Can somebody post the rhythms for reels, vs. hornpipes. I know they are two different dances, that reels are like contras, and that hornpipes are couple dances. As I understand it, anyway. But I can't "see" any differences in the notated versions I have of tunes which are called reels, and tunes which are called hornpipes.
And I know they are all in quarter time -- but is one in cut time, and one in 4/4 or what? I find it difficult to believe that reel rhythm and hornpipe rhythm are identical. I do notice that a lot of "hornpipes" start with a triplet pickup beat, but then, so do some reels. Hmmmm.
I read that reels tend not to have dotted rhythm, and hornpipes do, but not according to the versions I have seen.
Could somebody tell me how to tell the difference? I'd appreciate specifics, like
[that was just random.... but that's the style I could use, since it's so easy to tell what's going on, rather than in prose text. THanks for any info.] Be sure and put in bar lines, like the / I put there.
Is it possible to post the actual notated rhytym someplace on the Session site? That would be ideal, for me.
Marian, this strikes me as the kind of question that could only be asked by someone who relies on reading music - am I right? The best thing for you to do, in my opinion, is to listen to the way reels and hornpipes are played by experienced traditional players. That will tell you the whole story.
The point is that the way that you'll never understand the rhythms of traditional music by looking at music on paper. Attempts to notate the exact rhythm would tend to make the score look very complicated. The music is a kind of shorthand and requires that you know (by listening) what is an acceptable rhythm for a hornpipe, reel, jig or whatever. Then you just use the notation as a way to acquire the basic framework of the tune.
That said, here are a few hints. Both hornpipes and reels are played "uneven", but not so much as to make dotted notation accurate. Think of it as a "swing". The swing in hornpipes is usually more pronounced, partly due to the fact that hornpipes are generally played more slowly than reels. Speed a hornpipe up, however, and it starts sounding pretty much exactly like a reel.
Another essential element in the rhythm of both, but especially reels, is a marked off-beat pulse - an accent on beats 2 and 4. This can vary depending on the instrument you're playing. It's very obvious in traditional fiddle playing.
Hornpipes often have phrases that end with three quarter notes (or decorated versions of same), e.g. third-tonic-tonic.
Hornpipes might be more accurately notated by writing them in 12/8 time, using quarter-eighth pairs instead of the usual eighth-eighth pairs. But the thing is, there is a good deal of variation in the amount of swing used by different players. Which brings me back to my original point: listen lots, and everything will become very simple.
Steve's right, Marian -- the reason you don't see any difference in the notated versions is simply that most transcribers just don't bother notating out that hornpipes are played "swung" -- but a very specific and peculiar kind of swing that would be very difficult to notate. Some people play their reels swung, and most play them straight, although "straight" is still a tiny bit swung just the smallest bit.
There are some very esoteric things that make hornpipes hornipes that I don't know, although I know they're there -- chord structures and sequence, mainly, as well as that peculiar little motif on the end in so many hornpipes that Steve mentioned above (like Harvest Home, a much maligned hornpipe that a lot of people think of as a beginner piece -- in the hands of a good player, it's a pretty decent hornpipe).
But Steve's advice is the best -- listen, listen and listen some more. If you want very obvious differences, get a CD of music for stepdancers, and make sure that there's tracks marked "slow hornpipe" or such. You'll quickly hear the differences.
"Speed a hornpipe up, however, and it starts sounding pretty much exactly like a reel. "
That's exactly my problem!! I hear people talking about reels and hornpipes, and nobody seems to be able to identify them well! Neither by playing them or listening to them.
And, you wrote, too,
"...this strikes me as the kind of question that could only be asked by someone who relies on reading music - am I right? "
Nope, you're not right. I use music only when I can't hear something, which is not often. But I understand the finer points of reading music, since I was trained in classical piano. I am not, however, a "natural reader" -- I'm a natural ear player and find it very easy and quick to learn tunes by ear. I find that reading is like a wall between me and the music, and I use it only as a tool when absolutely necessary. I never use the printed music when I play, only to decipher stuff on a poor recording, etc etc.
But since nobody I've asked has been able to explain in either English or by playing the tunes (which, like you say, sound so much alike that I can't hear any difference), I thought that if I could see the notation, I could interpret it so that the two dances would sound different. Plus, I could probably hear the tunes better -- for instance, if there is a player who puts a very subtle accent on the hornpipes s/he plays, I would be able to hear it better than if I had not seen the printed notation, and then I could make my playing more distinctive between the two dance forms.
For instance, in a fake book I have which was basically pasted together from many unknown sources, there are Mazurkas which are called "Waltzes." Mazurkas are not waltzes. But it would be real easy to change the accented beat and make them sound like waltzes. Minuets aren't waltzes, either, but all three dances are in 3/4 time. I have played enough mazurkas and minuets to where I would never make one of them sound like a waltz, unless they were being used AS a waltz for dancers, which is fine. But I think it's really important for people to realize that a mazurka is not a waltz.
I find that when all else fails, seeing the notation can help.
However, I absolutely agree that notation is an approximation. It's a learning tool, but ear learning is the "reel" way to learn.
Zina, do you happen to have any CDs in mind that have "slow hornpipes" on them? To compare a slow hornpipe and a slow reel would help. I didn't realize the differences were going to be so hard to discern.
Since you're still searching for help on this, I'll suggest that you go to the tunes section on this site and print Harvest Home. (Type in Harvest Home in the search box and then click on the tune title when it comes up.) Jeremy posted this simple hornpipe ages ago, and it will provide a good demonstration of the difference between hornpipes and reels. (Though even this exercise will only approximate the rhythm you're really looking for, and I know some people will howl at the dotted eighth/sixteenth note rhythm as "wrong," but it will get you started on the right track.)
Print it off, and play it straight, as written (no dotted eighth and sixteenth notes). It should go pretty steadily--kind of mechanical or clock-like. Di-Di-Di-Di Di-Di-Di-Di and so on. That's a reel, with no swing.
