I think to do it well will take a long time and a lot of effort. I don't know anything about you (no bio on site), so don't know how long you've been playing.
Assuming you are relatively new to this music, I think the best way to START to write tunes is to go on one of the week-long players' courses there are dotted around the world eg the Willie week in Clare.
Just play lots and lots of tunes and wait until you're absolutely knackered (say, about 6 in the morning having been up since 6am the day before yesterday) and ... suddenly a tune pops into your head.
If that doesn't work at your first course, keep going to lots more, and festivals and every other bit of immersion you can get and, after about 10 more years, it may work.
I'm honestly trying to be genuinely helpful in this. I wrote tunes right from the start (42 years ago), but the only ones I still play (apart from one) are relatively recent (last 5 years) 'cos I think I might be getting the hang of it now ...
Most SUCCESSFUL ( ie other people will play their tunes in public with straight faces ) composers are experienced musicians with years of listening and playing behnd them.
I mean, Josie McDermott, Paddy Fahey, Ed Reevey, et al didn't just sit down one day in their early twenties and say to themselves "I think I'll compose a reel/jig/polkaetc". It was a natural outgrowth of years and years of musicmaking that started in childhood.
If you're just looking for a formula, this should help:
Reels consist of at least two parts, 8 bars per part, each part often split into two 3 or 4 bar phrases in a call-and-response manner; each 8 bar part is usually repeated, before preceding to the next one but not always.
If you want other people to play your composition with you, put in an accessible key like D, G, or a related mode.
If you don't care whether anyone plays with you, put it in anything you like.
As for variations, you'll have to come up with your own. There aren't any pat formulas for that other than hours upon countless hours of playing and listening.
I think the only way to properly compose any Irish tunes is to have learned so many that they start pouring out of your head if you tip it slightly. At that point tunes will choose you to write them rather than you choosing to do so yourself.
Of course, once you've written the reel it's required that you go through all of the books: O'Neill, Breathnach, Allan's... and all of the tunes here on the Session, and Henrik Norbert's collection to make sure it hasn't been written before.
Sometimes existing tunes you have forgotten you know choose you to re-write them. They're malevolent gremlins who are just trying to put you in your place.
I think you would be better off writing a blues tune. Much smaller chance of inadvertently copying another one.
Grego, you've got that backwards, don't you? The easiest way to write a reel is to flip O'Neill's open to a page with tunes in cut time or 4/4 and copy down what you find there. Then tickle a few notes loose and put something else in their place, and slap a new impressive name on it--The Pilfered Urinal, or The Floating Dentures, or The Puckered Hen--and play it out. Presto--insta-reel.
I haven't talked to any well-known composers about this, but I wonder if many of them feel that the tunes come to them rather than that they came up with the tune out of thin air. They do seem to all spin off of one another somehow. I know that in my experience tunes that come to me are actually other tunes I've heard that my subconscious will regurgitate pieces of. After writing a tune, I'll play it for other musicians without mentioning I wrote it to see if it triggers any tunes already out there. Often I will find out that it was my brain trying to remind me of a tune I wanted to learn. If it doesn't trigger any tunes from my friends I might keep it until I discover what the tune was from some other source. At that point I have to decide whether the tune I came up with is unique enough to stand on it's own. If the tune gets that far then I'll start playing it and I might even post it in here. But ultimately I think most tunes spin off one another. On very rare occasion I won’t find any source already out there to attribute my tunes to. What’s it like for you guys?
i only started playing just over a year ago, and have written 2 reels. i'm taking a music theory class in school, and several times we have been asked to write some short melodies. i've expanded them, and ended up with a reel. granted they're very simple. it doesn't matter what key you write them in, as long as you enjoy playing in that key. as far as back-up goes, usually the backing chords consist of chords that have the note being played within them. for example, if you are playing a c, in the key of a minor, you could use an a minor chord (a, c, .) it takes a while to get the harmony down. the best way is to ask a guitar player for help. if possible, download finale notepad. it lets you write out the music on the computer, then plays it back for you. useful for the whistle part, cause you can hear the melody and harmony synonomously.
