Playing at speed

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 05:39 AM

Idon't think he did either Jim. My edition, from 1991:

'In conclusion, I wish to deplore the present tendency to play Irish dance music too fast. It is true that it is probably more difficult to play Irish music well at a modrate and regular pace, but such a practice generally leads to better performances, and is admirably suitable for Irish dancing.'

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 05:44 AM

OK Peter but I think he was less polite in the first edition- can't prove that until I find my copy though...

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 01:38 PM

"irishPOLKAS ARE PLAYED IN 2/4, REELS are 4/4, for feck sake reels are faster than polkas"

I've never heard anyone suggest irish polkas should be played slower than irish reels. Listen to any Irish player; all of them play polkas significantly faster than they play reels.

There are more notes in a reel, certainly, but that's because you've got more time to play them all... because reels are slower.

I'd be interested to hear an example of any Irish musician ever who played polkas slower than reels. Most reels tend to be played around the 120-130bpm mark; whereas polkas and slides tend to be from 130BPM upwards.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 01:51 PM

oh for feck sake i am playing irish music reels ansd polkas all the time all the time, you are talking rubbish polkas are played in 2/4 approx imately136 to 140 reels are played in 4/4, 1oo to 112, why do you think jasckie daly made the remark, reels are way faster, they are in a different time signature , you are a classic example of someone taking complete bvolocks

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 02:01 PM

ihave just played along with a metronome polkas 132, reels 100, slides 138, that does not mean slides are faster than reels because slides are 12 8 time. jackie daly plays polkas slower than reels

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 02:12 PM

jigs i might play beteween 108 amd 116, reels 100 to 104 that does not mean jigs are faster than reels, jigs are 6/8 anyone who has any sense of tempo can tell immediately reels are faster than jigs

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 02:27 PM

Your metronome is giving you the indication of tempo. If it is set for 132 for polkas and 100 for reels, that means you are playing a polka faster than a reel. That's a standard musical convention.

With your metronome set to 132, play a polka. Then segue straight into a reel without adjusting your metronome. Good luck playing that reel! If reels really were faster than polkas it ought to be a cinch, really easy. Somehow I don't think you'll find it so.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 02:38 PM

You mentioned Johnny O Leary. In the Johnny O'Leary tune book, in which Terry Moylan transcribed O'Leary's entire repertoire, he gives the tempi O'Leary played each tune at.

Moylan adopts standard convention, regarding the kind of metronome settings you gave at referring to tempi. Accordingly he says O'Leary plays jigs, polkas and slides faster than he plays reels.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: Jack Campin
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 02:46 PM

Reels are better notated in 2/2. When you count two in a bar, polkas are faster and have less notes.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 02:51 PM

yo7u are talking rubbish reels are thefastet tempom in irish music i gave you an example of a musician jackie daly , jackie daly is onre of the finest exponents of button accordion if he said what he said he is more likely to be right than you, he plays polkas slower than reels so do i and every musician i have ever encountered in ireland. jckie daly has been playing irish music for over 50 years , for god sake cop on

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 02:57 PM

Would you say the same thing to Matt Cranitch?

Would you tell him he's wrong in stating in his tuition books and in all his workshops on Sliabh Luachra playing that he is wrong in saying that slides and polkas are the fastest tunes in Irish music?

You of course know who Matt Cranitch is and who he regularly plays with, right?
I'll give you a clue: it's Jackie Daly.

"When you count two in a bar, polkas are faster and have less notes."
Yes Jack. That's how everyone counts them. Well, it appears almost everyone.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 03:07 PM

Ask a dancer if a reel is faster than a polka or slide; I think they'd go with the polkas and slides.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 03:13 PM

very shortly you will be trying to tell me that english polkas which are in 4/4 which have less notes than reels are faster than reels.
I have the matt cranitch book i know him and jackie personally, i have booked them for 8 years at my festival.
Jackie daly made a statement if you have a problem or do not understand it contact him.
when reels are played in sessions after other tunes they have a dynamic impact, this not just due to change of tempo but because they are faster. example changing from jig to reel , it rarely wporks the other way round reel to jig.
I cannot find your quote in matt cranitch irish fiddle book anywhere, what page is that on ,
what he does say about polkas which is much more important than your rremarks is that the emphasis or stress should be on the off beat, this is what is important in irish music the emphasis, there also is an emphasis in jigs which can never be notated properly in music notation, where it looks to be even but it is not there is an emphasison beat and to a lesser extent beat 4
do you play a melodic instrument matt?