Now take a red pen and dot ALL of the 1st and 3rd eighth notes of every group of four. The 2nd and 4th eighth notes in each group become sixteenth notes (you can run a little flag across the top line to show this).
Now play it, hanging on those dotted eighths, and moving off the sixteenths that much quicker. It should sound like: DAH-di-DAH-di DAH-di-DAH-di.
That's close to a reasonable hornpipe rhythm. In reality, you might hang on the first note longer, and then move through the next three more evenly, with just a linger on the 3rd note: DAH-di-dii-di...
The melodies of hornpipes also tend to be built around quarter notes (hence the typical ending on three quarter notes, and lots of triplet runs--which are really just graced quarter notes), while the meoldies of reels depend more on the intervals between eighth notes in series. This gives a smoother, more fluid line to reels compared to the deliberate thumping of a hornpipe. As with everything in Irish music, there are always exceptions, of course, and many hornpipes can indeed be smoothed out (and sped up) to sound like reels.
Hope this helps. Give Harvest Home a try, and let us know if you can hear the difference.
Will
Although it should be noted that some people (and I'm talking, in Ireland and within the tradition, here, not just elsewhere) do NOT play hornpipes with the dotted quarters. That doesn't mean that those tunes are not hornpipes. And since some people swing their reels, you'll hear reels that on first listen sound like hornpipes (if they're played slowly), but are missing those little distinctive quarter note endings (and apparently that don't have the right chord progressions or whatever that I don't know about). Will's exercise above is a good general rule, but it's also important to know that it doesn't cover everything across the board, because nothing does work across the board in Irish music. Even if you always play Flowers of Edinburgh as a reel, it doesn't mean it IS a reel, it's just a hornpipe that you're playing as a reel.
I wouldn't get too caught up in this, truly. Details are important, but it's kind of un-Irish to get too caught up in bits. If you know that hornpipes are usually played in dotted-quarter-eight-note groups and that their melodies are built around quarter notes rather than eighth notes, you'll be fine. Of course, so are most polkas, but polkas don't have those endings you get in hornpipes.
If you want a recording, Mike Shaffer's "Dance to the Music", anything by Mike Shaffer and Merv Bell (together or separately), Pat King, Tony Nother, or any other of the stepdance recordings work well. http://www.irishrecords.com/mikeshaffer.html for info on' Dance to the Music' and 'Mike and Merv'.
Do remember that the terms for dancing don't necessarily have anything to do with the terms for the music for the musician. A slow reel is just a reel played slower to a musician, but a kind of dance for a dancer. A slow hornpipe is a more complicated and difficult hardshoe dance for a champion stepdancer, and any hornpipe played slowly will do (although of course most musicians elect to use one of the more difficult tunes rather than something simple to keep from expiring of boredom). A dancer's light jig ("light" as in light shoes, or ghillies) is any jig in 6/8 played moderately fast. A dancer's treble jig or double jig is a hardshoe jig that is played slower than jigs for the light jig.
Just a suggestion for listening. Check out the "BBC Virtual Session" (it's in the "links" section of this site, under sessions). There's all kinds of different styles there: reels, hornpipes, slow reels, jigs, etc, and it's not played too fast, so it's a great place to get a feel for what things are supposed to sound like.
Now I am all excited!!! Zina, I am/was definitely trying to coordinate something with the music, to a dancer. I dance too, see. But not Celia dancing, which is too rigorous for my legs. I do several other types of dances, such as contra. But I don't THINK that contra dances coordinate the precise rhythms the musicians play, to the dances. 4/4/ is mostly what contra is danced to, and then there are 3/4 waltzes occasionally (which aren't contra dances, they're couple dances, thrown in for variety). And they occasionally throw in a polka or a schottische, too. I can hear all those rhythms just fine.
And in ballroom, there are waltzes, tangos, cha cha's etc.
Maybe ceili dancing (and more specificially, hornpipes and reels, ho hum, are we tired of this discussion yet???) might be analogous to swing, two-step, Texas two-step, and foxtrot, etc. Any of those dances COULD conceivably be done to the rhythm of any of the others. I suppose a major dancer/conniseur (sp) of swing or country dancing could get all worked up or pushed out of shape if somebody tried to dance the 2-step while everyone else was doing triple-swing. I have not been involved with dancers who are that "high level" or are competetion dancers, so I really can't say for certain. But I guess I'm just wondering if there might be a parallel in the thinking about the similarieies between swing, 2-step, etc; and between reels and hornpipes. Zina, do you mean that maybe musicians may vary the rhythms or interpret them, deciding to swing them if they want to or play them straight, depending on how they feel,or how they have heard the tune in the past?
Will, I can hear the difference between the dotted and straight rhthms that you illustrated verbally above, and will definitely try your suggestion about Harvest Home.
And Glauber, thanks a whole bunch for the idea of going to the BBC site. That is indeed an amazing place. One of my player friends told a bunch of us about it last month, but I had not thought of using it as a "tool" like you point out.
Okay, friends, I believe I have what I needed to know!!!! It's a combination of what all of you have told me, plus the BBC site that Glauber suggested. Here's the URL for that site, by the way:
I think the trick is this: Hornpipes are in 4/4 time and reels are in cut time, or 2/2. I personally would disagree with the way the reels are notated in the BBC site. Note that the hornpipes are set in double eighths, and that is exactly how they are played on that site.
But the reels are also set in double eighths, but that is NOT how they are played! They are played in 4-eights, with the accent on the first of the set of four eighths, rather than the first of 2 eighths.
Zina wrote:
"[hornpipe] melodies are built around quarter notes rather than eighth notes..." I guess I'd say what I hear is that hornpipe melodies are, yes, build around quarter notes, where reel melodies are build around half notes (2/2 time). That is how I think, how I feel them, and I do find it much easier to hear melodies when I have some sort of reference point.
Thanks to all of you -- any thoughts on what I have come up with here?
As most of the previous contributors to this discussion have said, the differences in rhythm between reels and hornpipes are too subtle to be accurately described in words, and certainly to be accurately represented in conventional notation.