Phantom (& others) - I've never actually sat down to write music, but last month, I had a tune from my session in my head, and I had most of the A part all figured out, so went home to figure out the rest. I returned to the session four weeks later, and found that I'd hallucinated most of the B part. My version sounded fine - I've absorbed enough music theory over the years that my timing was fine, I had the right number of bars in each phrase, and was doing things like ending phrases with middle F#'s instead of the high F#'s that were in the "real" version - and I'm still thinking, "surely I've heard this version *somewhere*..." But who knows?
The only tune I thought I'd written came in bits , as with Phantom, from the murky backwaters of my memory. I hadn't played or listened much for about 10 years and a fragment I had in my head didn't ring any bells for a mate with a big repertoire so I built a tune around it. I thought I was inspired as it came to me fairly easily. I even had a name ready which I later found out was not original either.
The tune works pretty well but i wouln't be able to play the Duke of Leinster without slipping into it.
To get back to the original question.......
You don't need to, there are enough around already. And I bet you haven't learnt them all yet. When you've learnt them all it's time to go and write a new one.
Judging from the actual question - it doesnt take a genius to figure out that your experience is limited Tom - I'd give it more time, learn lots of tunes and get a deep understading of the music before I started writing tunes.
It's really hard to come up with new names. I was sitting in biology one day a while back and the lecture inspired a great name. But I googled it and it is already the name of some metal/pop song (I didn't bother to listen to see what it was). I mean, if "Dance of the Platyhelminthes" is already taken, there's got to be nothing left (oh, and "PVC on a Plane" is also the name of a piece).
I've asked questions like this before and really you can't choose a key (well I can't but some might be able to) and then write it. Its down to experience really start with jigs or slides - their rythmically quite interesting and are a lost easier to compose than reels. I have been advised & would recommend anyone to it - 'Just let the tune come to you do not go searching for it' its a lot easier just to noodle around than rack your brains with manuscript paper in front of you trying to write a tune straight off.
I love trying to compose but have managed very few. Occasionally a bar or two has come into my head (I may or may not write it down) and somehow gone on into a tune that as far as I know is original, not a replay or paraphrase of something else. More often I find myself reinventing The Bucks Of Oranmore, or something. I think the more trad music you've listened to - and various different treatments of it - the more likely you are to find yourself diddling something original within the idiom as you walk down the street; and obviously it helps to have some experience of playing at least one trad instrument. Also, of writing music down, unless you are one of those people who does everything by ear and has an amazing aural memory, which is what trad players are actually meant to be but I certainly ain't.
I don't dwell on the fact there are zillions of extant tunes making new ones theoretically unnecessary. Would-be parents aren't likely to look at the zillions of people on the planet and conclude they shouldn't make another one, or few.
Though "beginner's luck" can probably operate, I'm sure it's the case that the more playing experience and exposure to the music a person has, the more he or she is likely to compose good tunes (some have been composed by startlingly young people, but even they have generally had a lot of experience). I'd say a good tune has a quality of inevitability about it, making one wonder why it has not been discovered, as it were, before. It constantly amazes me how something new can every so often be pulled out of that bucket of tired old notes.
Experience pays in the pop world - "John Wesley Harding" and "I Will" are simple enough tunes/songs, but Messrs. Dylan and McCartney could pull them out of the hat precisely because they'd learned from a wide range of music: simple they may be, but not just anyone could come up with them and jot them down on the back of an envelope.
I was asked a while back to write a reel for a CD a friend was publishing. Not being a composer I put it off and put it off until the night I was due to record it. Fortunately a tune popped into my head and I scribbled it down in the five minutes before my lift arrived for the recording studio. I recorded it that night and when the CD came out the reviewing magazine (not a folk or ITM Magazine thankfully) picked it out as the best track. Perhaps all you need is beginners luck and a little pressure?
There is only one tune.
We just play different bits of it at different times.
'nuff said.
I'm of the school - "The tune chooses you"
Oh, and the comments (paraphrased), "Don't try writing a tune until you've learnt all the ones out there already" is a load of rubbish. Nothing like squashing someone's creativity to give a young musician the right feeling about art.
We had an Irish medic offshore once who was also a fiddler. He said it's easy to write new tunes, you just get the music of a tune you like and play it backwards.
I had to write a couple of tunes for my Music GCSE years ago so I got a Yeats poem and made up a slow air to go with it (completely forgotten it now though) and I got the start of a reel (which I still play and a few of others have picked up now) from the beeps on the phone as I dialled a friend's number. Tunes can come from anywhere - just be receptive!
