Sorry if this has been answered somewhere in here before. I’m new to the board. Are there any guide-lines to putting tunes together to form a set? Particular keys; types…jig jig jig or what? Thanks, Phizzy
Is that a set as in dancing a set which involves several figures each danced to a particular rhythm or just any group of a few tunes?
You might find Chris Smith’s essay on set construction helpful:
http://www.geocities.com/coyotebanjo/instruction/tunesets.txt
John
Peter,
In Irish dancing we have tradional sets, i.e. St. Patrick’s Day, Blackbird, Garden of Dasies, etc. that are danced in compition, but I think this thread is referring to combinding three tunes (or more, or fewer), in an interesting order.
I recently heard a neat set, of two hornpipes, then two reels, which seemed to work really well. I personally like a set where it starts off really slow and pretty, then goes on to be crazy and wild.
On 2002-01-02 13:34, LKtz wrote:
Peter,
In Irish dancing we have tradional sets, i.e. St. Patrick’s Day, Blackbird, Garden of Dasies, etc. that are danced in compition, but I think this thread is referring to combinding three tunes (or more, or fewer), in an interesting order.
I recently heard a neat set, of two hornpipes, then two reels, which seemed to work really well. I personally like a set where it starts off really slow and pretty, then goes on to be crazy and wild.
Caryn,
I think what Peter was referring to was set dancing, which is a kind of social dancing, in groups of four couples. This is different from the set dances in solo step dancing, and even different from the figures or ceilis or whatever you call the group dances, that you would do in step dancing. These sets are fairly standardised, you can check out http://www.setdancingnews.net/ to see what it’s about.
That said, I do think the poster was probably referring simply to a group of tunes played together, not necessarily connected to a specific dance or set of dances.
Setdances are not generally referred to as ‘a set’. Set dances have ‘set’ steps to a tune which is often especially put together for these steps. I was referring to set dancing. When ‘a set’ is mentioned in Clare invariably a dance is meant consisting of a number of figures. I play weekly for local dancers who dance a variant of the Caledonian set: reels, reels again, jigs, reels and hornpipe (I may have reversed the last reels and the jigs). Depending on the length of the figure several tunes maybe combined to relief monotony for both players and dancers.
Various other ‘sets’ are danced in other parts of the country which require different tunes for the various figures. so it wasn’t such a strange assumption as the subject of combining a few tunes has been slapped around quite a bit ecently.
Oh, so it would be somthing like St. Patrick’s Day Eight Hand or Three Tunes, or Faery Reel. Ahh, my bad.
Wow, thanks for all the response. I should have stated my request more specifically. I’m actually in a Celtic group,(Skean Dubh), that performs more for listening than dancing. We’re trying to emulate…Silly Wizard; Tannehill Weavers; Old Blind Dogs; etc… I’d like to have tunes in our (two hour )set, to mix it up a bit. Song, song, song, tunes, like that. We have an excellent ullieann piper who doubles on penny whistles. I’ll check out that link. Thanks again,everybody! Phizzy