To my ears, both reels and hornpipes are usually played with some degree of "swing" - i.e. every second 1/8-note is slightly shorter in duration than the preceding one. As a general rule (although not one that all players or all tunes adhere to), hornpipes have somewhat more swing than reels, and are played significantly slower.
Another important difference is in the accents. In a reel, the primary accent occurs on the first 1/8-note of each bar, with a much weaker secondary accent on the fifth 1/8-note. In a hornpipe, the main accents fall in exactly the same places, but the accent on the fifth note is equal or very similar in strength to that on the first note (which accounts for hornpipes sometimes being notated in 2/2 or cut time).
In O'Neill's there are a number of tunes given as hornpipes which are nowadays more often played as reels and vice versa, which strongly suggests that the main difference is in the way the tune is played. However, many Hornpipes in the Irish tradition share certain structural features (most of which are too subtle for me to begin to explain in writing) - for example: whilst reels may be either 16 bars or 32 bars long (including repeats), hornpipes, with very few exceptions, are always 32 bars; triplets occur more frequently than in reels; the final bar of a strain has a sense of having arrived at a destination, often consisting of three 1/4-notes or 1/4-note, two 1/8-notes and a 1/4-note - the final bar of a strain in a reel has more of a sense of motion, either coming to a halt in the second half of the bar, with three 1/8-notes or a single 1/4- dotted 1/4 note, or it may be cyclic, leading directly into the next strain (very rare in a hornpipe).
A Nobel Prize will be awarded to anyone who understands what I'm going on about.
Close, but no cigar... the difference between the reel and the hornpipe is to be found in the last bar in each section. The hornpipe 'rests' on the tonic for a full bar, and the reel rests for a half bar. Thus, tunes such as the Devil's Dream and Soldiers Joy are hornpipes and not reels. It is this difference in the phrasing which distinguishes a reel from a hornpipe. The amount of swing can be varied from one extreme to another, the tempo can vary, etc., but that will not change a reel into a hornpipe or vice versa.
But you can PLAY them as each other, if you force them. Their structure will stay the same no matter what, but you can certainly force hornpipes to do duties as reels and vice versa (although a reel as a hornpipe is a lot harder because they usually don't end right for a hornpipe).
Marian, don't worry about it. Seriously. No use stressing about it. You can find rules until you're blue in the face, and still find lots of exceptions. (And LOTS of exceptions past those.) Just play the damn things, as I was so elegantly told after a bit. It's lots more fun that way!
Well, Zina, I'm gonna differ with you a bit here.....I can hear very distinct differences between the reels and hornpipes, when I go to the BBC site. This just reinforces what I've heard played already anyway, and clarifies it for me. And as a dancer, I'm very aware of differences in rhythm, and want to "hear" that. It's like if a person is a visual artist -- it's pretty well accepted that one must be able to draw a chair (or an egg, a person, whatever) that looks like a chair, etc, before they go off into interpretive work of chairlikenesses, and be taken seriously. At least a lot of people feel that way about visual art, and I sure do. Likewise, I want to know what the differences between a reel and a hornpipe are, and now I believe I do know. Thus, when somebody says something is a hornpipe and plays it like a reel, well, that's their way, but if I start the same tune, I'll play it like a hornpipe.
A friend of mine who hosted an Irish radio show for years, and now is playing the music herself put it this way: that hornpipes sometimes evolve into reels because reels are easier. She used the term "dumbed down," but I'd use the term "made into cliche."
I'm really into being able to describe things and play them. And I do know, Zina, that many people play fantastically wonderful music and either cannot or do not want to describe it. There is definitely merit to that point of view, too. I do both.
So do I, Marian -- but definitely keep in mind that all of those rules are very malleable. Hornpipes can be played both swung and not, and even if a musician doesn't play it swung, it still doesn't make it a reel -- it's still a hornpipe. The hornpipe part is inherent to the tune (as Steve and Scott pointed out). MOST musicians play hornpipes with the dotted quarter-eighth thing going on, but not everybody does, and that doesn't make the folks who don't wrong, even as the folks who do aren't wrong either.
Okay, Zina, it sounds like if something is played musically and well, then it's fine. With traditional musicality, that is. But what I don't "get" is that hornpipes and reels are two different dances. Probably one of the traditions I am entering Irish music from makes me really inquisitive. I enter basically from two traditions -- classical piano, and old timey music. Old timey sometimes has just the opposite problems from classical -- rather than being "too analytical" it can sometimes not be analytical enough, to where it gets fuzzy and sloppy or chaotic. Some old timey players seem to be allergic to learning to count bars or even beats. Not always, by any means, but it can be a point of argument at times. And forget about neatly done beginnings or endings in some jams -- something that could be polished quite easily with a bit of communication. Classical, on the other hand, stresses the beauty of the beginnings and endings as being one of the most vital parts of the music, and I agree. But I digress.
I guess I think of how many times I've been led to really analyze the difference, say, between the waltz and the mazurka. And the precision of the feel of the minuet, etc. Funnily enough, I have yet to meet a classical player who has ever danced a minuet, and I'm not even sure that anyone even knows what a minuet is danced like -- although I do suspect some people do, though they are hard to find. There are prose descriptions of the dance, and that's about all I have seen. (Now somebody here is probably going to point me to a web video of the minuet being danced.... LOL... I have not checked.) I even went to a workshop where this classical person purportedly was teaching the minuet and she didn't know a thing about it. Made it more confusing than ever.
Still, though, Zina, hornpipes and reels are dance rhythms, are they not? I guess the question may have different interpretations by and Ceili dance community, and the playing community who are not playing for dancers? This question was touched upon someplace above, I think.
Thank you for this discussion. It helps me know what to look and listen for, and eventually I will have a perspective that makes sense to me and enough others that I'm satisfied with it. It is not possible for everyone to agree on every point, but I'm still in the early stages.
