Checking how it?s noted in the O?Neill?s collection, I see that Fanny is in 6/8 time, but whether it was that originally is unlikely since O?Neill would have probably standardised it to suit musicians and dances of the time.The 3/4 waltz that most of us tend to play nowadays, relates to a dance that only became popular in the late 1800s and these tunes predate that era. In old tune books many tunes are found in time signatures that most of us would now shy away from, eg. hornpipes appear in 3/8. That?s probably not just about comfort zones, but also changes in popular instrumentation, with 3/4 and 4/4 being easy for guitars and squeeze boxes.

Choice of key is also interesting, because O?Neill chose A major, presumably for fiddlers, but how many of you would play Fanny in that key now? Likewise many Early English tunes were played or at least notated in F, Bb, Gm, etc. Melodeons must take some of the blame of course because those other keys are well suited to fiddles, whistles, flutes, mandolins, accordians, trumpets, concertinas, etc. Are we less sophisticated than our forebears? You only have to look at sheet music for popular songs of yesteryear to see how varied they were in choice of rhythm, key and chordal progressions, compared to the typical chordal strums in unrelenting 4/4 that pass for a lot of pop music today.

There must be lots there to wind people up.