Jigs are easier to compose than reels - they don't have as many notes!
People compose in many different ways but what they all have in common is "listening". Listening in your imagination, listening to your instrument, listening to your voice. If you want to write a catchy tune try singing one. If you can't sing it it is porobably not going to be catchy on the first listening.
If you reelly want to write a reel start with an old fashioned four bar job. Start with something really boring, like:
|DDDD DDDD| DDDD AAAA|DDDD DDDD|GGAA DDDD|
Sing around it a bit, change some notes and, hey presto:
K: D
|DEFE Dddc|dAFD CEEF|DEFE DddA|BcdA FDD2|
Oh, and listen lots and lots and lots and lots.
Good points,
I think the more you learn Tom, the more you'll realise that you don't need to write one of your own. But thats not to say you cant or shouldn't do it! If I could, maybe I'd try. If you can, then go for it, and don't be put off by some negative comments here.
For me, when I listen to the music I think, Sure Liz Carrol and Winifred Horan et al write their own, but listen to the likes of Brian Rooney play standards and make them sound fresh and unique and beautiful. Then you realise they belong to everyone to share and MAYBE there is no real need for the compostition of new ones.
Thats just me though!
Ps - Having said all that, Jack did write one lovely tune I found on this site and still play!
I love to write tunes, but I rarely play them out. For one thing, there are so many great trad tunes that want to be played. For another, it's a little selfish to play a tune that no one else knows. For another, I'm a bit shy.
That said, here are two things for the discussion.
1) my particular inspiration often comes when I'm finishing up a trad tune, or a set, and I find myself wanting to jump into some music that isn't an existing trad tune. If I follow the lead of the music I'm now playing, it can turn into a nice, new tune, sometimes.
2) not all jigs and reels have to be simple, but beware of writing something too complex, or maybe with too many ideas, to be playable and pleasing. That seems to be the trick to composing. You should have something to say with a tune -- in other words, offer some music that's new and fresh and non-cliched -- but that's also simple to hear and simple to play.
What I mainly learn by writing tunes is how extraordinarily beautiful so many trad tunes are. Something like "The Hag with the Money," for instance, contains a total of about six or seven different notes, but is incredibly beautiful.
I wrote a wee tune once. I was walking down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, and happened to walk by this piper standing out there entertaining the tourists. The tune he was playing was very catchy, and I hummed the two or three bars I managed to hear.
As I continued my walk, I started humming the few bars I had in my head, and making variations on the theme. After awhile, I had something totally different. Now this tune is not something I will play for other people, since it has the wrong number of beats to be any kind of jig or reel, not to mention who knows what other technical problems.
In short, it will never be a classic of Scottish Trad music. But you know, I am pretty fond of my wee bit of creativity. Give it a try, life needs a little more of this kind of joy, even if it never ends up on the Session website!
reels
reels
(1) how do i start to compose a reel. what key should i start with and what to i do once i have chosen a key.
(2) how to write a guitar accompniment for the reel.
(3) how to write a tin whistle harmony for the reel.
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by today
Re: reels
Once youv'e chosen a key go and have a lie down . .
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by Justintime
Re: reels
a bit more help please
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by today
Re: reels
Sorry can't be any more help than that . . I've never been able to work out how long a piece of string is . . .
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by Justintime
Re: reels
thanks but does anyone else know
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by today
Re: reels
I think to do it well will take a long time and a lot of effort. I don't know anything about you (no bio on site), so don't know how long you've been playing.
Assuming you are relatively new to this music, I think the best way to START to write tunes is to go on one of the week-long players' courses there are dotted around the world eg the Willie week in Clare.
Just play lots and lots of tunes and wait until you're absolutely knackered (say, about 6 in the morning having been up since 6am the day before yesterday) and ... suddenly a tune pops into your head.
If that doesn't work at your first course, keep going to lots more, and festivals and every other bit of immersion you can get and, after about 10 more years, it may work.
I'm honestly trying to be genuinely helpful in this. I wrote tunes right from the start (42 years ago), but the only ones I still play (apart from one) are relatively recent (last 5 years) 'cos I think I might be getting the hang of it now ...