I have to run down to Denver and work this afternoon, and don't have time for the answer that this deserves...so I'll do it later. It's a very complicated answer, I'm afraid.
Okay, so here we go! We'll have to repeat some of what's already been said, so have patience.
Remember that a dance is not the same as the music. I can dance a reel step to just about any tune at all, but it might not necessarily "match" the tune very well, which is okay in a stepdancer's world, although not as good in the musician's world, and is close to whiffly from a performance standpoint. The minuet (the dance "the minuet" is actually something of a precursor to the four and eight hands and the set dancing -- as is the quadrille) music form is a musical form, and it's probable that there are classical minuets out there that a set of dancers would probably not be able to dance to for one reason or another. I imagine that the minuet had a certain amount of measures for each figure, just like modern figure dancing does, and you can bet that composers often took the minuet musical form and prodded it about a bit in the name of art.
The DANCE 'the hornpipe" is based on dances done, according to various stories, on both the dances sailors did to the hornpipe (which is relatively easily played and easy to carry onboard a ship) and the dances performed by Irish warriors the evening before a battle (this last is a little hard to prove, but it makes a good story!). Modern stepdancing hornpipes have certain little bits in them -- motifs, as it were -- that make them hornpipe steps. (The ending sequence in particular is familiar to most stepdancers -- step shu-ffle hop back, step shuffle cut shuffle hop back -- this happens usually at measures 7 and 8, and usually goes well with the little quarter note endings normally found in hornpipes.) Since most musicians who play for dancers play the hornpipes with the dotted-quarter-eighth-note grouping, the steps usually play off this minor syncopation.
However. The MUSIC form "the hornpipe" is considerably more complicated than that (though, as a dance teacher, I am certainly not telling you that the dances are uncomplicated!). As mentioned above by various people, the chord progressions, the structure of the tune, a characteristic slower tempo, quarter note endings of phrases, plus a host of other extremely esoteric things cared pretty much only by ethnomusicologists and people largely more fussy than I make a hornpipe a hornpipe.
Now. You can play a reel just like a hornpipe by swinging the notes, but because reels are put together differently, it doesn't make that reel an actual hornpipe. However, many people DO play reels and hornpipes interchangeably. A dancer, however, will feel like something is a little wrong when dancing to a reel played as a hornpipe -- the endings of the phrases don't fit together with the steps as well. To make it more difficult, many people play their hornpipes relatively straight, like reels, with even eighths. AND to add to the confusion, many people swing their reels (although technically, the swing in a hornpipe is a very small bit different from the swing in a reel, by about a 32nd of a note -- again, something usually only the ethnomusicologists worry about). This last Sunday, I was taught Flowers of Edinburgh as a reel -- as soon as we hit the ending of the first part, I and the other experienced player immediately knew it was actually a hornpipe in form, even though we played it as a reel. Nothing wrong with that at all. Plus, many of the best players play with a swing to their reels -- I once slowed down James Kelly playing Lads of Laois to see what he was doing at a particular part. I'd always thought he was playing the reel straight. However, slowed down, there was a very VERY definite swing to the eighths.
Am *I* going to say that one way of playing a hornpipe is better than the other way? Nuh uh. I am not a masochist, and the kind of abuse I would receive for that is not something I would willingly ask for! Let the ethnomusicologists tell us what is the right way and the wrong way -- me, I'll play 'em like I learn 'em by hearing others play, make my decisions inside my head as they seem right to me, and go on from there.
So, here's an illustrative little story:
Kevin Glackin, Eoin O Riabhiagh, Conal O Grada and Christy O Connell are playing at the Lamont School of Music. The audience is lovely, young students of classical music, jazz, various traditional forms of music, etc. They are demonstrating various tune forms. They get to the jig. Kevin Glackin starts explaining jigs. He mentions that they're in 6/8. Before he starts the tune, he suddenly turns to Eoin and Conal. "6/8...that's right, isn't it? Jigs are in 6/8?" Conal says yes, they are. Kevin turns to the audience again. "Yes, they're in 6/8. You lot probably know more about that kind of thing than I do." And off they went into a lovely set of jigs. Conal explains later that he only learned to write music when they began Scoiltrad, and that he still doesn't really read the stuff. (All the lads, though, feel that you shouldn't ever turn down a tool.)
So, keep in mind that this has always been a aurally-learned music form, and that all the rules you can find about Irish music are probably broken in one place or another. We've sort of crammed Irish trad music into a classical music shaped hole in order to disseminate it across the Web and in printed forms, but you should always bear in mind that it's a square peg in a round hole situation! It simply doesn't matter much to Irish musicians whether it's notated in 2/4 or 4/4, simply because most of them don't have the training to realize that the written meter changes the way the played tune feels...when a classical player plays it. Largely, your Irish trad player doesn't care about it -- they know what they play.
I hope this helps. Irish traditional music can be extremely confusing. The music itself is largely inseparable from its culture when it's played authentically and genuinely traditionally. Those of us with no connection to Irish culture have to work about fifteen times harder to "get it" than those with! (And let's not even get into the whole "what's traditional" debate! We have threads and threads and threads on that elsewhere...)
Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Can somebody post the rhythms for reels, vs. hornpipes. I know they are two different dances, that reels are like contras, and that hornpipes are couple dances. As I understand it, anyway. But I can't "see" any differences in the notated versions I have of tunes which are called reels, and tunes which are called hornpipes.
And I know they are all in quarter time -- but is one in cut time, and one in 4/4 or what? I find it difficult to believe that reel rhythm and hornpipe rhythm are identical. I do notice that a lot of "hornpipes" start with a triplet pickup beat, but then, so do some reels. Hmmmm.
I read that reels tend not to have dotted rhythm, and hornpipes do, but not according to the versions I have seen.
Could somebody tell me how to tell the difference? I'd appreciate specifics, like
quarter eighth-eighth eighth-eighth-eighth-eighth / quarter quarter quarter quarter /
[that was just random.... but that's the style I could use, since it's so easy to tell what's going on, rather than in prose text. THanks for any info.] Be sure and put in bar lines, like the / I put there.