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 03:25 PM

on the subject of reels he again talks about accent or lift, suggesting that there is an emphasison the second and fourth crotchets of the bar, the problem that i have noticed is that many musicians can ececute the lift at 100 or 104 but when the playing is really fast the lift ismore difficult for them to execute. players need to understand that lift is moreimportant than excessive speed. i have jackie dalys contact number ,contact him if you dont understand any of this

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 03:31 PM

if you want to 8nderstand jackie dalys music got to the numrous you tube clips listen and play along, this music is about listening not notation

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 05:18 PM

Interesting that in all the youtube vids of Jackie Daly he notably taps his foot much faster when playing polkas than he does when he plays reels.

Interesting that he also gets through the A and B part of a polka in less time than he does the A and B part of a reel.

Interesting that In all the social dance videos I can find on youtube, the dancers appear to be dancing faster to polkas than they do reels. In the various discussions on tempo in Irish music I can find via google, everyone says polkas are faster than reels (and nobody says reels are faster than polkas).

Indeed you yousellf play reels at a lower BPM (metronome setting) than you do polkas. You are the only person I've ever heard of who says a higher metronome setting can mean a lower tempo!

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Feb 19 - 07:53 PM

contact him yourself and ask him he is very amenable , in the mean time spend more time listening and playing that is if you do play,you never answered my question do you play a melodic instrument

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 03:05 AM

neither have you answered on what page Matt Cranitch makes the statement you say he makes, in the copy i have of irish fiddle he makes no such statement, in fact your contribution is as red herring , the important points he makes are about emphasis not speed. yes indeed 108 for jigs is a higher met setting than 100 for reels ,but they are 6/8 and 4/4.
if jackie daly said what he said i am inclined to believe him rather than you , there are too many internet experets who in fact know feck all, jackie daly is someone whose comments i respect , why, because he has been playing trad music VERYWELL for 60 odd years, you have yest to answer whether you even play an instrument.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 03:45 AM

I quoted Jackie saying what he said as an illustration of an increased demand for speed by dancers. Which is something many musicians seem to observe.

A shouting match about details, a battle about being 'right', wasn't really what I meant to set in motion.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 03:49 AM

Matt Cranitch does make the following comment the best advice is to listen andbe guidedby what those who are more experienced do.Ifirst started playing for dancing in 1976 43 years ago, Matt, do you play and how long have you been playing?however JckieDaly has been playing for longer so i will defer to him , i suggest you do the same, if jackie says something about dance speed, accept it and shut up, he knows more than you or i about irish dance music

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 04:30 AM

I had a look on youtube. Though Jacky Daly seems to usually tap his foot two to a bar on reels in this clip he is tapping heel and toe giving four to a bar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daAkHYXyofs

Many other players do this. I guess four toe, or four heel, taps to a bar at that tempo is impractical

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 04:46 AM

My Taktell mechanical metronome only goes up to prestissimo 208. I don't think higher tempos are named anywhere, so you just can't count a faster reel bpm than 104 if you want a tick for every crotchet. That's why cut time exists.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 09:45 AM

go to Free Online Metronome - 8notes.com you can get accent too much more important than speed, musical notation is not nearly as important as using ears, musical notation does itsb best but lacks accuraccy about emphasis

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: Steve Jones
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 03:09 PM

Peter, is it possible that this story about Jackie playing reels instead of polkas has got turned back to front? I know I've heard or read the story from you before, but I think I might have also heard it from Jackie's mouth when I was hanging out with him in the Catskills between 2005 and 2013 or thereabouts.

The way I remembered it, Jackie played polkas instead of reels as a protest because the dancers wanted the reels at an unplayable speed. This actually makes sense if you try the following experiment: play, I dunno, the Silver Spear as fast or faster than you comfortably can. Then, tapping your foot at exactly the same pace, switch into Johnny Leary's polka no 2 aka Maids of Ardagh (since it starts with a very similar phrase). I'm sure you'll find, as I do, that the polka is _much_ easier to play at that pace.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 06:19 PM

Playing tunes too fast has two "advantages". It means you can get away with mistakes, and it impresses people who think it's harder. Much of the time of course it isn't. Like riding a bicycle really - going slowly without falling off is what calls for real skill.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Feb 19 - 06:54 PM

playing too fast is crap ,it b34comes more difficult toornament and to execute emphasis imo

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Feb 19 - 04:39 AM

que?

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Feb 19 - 04:48 AM

playing too fast is crap ,it b34comes more difficult toornament and to execute emphasis imo

Same goes for typing.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 18 Feb 19 - 06:22 AM

'Peter, is it possible that this story about Jackie playing reels instead of polkas has got turned back to front?'

Steve, my recollection is of him saying 'reels' for polka figures. But it's probably nearly fifteen years ago, it was a late night between tunes after playing for sets for a few hours. You know Jackie, some of his stories and set pieces come out arseways sometimes. And memory is a fickle thing.

But I trot this one out occasionally for discussions like this where there's always one, or two, people coming out with the old 'it's dancemusic, it can't be too fast'. Rather than a diversion of the discussion into the intricacies of the beat count of each tune I think what Jackie said is a great illustration of the pressures dancers often put on musicians to give it more wellie.