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by ethical blend
Re: reels
thanks + played for 6 years on button accordian but dont have a clue about writing music
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by today
Re: reels
Most SUCCESSFUL ( ie other people will play their tunes in public with straight faces ) composers are experienced musicians with years of listening and playing behnd them.
I mean, Josie McDermott, Paddy Fahey, Ed Reevey, et al didn't just sit down one day in their early twenties and say to themselves "I think I'll compose a reel/jig/polkaetc". It was a natural outgrowth of years and years of musicmaking that started in childhood.
If you're just looking for a formula, this should help:
Reels consist of at least two parts, 8 bars per part, each part often split into two 3 or 4 bar phrases in a call-and-response manner; each 8 bar part is usually repeated, before preceding to the next one but not always.
If you want other people to play your composition with you, put in an accessible key like D, G, or a related mode.
If you don't care whether anyone plays with you, put it in anything you like.
As for variations, you'll have to come up with your own. There aren't any pat formulas for that other than hours upon countless hours of playing and listening.
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by Hanley
Re: reels
brilliant
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by today
Re: reels
I think the only way to properly compose any Irish tunes is to have learned so many that they start pouring out of your head if you tip it slightly. At that point tunes will choose you to write them rather than you choosing to do so yourself.
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: reels
Of course, once you've written the reel it's required that you go through all of the books: O'Neill, Breathnach, Allan's... and all of the tunes here on the Session, and Henrik Norbert's collection to make sure it hasn't been written before.
Sometimes existing tunes you have forgotten you know choose you to re-write them. They're malevolent gremlins who are just trying to put you in your place.
I think you would be better off writing a blues tune. Much smaller chance of inadvertently copying another one.
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by grego
Re: reels
(since there's only two.)
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by grego
Re: reels
Grego, you've got that backwards, don't you? The easiest way to write a reel is to flip O'Neill's open to a page with tunes in cut time or 4/4 and copy down what you find there. Then tickle a few notes loose and put something else in their place, and slap a new impressive name on it--The Pilfered Urinal, or The Floating Dentures, or The Puckered Hen--and play it out. Presto--insta-reel.
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by Will Harmon
Re: reels
You know, Will you're right. There's actually only 10 tunes in O'Neill's - the rest are marginally altered copies.
No wonder my wife says all our tunes sound the same!
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by grego
Re: reels
"The Day We Hung the Dictator" - a variation on the "The Long Drop"
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by grego
Re: reels
I haven't talked to any well-known composers about this, but I wonder if many of them feel that the tunes come to them rather than that they came up with the tune out of thin air. They do seem to all spin off of one another somehow. I know that in my experience tunes that come to me are actually other tunes I've heard that my subconscious will regurgitate pieces of. After writing a tune, I'll play it for other musicians without mentioning I wrote it to see if it triggers any tunes already out there. Often I will find out that it was my brain trying to remind me of a tune I wanted to learn. If it doesn't trigger any tunes from my friends I might keep it until I discover what the tune was from some other source. At that point I have to decide whether the tune I came up with is unique enough to stand on it's own. If the tune gets that far then I'll start playing it and I might even post it in here. But ultimately I think most tunes spin off one another. On very rare occasion I won’t find any source already out there to attribute my tunes to. What’s it like for you guys?
# Posted on January 16th 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: reels
i only started playing just over a year ago, and have written 2 reels. i'm taking a music theory class in school, and several times we have been asked to write some short melodies. i've expanded them, and ended up with a reel. granted they're very simple. it doesn't matter what key you write them in, as long as you enjoy playing in that key. as far as back-up goes, usually the backing chords consist of chords that have the note being played within them. for example, if you are playing a c, in the key of a minor, you could use an a minor chord (a, c, .) it takes a while to get the harmony down. the best way is to ask a guitar player for help. if possible, download finale notepad. it lets you write out the music on the computer, then plays it back for you. useful for the whistle part, cause you can hear the melody and harmony synonomously.
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by rob_handel
Re: reels
Phantom (& others) - I've never actually sat down to write music, but last month, I had a tune from my session in my head, and I had most of the A part all figured out, so went home to figure out the rest. I returned to the session four weeks later, and found that I'd hallucinated most of the B part. My version sounded fine - I've absorbed enough music theory over the years that my timing was fine, I had the right number of bars in each phrase, and was doing things like ending phrases with middle F#'s instead of the high F#'s that were in the "real" version - and I'm still thinking, "surely I've heard this version *somewhere*..." But who knows?