Is it possible to post the actual notated rhytym someplace on the Session site? That would be ideal, for me.
Marian
# Posted on November 18th 2001 by Marian63
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Marian, this strikes me as the kind of question that could only be asked by someone who relies on reading music - am I right? The best thing for you to do, in my opinion, is to listen to the way reels and hornpipes are played by experienced traditional players. That will tell you the whole story.
The point is that the way that you'll never understand the rhythms of traditional music by looking at music on paper. Attempts to notate the exact rhythm would tend to make the score look very complicated. The music is a kind of shorthand and requires that you know (by listening) what is an acceptable rhythm for a hornpipe, reel, jig or whatever. Then you just use the notation as a way to acquire the basic framework of the tune.
That said, here are a few hints. Both hornpipes and reels are played "uneven", but not so much as to make dotted notation accurate. Think of it as a "swing". The swing in hornpipes is usually more pronounced, partly due to the fact that hornpipes are generally played more slowly than reels. Speed a hornpipe up, however, and it starts sounding pretty much exactly like a reel.
Another essential element in the rhythm of both, but especially reels, is a marked off-beat pulse - an accent on beats 2 and 4. This can vary depending on the instrument you're playing. It's very obvious in traditional fiddle playing.
Hornpipes often have phrases that end with three quarter notes (or decorated versions of same), e.g. third-tonic-tonic.
Hornpipes might be more accurately notated by writing them in 12/8 time, using quarter-eighth pairs instead of the usual eighth-eighth pairs. But the thing is, there is a good deal of variation in the amount of swing used by different players. Which brings me back to my original point: listen lots, and everything will become very simple.
Best of luck
Steve
# Posted on November 18th 2001 by Jeeves Tones
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Steve's right, Marian -- the reason you don't see any difference in the notated versions is simply that most transcribers just don't bother notating out that hornpipes are played "swung" -- but a very specific and peculiar kind of swing that would be very difficult to notate. Some people play their reels swung, and most play them straight, although "straight" is still a tiny bit swung just the smallest bit.
There are some very esoteric things that make hornpipes hornipes that I don't know, although I know they're there -- chord structures and sequence, mainly, as well as that peculiar little motif on the end in so many hornpipes that Steve mentioned above (like Harvest Home, a much maligned hornpipe that a lot of people think of as a beginner piece -- in the hands of a good player, it's a pretty decent hornpipe).
But Steve's advice is the best -- listen, listen and listen some more. If you want very obvious differences, get a CD of music for stepdancers, and make sure that there's tracks marked "slow hornpipe" or such. You'll quickly hear the differences.
Zina
# Posted on November 18th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Thanks Steve and Zina,
But Steve, you wrote:
"Speed a hornpipe up, however, and it starts sounding pretty much exactly like a reel. "
That's exactly my problem!! I hear people talking about reels and hornpipes, and nobody seems to be able to identify them well! Neither by playing them or listening to them.
And, you wrote, too,
"...this strikes me as the kind of question that could only be asked by someone who relies on reading music - am I right? "
Nope, you're not right. I use music only when I can't hear something, which is not often. But I understand the finer points of reading music, since I was trained in classical piano. I am not, however, a "natural reader" -- I'm a natural ear player and find it very easy and quick to learn tunes by ear. I find that reading is like a wall between me and the music, and I use it only as a tool when absolutely necessary. I never use the printed music when I play, only to decipher stuff on a poor recording, etc etc.
But since nobody I've asked has been able to explain in either English or by playing the tunes (which, like you say, sound so much alike that I can't hear any difference), I thought that if I could see the notation, I could interpret it so that the two dances would sound different. Plus, I could probably hear the tunes better -- for instance, if there is a player who puts a very subtle accent on the hornpipes s/he plays, I would be able to hear it better than if I had not seen the printed notation, and then I could make my playing more distinctive between the two dance forms.
For instance, in a fake book I have which was basically pasted together from many unknown sources, there are Mazurkas which are called "Waltzes." Mazurkas are not waltzes. But it would be real easy to change the accented beat and make them sound like waltzes. Minuets aren't waltzes, either, but all three dances are in 3/4 time. I have played enough mazurkas and minuets to where I would never make one of them sound like a waltz, unless they were being used AS a waltz for dancers, which is fine. But I think it's really important for people to realize that a mazurka is not a waltz.
I find that when all else fails, seeing the notation can help.
However, I absolutely agree that notation is an approximation. It's a learning tool, but ear learning is the "reel" way to learn.
Zina, do you happen to have any CDs in mind that have "slow hornpipes" on them? To compare a slow hornpipe and a slow reel would help. I didn't realize the differences were going to be so hard to discern.
Now I am more curious than ever!!!!!!!
Thanks, Steve and Zina.
Marian
# Posted on November 18th 2001 by Marian63
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Hello Marian
Since you're still searching for help on this, I'll suggest that you go to the tunes section on this site and print Harvest Home. (Type in Harvest Home in the search box and then click on the tune title when it comes up.) Jeremy posted this simple hornpipe ages ago, and it will provide a good demonstration of the difference between hornpipes and reels. (Though even this exercise will only approximate the rhythm you're really looking for, and I know some people will howl at the dotted eighth/sixteenth note rhythm as "wrong," but it will get you started on the right track.)
Print it off, and play it straight, as written (no dotted eighth and sixteenth notes). It should go pretty steadily--kind of mechanical or clock-like. Di-Di-Di-Di Di-Di-Di-Di and so on. That's a reel, with no swing.
Now take a red pen and dot ALL of the 1st and 3rd eighth notes of every group of four. The 2nd and 4th eighth notes in each group become sixteenth notes (you can run a little flag across the top line to show this).
Now play it, hanging on those dotted eighths, and moving off the sixteenths that much quicker. It should sound like: DAH-di-DAH-di DAH-di-DAH-di.
That's close to a reasonable hornpipe rhythm. In reality, you might hang on the first note longer, and then move through the next three more evenly, with just a linger on the 3rd note: DAH-di-dii-di...
