I’m working on developing better counting and rhythm with foot tapping. This is the first bar of “Drowsy Maggie” - E2BE dEBE.
Am I correct my foot would tap on E, B,d,and B?
I’d say that’s twice too often unless maybe for slow practice. At anything even approaching reel speed, you need two in the bar, which means once for each of your note groups.
Agreed. With maybe a bit of a proviso. There are some extremely good musicians who sort of do a ‘double tap’, by which I mean that they might tap their toes on the E and d, and rock back on their heels for the intervening B and B. Sometimes I do that myself. Not often, though. Mostly I do what you describe, Peter.
Yep, rocking is fine, and may even be helpful in establishing beat divisions rather than a doubled pulse.
Yes, absolutely. That’s what I meant. I realise I may not have said it clearly …
Yes foot-tapping with reels is generally two per bar, with Irish music.
It’s why reels, though in 4/4, have a 2/4 feel to many people.
On bodhran reels are treated as having 4 beats per bar, but leaving out the “2”,
Going 1_34 1_34
In this video you can see the two beats per bar foot tapping of the piper, the drummer filling in some beats with his heel, and the drum itself general having that 1_34 feel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uqcoeLR7TA
What I find interesting is how that same rhythm is heard in other places, for example Quebec.
Here it is, with an Irish reel The Gravel Walk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUd12UMpiCQ
Here’s that same foot-tapping rhythm, as would be used for a reel, but here it’s the only accompaniment so you can clearly hear it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Svjcda-84
and demonstrated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRKUgY4H9o8
And a similar rhythm is used with reels here in the USA
Note that the piper is doing straight two foot taps per bar while the drummer is sometimes filling in beats with his feet.
I am not sure what you can read from that though. There is a reason for that. For example, when I play the whistle I tap the one and three with my left foot while the right is alternating between the heel and toes for the bits in between, pretty much a la Micho Russell. When playing the pipes, because of the way I sit and because you don’t want the body of the pipes to hop about as well as the need to put the chanter down reliably every now and again, the right leg is not moving. So it’s purely for practical/functional reasons.
I don’t know that I was reading anything into it, just observing.
Personally I’ve learned how to do the Quebecois foot tapping while playing Irish reels, it’s a neat parlour trick.
Many, many years ago there was a fiddler here who did it, and I always thought it was cool.
Well you advised to take note so you seemed to imply something of note was to be found there.. But never mind.
Andy Conroy’s brother Mick used to have a party trick like that when playing the whistle. Brought the house down usually.
That sort of hoofing can become a party trick but but it’s fun when done well (Emily Flack dancing there to Manus McGuire’s fiddling, she did a spat sitting down, hoofing the rhythm to her own singing but that didn’t transfer to photo too well):
I’d say reels are normally in cut time, but typically misnotated as 4/4. So they have a 2/2 feel because they’re actually in 2/2, or 2/4 if you halve the note values as done by Scott Skinner and others. I’d not notate a reel as 4/4 unless it was composed as a ‘slow reel’, which is a rather different (listening rather than dancing) animal, and have indeed done that with one of my own composition.
Everyone’s posts have been helpful. For some reason, I don’t know what, there seems to be a disconnect between my feet and by hands in keeping rhythm. I had played GHB for some years and always seemed to be out of step with my bandmates when marching. So a choice had to be made. The tune or the marching. I could play in sync with the tune as the others carried me along. But the tune and marching? No. Oh, and there was a time I was walking about playing jigs. A bandmate said to me, “No one marches while playing jigs.” Well, at least one person does.
Some years ago I attended a GHB band camp and an instructor gave a counting exercise for jigs. As I recall it we were to tap our foot one time while clapping our hands three times within the tap, the three representing three 8th notes. This seems to be much like what posts are saying about reels, but reels with two claps. Yes?
And a addendum to this thread. A tangent, but one I think is appropriate. The tempo of a tune very much affects its feeling. I’m working on “Chanter’s Tune.” It feels very different at a slow tempo than it does at a march tempo.
