about such patterns, gealic_gale! I think you have been ill-informed. No, what you said is not “the case”.
English tunes mostly observe the AABB format. As in all the traditions, there are exceptions and oddities. The overwhelming majority of Irish and Scots material also has 8-bar repeats in two part tunes, with a significant but lesser proportion being either 8-bar unrepeated AB or 4-bar repeated AABB. All the traditions have a smattering of tunes with “extra” parts. These are often in the nature of “variations” similar to classical variations or “divisions” and have accumulated over the years, extending what were probably originally two-part tunes. Others had extra parts to fit specific dances, e.g. the minority class of 48-bar jigs and various set dances with unusual numbers of bars to a section.
I do know that it is a feature of Welsh music that there is an unusually high proportion of tunes that have an AABA format compared to other traditions - to the extent that it is seen as a typically Welsh thing to do - but still the majority of Welsh material has “normal” AABB patterns, whatever the number of bars in the sections may be. There are (rarer) examples of such a format from all the other countries mentioned. Many tunes from all the traditions have a reiteration of (usually the end) part of the A music as a 2nd time section to the B music. I do not think it can be seriously suggested that, if a tune has AABA format, wherever you have found it, it must have been Welsh originally just because Wales is the biggest user of that form!
“Modern” (since the 1950s) written tunes crop up in all sorts of configurations, though most observe the norms.
I’ve never heard of such a thing, and the quick sampling of Jonny Hardie (Scottish fiddler) reels I just listened to were all ABAB… just like thousands of Irish reels.
Okay. And I may be dead wrong. But allowing for gross generalities, do you suppose my whistle teacher (an elder & very good musician) was perhaps trying to keep from scaring us with how much we really proposed to learn in the following years?
Do you not see any room for this theory at all?
No. None. AABB with phrase lengths in 4-bar units is the baseline norm in all Western European and thence derived traditions.
Alrighty then…
This whistle teacher is Welsh also. (just an interesting side note)
For what it’s worth, the old time Michigan dance music I’ve looked at does seem to frequently follow AABA or ABAC sorts of patterns. But there are plenty of tunes which are AABB in that tradition, too.
But even with all the crooked tunes in Canada, the overall structure isn’t much of a guide to figuring out whether a tune is Quebecois, Metis, or Newfoundland. (Except for crooked Newfoundland doubles, which are pretty distinctive – a lot like a slide with perhaps one extra beat per 8 bar phrase.)