The melodies of hornpipes also tend to be built around quarter notes (hence the typical ending on three quarter notes, and lots of triplet runs--which are really just graced quarter notes), while the meoldies of reels depend more on the intervals between eighth notes in series. This gives a smoother, more fluid line to reels compared to the deliberate thumping of a hornpipe. As with everything in Irish music, there are always exceptions, of course, and many hornpipes can indeed be smoothed out (and sped up) to sound like reels.
Hope this helps. Give Harvest Home a try, and let us know if you can hear the difference.
Will
# Posted on November 18th 2001 by Miss Lonelyhearts
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Although it should be noted that some people (and I'm talking, in Ireland and within the tradition, here, not just elsewhere) do NOT play hornpipes with the dotted quarters. That doesn't mean that those tunes are not hornpipes. And since some people swing their reels, you'll hear reels that on first listen sound like hornpipes (if they're played slowly), but are missing those little distinctive quarter note endings (and apparently that don't have the right chord progressions or whatever that I don't know about). Will's exercise above is a good general rule, but it's also important to know that it doesn't cover everything across the board, because nothing does work across the board in Irish music. Even if you always play Flowers of Edinburgh as a reel, it doesn't mean it IS a reel, it's just a hornpipe that you're playing as a reel.
I wouldn't get too caught up in this, truly. Details are important, but it's kind of un-Irish to get too caught up in bits. If you know that hornpipes are usually played in dotted-quarter-eight-note groups and that their melodies are built around quarter notes rather than eighth notes, you'll be fine. Of course, so are most polkas, but polkas don't have those endings you get in hornpipes.
If you want a recording, Mike Shaffer's "Dance to the Music", anything by Mike Shaffer and Merv Bell (together or separately), Pat King, Tony Nother, or any other of the stepdance recordings work well. http://www.irishrecords.com/mikeshaffer.html for info on' Dance to the Music' and 'Mike and Merv'.
Do remember that the terms for dancing don't necessarily have anything to do with the terms for the music for the musician. A slow reel is just a reel played slower to a musician, but a kind of dance for a dancer. A slow hornpipe is a more complicated and difficult hardshoe dance for a champion stepdancer, and any hornpipe played slowly will do (although of course most musicians elect to use one of the more difficult tunes rather than something simple to keep from expiring of boredom). A dancer's light jig ("light" as in light shoes, or ghillies) is any jig in 6/8 played moderately fast. A dancer's treble jig or double jig is a hardshoe jig that is played slower than jigs for the light jig.
Zina
# Posted on November 19th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Just a suggestion for listening. Check out the "BBC Virtual Session" (it's in the "links" section of this site, under sessions). There's all kinds of different styles there: reels, hornpipes, slow reels, jigs, etc, and it's not played too fast, so it's a great place to get a feel for what things are supposed to sound like.
# Posted on November 20th 2001 by glauber
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Will, Zina, and Glauber, Thanks to all of you!!
Now I am all excited!!! Zina, I am/was definitely trying to coordinate something with the music, to a dancer. I dance too, see. But not Celia dancing, which is too rigorous for my legs. I do several other types of dances, such as contra. But I don't THINK that contra dances coordinate the precise rhythms the musicians play, to the dances. 4/4/ is mostly what contra is danced to, and then there are 3/4 waltzes occasionally (which aren't contra dances, they're couple dances, thrown in for variety). And they occasionally throw in a polka or a schottische, too. I can hear all those rhythms just fine.
And in ballroom, there are waltzes, tangos, cha cha's etc.
Maybe ceili dancing (and more specificially, hornpipes and reels, ho hum, are we tired of this discussion yet???) might be analogous to swing, two-step, Texas two-step, and foxtrot, etc. Any of those dances COULD conceivably be done to the rhythm of any of the others. I suppose a major dancer/conniseur (sp) of swing or country dancing could get all worked up or pushed out of shape if somebody tried to dance the 2-step while everyone else was doing triple-swing. I have not been involved with dancers who are that "high level" or are competetion dancers, so I really can't say for certain. But I guess I'm just wondering if there might be a parallel in the thinking about the similarieies between swing, 2-step, etc; and between reels and hornpipes. Zina, do you mean that maybe musicians may vary the rhythms or interpret them, deciding to swing them if they want to or play them straight, depending on how they feel,or how they have heard the tune in the past?
Will, I can hear the difference between the dotted and straight rhthms that you illustrated verbally above, and will definitely try your suggestion about Harvest Home.
And Glauber, thanks a whole bunch for the idea of going to the BBC site. That is indeed an amazing place. One of my player friends told a bunch of us about it last month, but I had not thought of using it as a "tool" like you point out.
Marian
# Posted on November 21st 2001 by Marian63
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Okay, friends, I believe I have what I needed to know!!!! It's a combination of what all of you have told me, plus the BBC site that Glauber suggested. Here's the URL for that site, by the way:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/folk/acoustic_club/launch.shtml?surve
I think the trick is this: Hornpipes are in 4/4 time and reels are in cut time, or 2/2. I personally would disagree with the way the reels are notated in the BBC site. Note that the hornpipes are set in double eighths, and that is exactly how they are played on that site.
But the reels are also set in double eighths, but that is NOT how they are played! They are played in 4-eights, with the accent on the first of the set of four eighths, rather than the first of 2 eighths.
Zina wrote:
"[hornpipe] melodies are built around quarter notes rather than eighth notes..." I guess I'd say what I hear is that hornpipe melodies are, yes, build around quarter notes, where reel melodies are build around half notes (2/2 time). That is how I think, how I feel them, and I do find it much easier to hear melodies when I have some sort of reference point.
Thanks to all of you -- any thoughts on what I have come up with here?
Marian
# Posted on November 21st 2001 by Marian63
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
As most of the previous contributors to this discussion have said, the differences in rhythm between reels and hornpipes are too subtle to be accurately described in words, and certainly to be accurately represented in conventional notation.
