"When the fiddler plays smooth, connected notes (often slurred, dotted slurred, or legato), the dancers glide more. When the fiddler plays with little hesitations (staccato, dotted slurs) between the notes, the dancers use a bouncier step."

Thank you - I now know I'm not the only person who notices that - Thought I was going insane... :-)


"In Celtic music, two consecutive eighth notes are generally not played for the same length of time. One or the other can be a little shorter, then the next one a little longer, but they still add up to one beat."

This is of course the hassle when printing sheet music.

There is a concept that Classically Trained Musicians - at least those who go on to specialise in 'Early Music' (i.e. before the age of 'Classical Music!) have to come to grips with - Musica Ficta.

This nightmare states simply that Music is not played 'exactly' as written down on the sheet! There are ASS-U-MEptions that Everybody Just Knows!. Yes, we KNOW that a semi-quaver is half the length of a quaver, which is half the length of a crotchet, etc. That's the simplistic theory for printing the dots.

But, in the Musical Real World, we 'bend' things - in some musical genres, it's called 'Swing' - so Swing Players didn't invent the concept! Every genre/style has differing 'Musica Ficta Rules', including 'Celtic'.

Early Music Students also have to cope with the fact that each localised 'School of Music' had their own rules, many of which were often not written down in documents that survived, as 'everybody just knows'... a common problem that archaeologists have to deal with... and some of these rules involved 'Performance Improvisation' - something similar to 'Ornamentation' as used in Celtic Music... :-)