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by Tall, Dark, and Mysterious
Re: reels
The only tune I thought I'd written came in bits , as with Phantom, from the murky backwaters of my memory. I hadn't played or listened much for about 10 years and a fragment I had in my head didn't ring any bells for a mate with a big repertoire so I built a tune around it. I thought I was inspired as it came to me fairly easily. I even had a name ready which I later found out was not original either.
The tune works pretty well but i wouln't be able to play the Duke of Leinster without slipping into it.
X: 1
T: Fire Hose Reel (not)
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Gmaj
|G3B dBB2|gBfB eBdB|~G3B dB (3BBB |dBAB GEDE|
|G3B dB~B2|gBfB eBdB|~g3e dBge| dged BAGF:|
|:g3a bgg2|abag edBd|g3a bg~g2|aged (3B^cd ef|
|~g3a bg~g2|abag edBd|g3e dBge|dged BAGF:|G3
http://tinwhistletunes.com/clipssnip/Audio/08-06/FireHoseReelMarkF.mp3
The fragment came from "Off in the morning" (Speed the plough) and the structure of it came from "the Duke of Leinster"
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by cabers
Re: reels
To get back to the original question.......
You don't need to, there are enough around already. And I bet you haven't learnt them all yet. When you've learnt them all it's time to go and write a new one.
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by Guernsey Pete
Re: reels
PS I just checked, there are 2456 on this site alone. So learn all those and then write one.....
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by Guernsey Pete
Re: reels
How many tunes though, are built from half remembered fragments. Bucks of Oranmore and Lucy Campbell's. Other examples?
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by cabers
Re: reels
Judging from the actual question - it doesnt take a genius to figure out that your experience is limited Tom - I'd give it more time, learn lots of tunes and get a deep understading of the music before I started writing tunes.
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by bb
Re: reels
That seems to be the consensus.
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: reels
It's really hard to come up with new names. I was sitting in biology one day a while back and the lecture inspired a great name. But I googled it and it is already the name of some metal/pop song (I didn't bother to listen to see what it was). I mean, if "Dance of the Platyhelminthes" is already taken, there's got to be nothing left (oh, and "PVC on a Plane" is also the name of a piece).
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by Ben314
Re: reels
I've asked questions like this before and really you can't choose a key (well I can't but some might be able to) and then write it. Its down to experience really start with jigs or slides - their rythmically quite interesting and are a lost easier to compose than reels. I have been advised & would recommend anyone to it - 'Just let the tune come to you do not go searching for it' its a lot easier just to noodle around than rack your brains with manuscript paper in front of you trying to write a tune straight off.
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by samburnstone
Re: reels
I love trying to compose but have managed very few. Occasionally a bar or two has come into my head (I may or may not write it down) and somehow gone on into a tune that as far as I know is original, not a replay or paraphrase of something else. More often I find myself reinventing The Bucks Of Oranmore, or something. I think the more trad music you've listened to - and various different treatments of it - the more likely you are to find yourself diddling something original within the idiom as you walk down the street; and obviously it helps to have some experience of playing at least one trad instrument. Also, of writing music down, unless you are one of those people who does everything by ear and has an amazing aural memory, which is what trad players are actually meant to be but I certainly ain't.
I don't dwell on the fact there are zillions of extant tunes making new ones theoretically unnecessary. Would-be parents aren't likely to look at the zillions of people on the planet and conclude they shouldn't make another one, or few.
Though "beginner's luck" can probably operate, I'm sure it's the case that the more playing experience and exposure to the music a person has, the more he or she is likely to compose good tunes (some have been composed by startlingly young people, but even they have generally had a lot of experience). I'd say a good tune has a quality of inevitability about it, making one wonder why it has not been discovered, as it were, before. It constantly amazes me how something new can every so often be pulled out of that bucket of tired old notes.
Experience pays in the pop world - "John Wesley Harding" and "I Will" are simple enough tunes/songs, but Messrs. Dylan and McCartney could pull them out of the hat precisely because they'd learned from a wide range of music: simple they may be, but not just anyone could come up with them and jot them down on the back of an envelope.
