Hi folks. I've been playing fiddle for almost a year, mostly Irish and Scottish dance music.

I was led to believe that most jigs, reels, and hornpipes consist of an 8 bar "A" part and an 8 bar "B" part, and that you're supposed to play them AABB as many times as seems appropriate.

Most tunes that I find sheet music for seem to fit that format, but increasingly I'm finding tunes that have sections that are only four bars long (or sixteen in one case), or that have more than two sections.

When the sections are other than eight bars long: should I assume that these tunes are supposed to fit the normal format, and play a four bar section four times and a sixteen bar section only once? Or do I treat them as exceptions, and repeat every section twice no matter how long it is?

And when there are more than two sections: do I play AABBCC or AABBCCDD as the case may be, or do I treat the A section as a "theme" and keep going back to it between the other sections? One of my favourites, Maple Sugar, has three parts and I know it's supposed to be played ABACABACA... but it's not Celtic so I don't know if I should generalized that pattern to something like High Road to Linton, which has four parts of four bars each.

Thanks in advance,

Marion