That is my own experience as well, dancers almost invariably demand more speed than I, and the people I play with, usually play at.


One instances comes to mind (well, a few more do but I'll stick to this one for now) that occurred twelve or thirteen years ago, Kitty Hayes and myself were asked to play a charity concert locally, which ofcourse we agreed to. A couple of days later the organiser phoned to ask if we could play for a girl doing a brush dance, she'd come round for a practice. So, a twelve year old and her mother turned up at Kitty's for a run through a few days before the concert and could we play the Buck of Oranmore, please. Not one Kitty regularly played but we did. As you know Kitty wasn't a particularly fast player but she had beautiful rhythm, she could dance a set herself with the best of them. The girl stood there all sulky and wide eyed saying to her mother 'I can't dance to THAT'. So we picked it up to the limits of what Kitty at her age and with that particular concertina could muster. No cigar. The mother clearly wondered how they could have teamed her precious up with a bunch of non entities like that. We got Jackie (or Conor Keane) to play for her on the night.

I think when discussing speed it good to keep in mind a tune can be played to suit different dances. It's all fine to trot out the same old Tulla Ceiliband clip and shout 'THIS IS HOW A HORNPIPE SHOULD BE PLAYED'. Well, yes, it was fine on that occasion but it doesn't mean it has to be the standard for every situation. I once posted a clip to one of these discussions of Michael Tubridy playing the Harvest Home for dancer Agnes Haak, recorded at the Willie Clancy week of 2008. Like clockwork the reaction came YOU CAN'T DANCE TO THAT!. And that was in spite of the footwork clearly audible on the recording. Agnes danced beautifully (I was there), she a very lightfooted gracious dancer indeed and Mick Tubridy knows a thing about dancing (and playing for it).

My point is, look at the situation at hand before trotting out the usual cliches, some step dancers demand excruciatingly slow tempi for their hornpipes, some sean nos dancers may give it more wellie and let me tell you, for the last figure of the set (it's mostly the Caledonian around here) dancers sometimes want it at a different speed altogether.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Feb 19 - 07:15 AM

An even more extreme situation is with rapper. Rapper jigs have to go at a pace where there is nothing left of the tune but its metre - and if you did manage to insert any expressive phrasing the dancers wouldn't want it.

There was a workshop about playing for rapper at Whitby a couple of years ago. I went along, with the main question in my mind being "how can you do it without getting bored out of your skull?" - never got an answer to that.

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: Steve Jones
Date: 18 Feb 19 - 10:16 AM

Good points, Peter. If the dancers are happy - from rapper to excruciating hornpipes - the musicians have done their job well (even if under protest, like Jackie). If dancers aren't involved, why worry about dance tempi?

I like tunes at any speed provided they are well played. I enjoy listening to good players playing at insane speeds that I could never manage, just as I love listening to the old Clare fiddlers playing reels at around 95 bpm.

Mind you, as a possibly irrelevant aside, I have heard music played by established players so slowly and deliberately that it becomes irritating - or ridiculous. The most extreme example came one night when, in a state of altered consciousness (brought on by fatigue - tired, but not "tired and emotional"), I put on a CD of a well-regarded piper playing tunes solo at a snail's pace and wringing them dry of every tight triplet and crann imaginable. The effect was electric - it was musical theatre of the absurd, and to me, at that moment, hysterically funny. The music was lost among the grunts, belches and assorted squeals and borborygmi the piper was labouring so hard to produce...

Subject: RE: Playing at speed
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 18 Feb 19 - 10:57 AM

If there aren't any dancers, when, in Garrett Barry's words, you're playing for the heart, not the feet, your only duty is to the music. If you can make the tune shine and bring it across, you're doing a good job and the speed doesn't really matter.

Martin Hayes doing 'the Sailor's Bonnet' with the Gloaming has become the go to piece to play behind 'meaningful' and atmospheric images in documentaries and other televised imagery. To be honest, that has outstayed its welcome a bit by now.

Last night I was at a concert, first on were Josephine Marsh and Yvonne Casey, almost serene music at a leisurely pace with plenty of space. Call it modern Clare music. After them came Seán McKeon and Liam O'Connor were on. The contrast couldn't have been greater, perhaps you could describe their music as Dublin, urban, music (one of their recordings is called 'Dublin made me' taken I presume from Donagh McDonagh's poem, would suggest they'd subscribe to that). Their music was fast, loud an bristling with musical imagination and stuff they bounced off eachother. Extremely high density stuff they pulled off with incredible skill. Would I listen to it for a long time, perhaps not but there was a lot to appreciate though while it lasted. What I mean to say is, there are more ways to skin that cat and there are loads of valid ways of tackling this dance music stuff when you're not playing for dancers.