🎻 A whole bunch of tune recommendations, and adventuring into Brendan Breathnach's collections

Hi, Reader!

Last week's chat about modal tunes had some great replies! Here are a few more tunes for your radar if you want a "spooky-ish" feel to your playing this Halloween season without going totally overboard (unless you want to, of course):

• Rodney's Glory (set dance with a hornpipe feel that bends an F natural and F sharp throughout the tune)
• Blackberry Festival Footrace (3 part d minor jig)
• Halloween (a nice Scottish strathspey in F)

I'll also add Chief O'Neill's hornpipe to the mix for throwing in a modal feel in the B part, and will link one of my favorite albums Ceol na gCarad (duo album from Adam Agee & Jon Sousa) for their renditions of The Tempest and Porthole of the Kelp -- delightfully haunting!

Onto this week's musings...

Earlier this week, one of my Tune Library members asked me about the difference between single and double jigs. The best explanation I've found for this so far was in a Brendan Breathnach book Folk Music and Dances of Ireland.

A single jig can be in 6/8 or 12/8 time, and is often characterized by a quarter note - eighth note pattern (someone in thesession.org forum mentioned "Humpty-Dumpty" is a good similar rhythm). Unlike a single reel vs a reel, the number of bars doesn't seem to matter as much when distinguishing between the two.

A double jig is what we usually think of as a jig -- 6/8 time, groups of 3 eighth notes, and uses "rashers and sausages" for a rhythm comparison.

I've heard a few people say that slides and single jigs are pretty much the same (at least when in 12/8), but I would be curious if this is one of those situations where you have two names for the same thing or if perhaps the difference lies in a specific set of dance steps assigned to each type.

Two names for the same thing is definitely in keeping with the fact that there are quite a few tunes out there that go by a variety of names!

I've been playing through another of Breathnach's books -- Volume I of the Ceol Rince na hEireann (Dance Music of Ireland) series.

In this book there is a section for double jigs (Poirt Dúbalta) and the following section is for single jigs, slides, agus eile (and other). The funny thing though is it's very hard in that section to tell which is which!

There are some jigs that contain mostly triplet eighth notes in 6/8, and other tunes that I could swear I've heard as slides but maybe are single jigs...

It's somewhat mind boggling, and I'd love to have a better idea of which is which! Perhaps the "eile" section refers to a few tunes that are actually more double jigs, but Brendan ran out of space in the other section?

This letter is definitely more a train of thought, but if you happen to know the answer to any of this, please do let me know! I'm enjoying the "always be a student" mentality here!

Speaking of tune collections, one of my favorite things to do with these is to pencil in my star system:

• One star means I do eventually want to learn the tune (either I've heard someone play it in a session before, or it's one of those "I don't hate it but I don't love it" kind of situations).
• Two stars means "yes! I gotta learn this one!" Once I've categorized the tunes, it's the two stars I come back to first for review.
• No stars means I have absolutely zero interest in learning the tune
• A check mark means it's a tune I can play from memory, comfortably lead at a session or perform in a gig. And yes, pencil instead of pen is a good move here! 😉

I've been using this system now for about a decade, and I can tell you that I still don't know all of my two star tunes, and just about every time I pull out a book, I erase or add stars.

But it is fun to keep track of what past Hannah enjoyed, and also see which tunes I've learned from sessions or recordings since last going through the collection!

It can also be a fun exercise if you go back and play through all of the tunes on any given page of a collection.

• No stars means I'll play it once through to confirm "yep still don't like this tune" or "hey maybe I should give this a new chance!"
• One star means I'll play it twice because the more times I play through the tunes, the more phrasing practice I'm getting in -- I might be able to hang on if someone else starts the tune at a session.
• Two stars gets the full three times through and sometimes more!

Úllaí uí Ghiolláin is a two star tune for me, and I've enjoyed getting this one under my fingers this month!

If we combine all three topics from today's letter, you'll be combing through all your tune collections for slightly spooky sounding single jigs... if you happen to hit that trifecta, I want to be the first to know 😆.

Happy playing!

~Hannah