Guide to Irish Tune Types
If you’ve ever been to an Irish music concert or a session, you’ve heard the musicians playing lots of tunes. They learned a variety of tune types but most likely, if you are not involved in the music, you can’t tell the different types apart. Below is an brief introduction to the tune types that are played.
For starters, here is the difference between jig and reel (for non-musicians): To tell whether a tune you’re listening to is a jig or a reel, let your foot tap along with the music at a natural pace, then see how many fast notes you count between each tap. If you can count to 3, it’s a jig. If you can count to 4, it’s a reel.
Reels
Reels are notated 4/4. All reels consist largely of eighth note (quaver) movement with an accent on the first and third beats of the bar.
Most reels have two parts (A and B). Each part (A and B) typically has eight bars, which in turn are divisible into four-bar and two-bar phrases.
For most reels, each part is repeated (AABB), but there are others that are not repeated (ABAB).
Another way to look at it is that there are four beats to every bar (each beat is counted in even measure as 1-2-3-4 I 1-2-3-4.
Reels, most likely, originated in France in the early 1500s as the “haye.” It was being played as ‘reill’ in Scotland in 1590 and in its modern form brought to Ireland in the late 1700s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel_(dance)
https://thesession.org/discussions/24314
Jigs
Single and double jigs
How to tell Single Jigs and Double Jigs Apart
The single jig tends to follow the pattern of a quarter note followed by an eighth note (twice per 6/8 bar) or less commonly a 12/8 time.
Double Jig
Slip Jigs
The hop, or slip, jig is in 9/8 time.
Played either quickly as one group per bar (e.g., Michael Coleman’s style), having three jig patterns per group, or slower (e.g., for step dances) as three groups per bar, each of which is a jig pattern.
Foxhunter’s Jig
Slides
A slide is 12/8
Though slides contain the same number of beats per tune as a single jig, melodies are phrased in four rather than two beats. Consequently, single jigs are notated as having eight bars per part and slides as having four bars. Furthermore, the pace is quicker than single jigs, often around 150bpm. While single jigs are often danced solo by step dancers, slides are usually danced in groups by set dancers, sometimes in sets with polkas.
Hornpipes
The most common use of the term nowadays refers to a class of tunes in 4/4 time.
There are two basic types of common-time hornpipe, ones like the “The Harvest Home,” moving in even notes, sometimes notated in 2/2, moving a little slower than a reel, and ones like “Sailors’ Hornpipe,” moving in dotted notes.
Marches
Marches, can be 4/4, 6/8 or 12/8For the most part, however they are in quadruple meter with 4 beats to a bar. You would subdivide in 2 (ONE-and, TWO-and…) for 4/4, and in 3 (ONE-and-a, TWO-and-a…) for 12/8, 6/8, and 9/8.
Marches are distinguished by their crispness and the accent on the first beat. For example here is how you would count while playing different marches. The vertical lines separate measures.
Polkas
The polka (polca in the Irish language) is also one of the most popular traditional folk dances in Ireland, particularly in Sliabh Luachra, a district that spans the borders of counties Kerry, Cork and Limerick. Many of the figures of Irish set dances, which developed from Continental quadrilles, are danced to polkas. Introduced to Ireland in the late 19th century, there are today hundreds of Irish polka tunes, which are most frequently played on the fiddle or button accordion. The Irish polka is dance music form in 2
4, typically 32 bars in length and subdivided into four parts, each 8 bars in length and played AABB. Irish polkas are typically played fast, at over 130 bpm, and are typically played with an off-beat accent.
Waltzes
In traditional Irish music, the waltz was taught by travelling dancing masters to those who could afford their lessons during the 19th century. By the end of that century, the dance spread to the middle and lower classes of Irish society and traditional triple-tune tunes and songs were altered to fit the waltz rhythm. During the 20th century, the waltz found a distinctively Irish playing style in the hands of Céilidh musicians at dances.
Since waltzing is a relatively recent introduction into the Irish tradition, there are very few native Irish waltzes. Thus it is common for Irish musicians to freely adapt traditional pieces, airs, marches, and songs as waltzes as the need arises. For such tunes you will see the note “(also as waltz)” if I have found recordings of such adaptations or when even I am guilty of occasionally colluding in the “waltzification” of the tune. You will also note that most of the genuine waltzes in the Tunography are directly and knowingly imported from other cultures by Irish musicians looking for better waltzes. I am including redowas in this category for the time being.
Barndances
The barndance is in origin both a musical form and an accompanying social ballroom dance which became popular in England and north America in the late nineteenth century. Early barndance music was composed by professionals or consisted of existing melodies adapted to suit the new fashion. It’s usually in 2/4 or 4/4 time and strongly marked in rhythm, with an emphatic ending to each section. Barndances are likely to have come into Ireland through commercial sheet music and the activities of professional dance teachers. In time they were danced and played traditionally, mixed in during a night’s dancing with older forms.
While barndance melodies begin to appear in collections of Irish traditional music in the late 1920s, they had earlier and more influentially begun to be issued from the early 1920s on 78rpm commercial discs recorded by Irish immigrant musicians in New York and other American centers of Irish settlement. The recordings influenced local repertory in Ireland as they began to be heard widely there from the 1920s.
https://www.hannahharrisceol.com/fiddle-forays/comprehensive-guide-irish-tune-types