To my ears, both reels and hornpipes are usually played with some degree of "swing" - i.e. every second 1/8-note is slightly shorter in duration than the preceding one. As a general rule (although not one that all players or all tunes adhere to), hornpipes have somewhat more swing than reels, and are played significantly slower.
Another important difference is in the accents. In a reel, the primary accent occurs on the first 1/8-note of each bar, with a much weaker secondary accent on the fifth 1/8-note. In a hornpipe, the main accents fall in exactly the same places, but the accent on the fifth note is equal or very similar in strength to that on the first note (which accounts for hornpipes sometimes being notated in 2/2 or cut time).
In O'Neill's there are a number of tunes given as hornpipes which are nowadays more often played as reels and vice versa, which strongly suggests that the main difference is in the way the tune is played. However, many Hornpipes in the Irish tradition share certain structural features (most of which are too subtle for me to begin to explain in writing) - for example: whilst reels may be either 16 bars or 32 bars long (including repeats), hornpipes, with very few exceptions, are always 32 bars; triplets occur more frequently than in reels; the final bar of a strain has a sense of having arrived at a destination, often consisting of three 1/4-notes or 1/4-note, two 1/8-notes and a 1/4-note - the final bar of a strain in a reel has more of a sense of motion, either coming to a halt in the second half of the bar, with three 1/8-notes or a single 1/4- dotted 1/4 note, or it may be cyclic, leading directly into the next strain (very rare in a hornpipe).
A Nobel Prize will be awarded to anyone who understands what I'm going on about.
# Posted on November 21st 2001 by OrganicPeatCreature
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
David, thank you..... I take it you are in Ireland or someplace outside USA? (How did I suspect that.....Am I right?)
Anyway, thanks for all this very subtle stuff. Truly do appreciate it!
Also, you wrote:
..."In O'Neill's there are a number of tunes given as hornpipes which are nowadays more often played as reels and vice versa, .."
Oh, great. See why I started this thread in the first place?!! @@##$$%%
Marian
# Posted on November 21st 2001 by Marian63
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Close, but no cigar... the difference between the reel and the hornpipe is to be found in the last bar in each section. The hornpipe 'rests' on the tonic for a full bar, and the reel rests for a half bar. Thus, tunes such as the Devil's Dream and Soldiers Joy are hornpipes and not reels. It is this difference in the phrasing which distinguishes a reel from a hornpipe. The amount of swing can be varied from one extreme to another, the tempo can vary, etc., but that will not change a reel into a hornpipe or vice versa.
# Posted on November 21st 2001 by scottythefiddler
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
But you can PLAY them as each other, if you force them.
Their structure will stay the same no matter what, but you can certainly force hornpipes to do duties as reels and vice versa (although a reel as a hornpipe is a lot harder because they usually don't end right for a hornpipe).
Marian, don't worry about it. Seriously. No use stressing about it. You can find rules until you're blue in the face, and still find lots of exceptions. (And LOTS of exceptions past those.) Just play the damn things, as I was so elegantly told after a bit. It's lots more fun that way!
Zina
# Posted on November 22nd 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Well, Zina, I'm gonna differ with you a bit here.....I can hear very distinct differences between the reels and hornpipes, when I go to the BBC site. This just reinforces what I've heard played already anyway, and clarifies it for me. And as a dancer, I'm very aware of differences in rhythm, and want to "hear" that. It's like if a person is a visual artist -- it's pretty well accepted that one must be able to draw a chair (or an egg, a person, whatever) that looks like a chair, etc, before they go off into interpretive work of chairlikenesses, and be taken seriously. At least a lot of people feel that way about visual art, and I sure do. Likewise, I want to know what the differences between a reel and a hornpipe are, and now I believe I do know. Thus, when somebody says something is a hornpipe and plays it like a reel, well, that's their way, but if I start the same tune, I'll play it like a hornpipe.
A friend of mine who hosted an Irish radio show for years, and now is playing the music herself put it this way: that hornpipes sometimes evolve into reels because reels are easier. She used the term "dumbed down," but I'd use the term "made into cliche."
I'm really into being able to describe things and play them. And I do know, Zina, that many people play fantastically wonderful music and either cannot or do not want to describe it. There is definitely merit to that point of view, too. I do both.
Marian
# Posted on November 23rd 2001 by Marian63
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
So do I, Marian -- but definitely keep in mind that all of those rules are very malleable. Hornpipes can be played both swung and not, and even if a musician doesn't play it swung, it still doesn't make it a reel -- it's still a hornpipe. The hornpipe part is inherent to the tune (as Steve and Scott pointed out). MOST musicians play hornpipes with the dotted quarter-eighth thing going on, but not everybody does, and that doesn't make the folks who don't wrong, even as the folks who do aren't wrong either.
zls
# Posted on November 23rd 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Okay, Zina, it sounds like if something is played musically and well, then it's fine. With traditional musicality, that is. But what I don't "get" is that hornpipes and reels are two different dances. Probably one of the traditions I am entering Irish music from makes me really inquisitive. I enter basically from two traditions -- classical piano, and old timey music. Old timey sometimes has just the opposite problems from classical -- rather than being "too analytical" it can sometimes not be analytical enough, to where it gets fuzzy and sloppy or chaotic. Some old timey players seem to be allergic to learning to count bars or even beats. Not always, by any means, but it can be a point of argument at times. And forget about neatly done beginnings or endings in some jams -- something that could be polished quite easily with a bit of communication. Classical, on the other hand, stresses the beauty of the beginnings and endings as being one of the most vital parts of the music, and I agree. But I digress.
I guess I think of how many times I've been led to really analyze the difference, say, between the waltz and the mazurka. And the precision of the feel of the minuet, etc. Funnily enough, I have yet to meet a classical player who has ever danced a minuet, and I'm not even sure that anyone even knows what a minuet is danced like -- although I do suspect some people do, though they are hard to find. There are prose descriptions of the dance, and that's about all I have seen. (Now somebody here is probably going to point me to a web video of the minuet being danced.... LOL... I have not checked.) I even went to a workshop where this classical person purportedly was teaching the minuet and she didn't know a thing about it. Made it more confusing than ever.
