More so than any other form of dance I have played for, Cotswold morris music is governed by the dance.

There are times to emphasise lift and capers and this actually encourages dancers to get higher off the ground. There are times to vary the pace to drive the set along. Playing staccato and legato can emphasise the vigorous and/or smooth elements of figures or movements.

John Kirkpatrick is a master, but in reality the Plain Capers CD is only half the story, since the dancers are not involved. A great starting point, but there's much more to playing for Morris.

One example, in the Headington Quarry (Boy) half heys, the six dancers have to complete a half figure-eight in two bars of double-step (one-two-three-hop), then perform the cross-back steps and jump in the next two bars to get the set into the correct shapre for the next figure.

If you play just ahead of the dancers' feet (i.e. speed up) for the first two bars, it drives the team round the movement with vigour and gets them into place. Then you take some of the pace out and slow the next two bars so the dancers have time to pause, gauge the shape of the set and all perform the cross-backs together in neat lines. In BPM terms, you're not varying the tempo much, it's more akin to "singing behind the beat."

This sort of thing cannot be practised without a team dancing it - these quirks are different for every tradition and every dance.