Also in Cheshire, Shropshire border. Horses Brawl has always been played in G until a hurdy-gurdy player started doing it in C. Muscle memory protests loudly. Why are some tunes easy to transpose and others not?

I tried, and failed, to post this bit yesterday. Sorry if the thread has moved on and it's not so relevant. Here goes again.

At Whitby this year David Oliver made an interesting comment about musical dots. Something like..
The notation is not the music. It doesn't become music until you play it.


I came to playing from dancing and it really trips me up to hear a dance tune played with the wrong no. of bars or repeats. So I knew (50% certain) who the 'guest' was, talking about Jack's Health. The same villan who plays Sun Assembly with repeats, leaving me all in the wrong place while mentally dancing it.
It has become common (David Oliver, maybe) to play Margaret's Waltz with 2 Bs. Since each B is 16 bars already this is too long for the dance.
And I know I am only stating a personal preference about dance tunes, and that the same tunes can be used for more than one dance. E.g. the Carolan tune Planxty Irwin which (in one book) has 5 dances set to it as a waltz, and two as a jig. And Christchurch Bells (24 bars) and Christchurch Bells in Oxon (32 bars) use the same tune with different repeats