Do you play sets you’ve found in books or online, do you build your own?
When you build… do you just learn a buncha tunes then start linking em together however it sounds good or is there some method to the madness?
There are a number of ways to build sets. Sometimes you just play a bunch of tunes and you discover that a certain tune sounds really cool when it follows another certain tune, in other words there’s a great transition between them. You don’t need any knowledge of theory (keys, chords, etc) to discover these great tune pairings. Sometimes it’s the way the melody of the first tune ends; it just flows really nicely into the start of another tune. For example a reel that ends on a long high G can go really nicely into a tune which starts on high E. You just put an F# in to let them flow together.
Then there’s building sets based on the keys the tunes are in. For example, you’ll hear reels in G followed by tunes in A or A minor a lot. Why? It just sounds good to “bump it up” a step. (It’s done in pop music all the time.) Likewise, tunes in D are nicely followed by tunes in E minor as a rule.
One key progression which usually works is playing a reel in D followed by a reel in E minor and ending up with a reel in G. You have a continuous feeling of rising.
Sometimes the opposite sounds great, that is, playing a tune in E minor and going into a tune in D major. Just the other day I found that the E minor jig “The Banner” sounds cool when followed by the D major jig “Sport”.
Then there’s the issue of staying in the same KEY but switching MODES. For example, play a straightforward jig in D major (having all the C’s being C#'s) and then go into a jig in D mixolydian (having C naturals). Sounds cool.
Cape Breton fiddlers have refined this to quite an art, playing entire sets of tunes, beginning with an air, going into a march, going into a series of strathspeys, and ending with a series of reels, all in the same key, but switching modes. The usual thing is to progressively take away the sharps in the key signature, such as starting in A major (3 sharps), going into A mixolydian (2 sharps), then ending up in A minor/dorian (1 or no sharps). Same can be done in Irish music, but isn’t as commonly heard.
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Classic sets – not from books or on-line sources, but from great old recordings in the 78-era.
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Remembering transitions that work well, from recordings or wherever – using bits of multiple sets if possible.
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Remembering sets that have been played with this group before.
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PCP’s key rules above – I don’t go into that much thought, but I try to keep them in mind.
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Lately I’ve been trying to construct sets that start with relatively obscure tunes (that I may be shakier on) and work towards tunes that everyone knows. Nice both because it’s easier to transition into a tune you know really well, and it’s cool to end with everyone playing.
I’ve seen people construct sets using tunes with names which
conform to a common theme. The Ballydesmond Polka set is
obvious, since there’s 3 polkas named Ballydesmond. There’s
Travelers sets which include “Trip to Durrow”, “Tar Road to
Sligo”, “Road to Lisdoonvarna”, that sort of thing.
I don’t think there are any real hard-and-fast rules, as long as
it sounds good and makes you happy, go with it.
You do realize that the reason they are named the Ballydesmond polkas is that they were a set of three polkas from Ballydesmond, and the numbers are for their order in the set? What I’m trying to say is, the set came before that name, and is the reason for the name. As far as I know, it was first recorded on the classic album Star Above the Garter.
As far as “classic sets” go, the sets I’ve heard on old recordings (78s I suppose) usually don’t do much for me. They often seem to be more or less random and not very musical.
I myself usually avoid playing tunes in the order somebody else has done them in. That’s a large part of the fun of creating repertoire for an Irish band, discovering great tune transitions/sets/pairings. In my Irish trio’s repertoire, I think there’s only one set we play as heard, a wonderful pair of hornpipes.
One consideration for creating sets not touched upon above is instrumentation. For example, I play The Bear Reel on an “A” whistle so as to be able to play the entire range of the tune in the correct key. So, to make a set I found another reel that also needed to be played on that whistle. Same with the hornpipes mentioned above, they both have to be played on a C whistle to come out in the correct key for the fiddler.
We must be listening to different old sets or have very different tastes or something. The old sets I listen to do not sound random, and many are “classic” enough to have been recorded many times by top musicians. (I just checked, for instance, and I’ve got at least 12 recordings of the set “Boys of the Lough / Devils of Dublin” in my collection… Michael Coleman, Martin Wynne, Peter Horan, Seamus Tansey, etc.)
For me it’s all about the play between the traditional and the new, and learning the old sets that the old tunes have long been played in is an important part of that. The great players I look up to played these sets as they learned them in addition to making up new sets of their own; I try to do the same.
It’s also a great form of signaling – I played “Sctosman Over The Border / Tenpenny Bit” (originally recorded by Paddy Killoran, I believe) in a session with strangers over the summer, and one of the senior players instantly (and correctly) pegged me as a Peter Horan fan. It quickly pointed out a lot of tunes we had in common.