Still, though, Zina, hornpipes and reels are dance rhythms, are they not? I guess the question may have different interpretations by and Ceili dance community, and the playing community who are not playing for dancers? This question was touched upon someplace above, I think.
Thank you for this discussion. It helps me know what to look and listen for, and eventually I will have a perspective that makes sense to me and enough others that I'm satisfied with it. It is not possible for everyone to agree on every point, but I'm still in the early stages.
Marian
# Posted on November 24th 2001 by Marian63
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Hi Marian:
I have to run down to Denver and work this afternoon, and don't have time for the answer that this deserves...so I'll do it later. It's a very complicated answer, I'm afraid.
zls
# Posted on November 26th 2001 by Zina Lee
Re: Rhythms for reels and hornpipes, please
Okay, so here we go! We'll have to repeat some of what's already been said, so have patience.
Remember that a dance is not the same as the music. I can dance a reel step to just about any tune at all, but it might not necessarily "match" the tune very well, which is okay in a stepdancer's world, although not as good in the musician's world, and is close to whiffly from a performance standpoint. The minuet (the dance "the minuet" is actually something of a precursor to the four and eight hands and the set dancing -- as is the quadrille) music form is a musical form, and it's probable that there are classical minuets out there that a set of dancers would probably not be able to dance to for one reason or another. I imagine that the minuet had a certain amount of measures for each figure, just like modern figure dancing does, and you can bet that composers often took the minuet musical form and prodded it about a bit in the name of art.
The DANCE 'the hornpipe" is based on dances done, according to various stories, on both the dances sailors did to the hornpipe (which is relatively easily played and easy to carry onboard a ship) and the dances performed by Irish warriors the evening before a battle (this last is a little hard to prove, but it makes a good story!). Modern stepdancing hornpipes have certain little bits in them -- motifs, as it were -- that make them hornpipe steps. (The ending sequence in particular is familiar to most stepdancers -- step shu-ffle hop back, step shuffle cut shuffle hop back -- this happens usually at measures 7 and 8, and usually goes well with the little quarter note endings normally found in hornpipes.) Since most musicians who play for dancers play the hornpipes with the dotted-quarter-eighth-note grouping, the steps usually play off this minor syncopation.
However. The MUSIC form "the hornpipe" is considerably more complicated than that (though, as a dance teacher, I am certainly not telling you that the dances are uncomplicated!). As mentioned above by various people, the chord progressions, the structure of the tune, a characteristic slower tempo, quarter note endings of phrases, plus a host of other extremely esoteric things cared pretty much only by ethnomusicologists and people largely more fussy than I make a hornpipe a hornpipe.
Now. You can play a reel just like a hornpipe by swinging the notes, but because reels are put together differently, it doesn't make that reel an actual hornpipe. However, many people DO play reels and hornpipes interchangeably. A dancer, however, will feel like something is a little wrong when dancing to a reel played as a hornpipe -- the endings of the phrases don't fit together with the steps as well. To make it more difficult, many people play their hornpipes relatively straight, like reels, with even eighths. AND to add to the confusion, many people swing their reels (although technically, the swing in a hornpipe is a very small bit different from the swing in a reel, by about a 32nd of a note -- again, something usually only the ethnomusicologists worry about). This last Sunday, I was taught Flowers of Edinburgh as a reel -- as soon as we hit the ending of the first part, I and the other experienced player immediately knew it was actually a hornpipe in form, even though we played it as a reel. Nothing wrong with that at all. Plus, many of the best players play with a swing to their reels -- I once slowed down James Kelly playing Lads of Laois to see what he was doing at a particular part. I'd always thought he was playing the reel straight. However, slowed down, there was a very VERY definite swing to the eighths.
Am *I* going to say that one way of playing a hornpipe is better than the other way? Nuh uh. I am not a masochist, and the kind of abuse I would receive for that is not something I would willingly ask for!
Let the ethnomusicologists tell us what is the right way and the wrong way -- me, I'll play 'em like I learn 'em by hearing others play, make my decisions inside my head as they seem right to me, and go on from there.
So, here's an illustrative little story:
Kevin Glackin, Eoin O Riabhiagh, Conal O Grada and Christy O Connell are playing at the Lamont School of Music. The audience is lovely, young students of classical music, jazz, various traditional forms of music, etc. They are demonstrating various tune forms. They get to the jig. Kevin Glackin starts explaining jigs. He mentions that they're in 6/8. Before he starts the tune, he suddenly turns to Eoin and Conal. "6/8...that's right, isn't it? Jigs are in 6/8?" Conal says yes, they are. Kevin turns to the audience again. "Yes, they're in 6/8. You lot probably know more about that kind of thing than I do." And off they went into a lovely set of jigs. Conal explains later that he only learned to write music when they began Scoiltrad, and that he still doesn't really read the stuff. (All the lads, though, feel that you shouldn't ever turn down a tool.)
So, keep in mind that this has always been a aurally-learned music form, and that all the rules you can find about Irish music are probably broken in one place or another. We've sort of crammed Irish trad music into a classical music shaped hole in order to disseminate it across the Web and in printed forms, but you should always bear in mind that it's a square peg in a round hole situation! It simply doesn't matter much to Irish musicians whether it's notated in 2/4 or 4/4, simply because most of them don't have the training to realize that the written meter changes the way the played tune feels...when a classical player plays it. Largely, your Irish trad player doesn't care about it -- they know what they play.
I hope this helps. Irish traditional music can be extremely confusing. The music itself is largely inseparable from its culture when it's played authentically and genuinely traditionally. Those of us with no connection to Irish culture have to work about fifteen times harder to "get it" than those with! (And let's not even get into the whole "what's traditional" debate! We have threads and threads and threads on that elsewhere...)
Zina
# Posted on November 26th 2001 by Zina Lee