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by nicholas
Re: reels
I was asked a while back to write a reel for a CD a friend was publishing. Not being a composer I put it off and put it off until the night I was due to record it. Fortunately a tune popped into my head and I scribbled it down in the five minutes before my lift arrived for the recording studio. I recorded it that night and when the CD came out the reviewing magazine (not a folk or ITM Magazine thankfully) picked it out as the best track. Perhaps all you need is beginners luck and a little pressure?
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by bowburner
Re: reels
I've said this before:
There is only one tune.
We just play different bits of it at different times.
'nuff said.
I'm of the school - "The tune chooses you"
Oh, and the comments (paraphrased), "Don't try writing a tune until you've learnt all the ones out there already" is a load of rubbish. Nothing like squashing someone's creativity to give a young musician the right feeling about art.
Go ahead. Flame away.
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by FyfferGuy
Re: reels
We had an Irish medic offshore once who was also a fiddler. He said it's easy to write new tunes, you just get the music of a tune you like and play it backwards.
So there's a top tip for nuttin'
# Posted on January 17th 2007 by Bren
Re: reels
I had to write a couple of tunes for my Music GCSE years ago so I got a Yeats poem and made up a slow air to go with it (completely forgotten it now though) and I got the start of a reel (which I still play and a few of others have picked up now) from the beeps on the phone as I dialled a friend's number. Tunes can come from anywhere - just be receptive!
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by SineadE
Re: reels
Jigs are easier to compose than reels - they don't have as many notes!
People compose in many different ways but what they all have in common is "listening". Listening in your imagination, listening to your instrument, listening to your voice. If you want to write a catchy tune try singing one. If you can't sing it it is porobably not going to be catchy on the first listening.
If you reelly want to write a reel start with an old fashioned four bar job. Start with something really boring, like:
|DDDD DDDD| DDDD AAAA|DDDD DDDD|GGAA DDDD|
Sing around it a bit, change some notes and, hey presto:
K: D
|DEFE Dddc|dAFD CEEF|DEFE DddA|BcdA FDD2|
Oh, and listen lots and lots and lots and lots.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by DonaldK
Re: reels
Good points,
I think the more you learn Tom, the more you'll realise that you don't need to write one of your own. But thats not to say you cant or shouldn't do it! If I could, maybe I'd try. If you can, then go for it, and don't be put off by some negative comments here.
For me, when I listen to the music I think, Sure Liz Carrol and Winifred Horan et al write their own, but listen to the likes of Brian Rooney play standards and make them sound fresh and unique and beautiful. Then you realise they belong to everyone to share and MAYBE there is no real need for the compostition of new ones.
Thats just me though!
Ps - Having said all that, Jack did write one lovely tune I found on this site and still play!
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Hugo Chavez
Re: reels
I love to write tunes, but I rarely play them out. For one thing, there are so many great trad tunes that want to be played. For another, it's a little selfish to play a tune that no one else knows. For another, I'm a bit shy.
That said, here are two things for the discussion.
1) my particular inspiration often comes when I'm finishing up a trad tune, or a set, and I find myself wanting to jump into some music that isn't an existing trad tune. If I follow the lead of the music I'm now playing, it can turn into a nice, new tune, sometimes.
2) not all jigs and reels have to be simple, but beware of writing something too complex, or maybe with too many ideas, to be playable and pleasing. That seems to be the trick to composing. You should have something to say with a tune -- in other words, offer some music that's new and fresh and non-cliched -- but that's also simple to hear and simple to play.
What I mainly learn by writing tunes is how extraordinarily beautiful so many trad tunes are. Something like "The Hag with the Money," for instance, contains a total of about six or seven different notes, but is incredibly beautiful.
# Posted on January 18th 2007 by Jmbu
Re: reels
I wrote a wee tune once. I was walking down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, and happened to walk by this piper standing out there entertaining the tourists. The tune he was playing was very catchy, and I hummed the two or three bars I managed to hear.
As I continued my walk, I started humming the few bars I had in my head, and making variations on the theme. After awhile, I had something totally different. Now this tune is not something I will play for other people, since it has the wrong number of beats to be any kind of jig or reel, not to mention who knows what other technical problems.
In short, it will never be a classic of Scottish Trad music. But you know, I am pretty fond of my wee bit of creativity. Give it a try, life needs a little more of this kind of joy, even if it never ends up on the Session website!
# Posted on January 22nd 2007 by MapleLeafScot