That’s a great tune. I play it at a sort of slowish march tempo - about 60 bpm per half bar. What’s slow to you, Michael?
Tapping and counting against a digital clock, I count 80 bpm. I’d call it a reasonable walking pace. What you mean by “half bar”?
I always assumed beat was per bar.
Here, this is about what I’m playing… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_H0sJljEbA
Gosh, she speeds up massively in that! It’s nearly twice the speed at the end. (Well, I haven’t checked by counting or what have you, but it seems it.) She also put me off by leaving out parts of the tune in the variation that she plays towards the end. I don’t get that. It loses the feel a of march, by leaving out part of the rhythm. Well, it does for me anyway. The speed she ends up at is more or less where I would play it in any case. Well, it would be if she was playing it steadily, and also not leaving out parts of the rhythm.
This is a better indication of what speed I mean. I make that 64 bpm, so not a million miles different from my earlier suggestion of 60 bpm. Apologies for the rather ‘hippie’ nature of the track, but it’s well performed, I think, and a reasonable example of the tune as I know it.
I used the term “half bar” in order to be precise, and unambiguous. I wondered if you might be using the sheet music from the session.org, as you have in the past and, if you were, knowing how this particular tune is notated on the session.org (wrongly, as usual) I knew that I couldn’t say something like “60 bpm per minim” because that would depend on what version you were reading from. And the first one on the session.org is actually notated in 2/4 but the time signature incorrectly shows 4/4, adding to the confusion. Hence why I used the term “half bar”. There’s no ambiguity with that. A beat is something totally different from a bar. I really can’t go into that here, because it goes back to the fundamentals (pardon the pun) of music, and I’d have to write an entire volume to go into it. Instead, I suggest that you Google the term “bar in music”.
I wondered if you might be using the sheet music from the session.org,
Yes, from The Session. The dots I have are signed as 2/4 but the bars are generally structured with 3 quarter notes and 2 8ths so even as a new player I say it is a 4/4. I compared it to dots on Folk Tune Finder and it compares well it seems to me. I first found this tune in Robin Williamson’s “The Penny Whistle Book” which is a 4/4 with a slightly different structure.
You’ve completely confused me again. There isn’t a single one of the settings on the session.org which is “signed as 2/4”. What do you mean? The first one is shown with a 4/4 time signature, but is actually written out in 2/4, but that can’t be the one you mean, because that one has three 8th notes and two 16th notes. I’m baffled …
Well, this is interesting. Perhaps the mistake has been corrected. The version I printed some while ago is the second. As we both see it is in 4/4 But the same tune on my printed page is 2/4.
Phew! That’s a relief. At least that makes sense. I was getting really confused there!
Out of interest, I’m not keen on that scale run down in bars 4, 7, 12 and 15. I’ve never heard anyone play it like that. My main objection to that scale is that it wrecks the mode of the tune, which, to my mind at least, has always been firmly in a gapped mode on D, so with no F natural or F sharp - no F at all.
Now, a bit like with the last tune, are you playing it as written in those dots, on a D whistle? Because I’ll bet that, if so, you’re playing F sharps rather than naturals on that scale run down. If so, that’s really not the tune.
@Ben - Preface: I previously posted reply using the quote function but when I clicked “submit” I got a message I had quoted three times. I don’t know what happened with that and don’t see that post on the thread. Odd.
You asked if I’m playing the dots as noted and if I’m using a D whistle. Yes to both. The descending run you mention sounds fine to me. Maybe this is unfamiliarity with the tune. But I quite like the setting cited. I found some other setting in different keys and higher pitches which I like much less. the lower pitches just seem to suit the tune better.
Post Script: I’m getting a strange split page. The page I’m typing this response on and below it the pages of the rest of the thread and this can be scrolled through. Anyone else seeing this or is it some glitch on my PC?