A comment in a recent reminded me of a comment I made in a thread some time ago, about the American habit of calling tunes songs. I suggested that at one time most, if not all, tunes were associated with songs (or, at least, a few words).
Unfortunately I don't have any knowledge to back this up and I can't remember where I read it, but I still wonder if this "Americanism" (no offence intended) is the result of a carry over from the early days. Does anyone know more about this?
Well, when the early Americans came over, they brought along a lot of European ideas, culture, and music. Most of the people with more Scottish or sometimes Irish roots, tended to settle more in the Appalachian/Kentucky area, so that would be a lot of the reason why Bluegrass music sounds so close to Irish and Scottish music. This ties in to your question because I have a fiddle book with American and Irish tunes in them. Some of them sounded curiously similar, but they had different names. That says that a lot of the music that was carried over got a little mixed up. Also, the journey from Europe to America was very long, and some people died, so some people probably forgot a lot of the words to a song, but carried on the melody. So they probably knew that they were songs, but they couldn't get the words to it. That is what I think.
I know, Adam. I was just pointing out that probably answer is much less dramatic - most people do not know the terminology, and "songs" is the first thing that comes to their mind - it has a melody, doesn't it, just like Shakira's stuff. I also wanted to avoid saying implicitly that trying to explain something with collective spiritual connection to certain nation's ancestry, especially in modern post-industrial societies, bears to me some distant but itching similarity to worshipping spirits of trees by beating a bodhran.
Bird's songs don't have words. More than one of the the 'psychology' books on music use song rather than tune. Maybe that is deliberate rather than just following the usage of the itunes generation. Irritating though.
Yes, it's all i-Tunes' fault. It shows the power of ignorance when the language of the English-speaking world can be sabotaged by one idiot in charge of marketing. All the rest of us have to do is go along with the idiocy. Some of us actually care -- but the ones who don't can ruin things for everybody.
@ David50 what do you mean bird's (sic) songs don't have words? What do you think the birds are doing. whistling? What do you think whales do, hum along? It's only kettles that sing without words, but then they don't sing songs, they just sing.
A tune is a tune a song is a song. Sometimes a song & tune share the same or similar melody, if sung it's a song, if played instrumentally it's a tune, check out the dictionary.
I don't see what's so difficult in that. Perhaps the North American habit of miscalling tunes "songs" has got something to do with the fact that most old time and older bluegrass tunes are/were based on popular songs, it's the same with some jazz standards. Many of the modern bluegrass tunes aren't based on songs but the tunes are still referred to as songs, by many. Could this have something to do with it?
"Puirt a beul originates in Scotland and Northern Ireland where, the traditional cultures of the countries were repressed. All musical instruments were banned. Puirt a beul was invented as a substitute for instruments when music was required for entertainment - and especially for dancing.
Once this prohibition was lifted, and instruments were legalised, Puirt a beul still remained as a musical from in the Celtic regions and remains so until this day."
Most Americans grew up in a music culture that wasn’t much interested in the idea of a tune that might be played on a variety of instruments in a variety of settings. A “song” without words was a one-off novelty called an “instrumental” and was seen as a whole unit, including the choice of instruments and arrangement. If you wanted to play that instrumental, you copied the original recording as closely as possible. It was only natural for “song” to become the generic term for a complete unit of music.
In my experience, people who grew up in an old-time music environment are more likely to call a tune a tune.
The idea that puirt a beul is a response to any sort of ban is 95% crap. Most of those areas were just too poor to ever have much instrumental tradition. The Kirk (and to a lesser extent the Catholic Church) did discourage instruments sporadically in some areas, but they only place they ever got near to a complete ban was in St Kilda (where the only instrument the people had left by the end of the 19th century was the jews harp). St Kilda is unlikely to have ever had more than one or two fiddlers anyway.
Puirt a beul predates the fiddle in Scotland. And probably predates Gaelic, for that matter. Vocal dance music with semi-nonsensical words is found all over the world.
There never was a moment when instruments were "legalised". Churches don't operate that way. They just slowly lost their cultural hegemony.
Over here in America, the word "Tune" is almost unnecessary because most(meaning, a little over 90%) of popular music is "song". People write lyrics for everything. I'm not even sure if i know anyone who uses the word "tune", ever, other than my session pals. And you will not hear a "piece" on the radio unless it's on a classical radio station(or you have access to satellite radio). So us Americans having the habit of calling tunes "songs", comes from the fact that we call all of our music "song", cause all of our music is "song" We don't have to get all worked up over it though. It's just a word.
>We don't have to get all worked up over it though. It's just a word.
Oh right, if you say so.
Vagina is a word and c**t is a word, both meaning the same. But some people take offence to the second word being used. Why is that?
Ok Rudall i get your point. But would you be offended if a little kid that didn't know what a meant said it? Some of us are really poorly educated when it comes to music. I myself, learned the word "piece" very very late in my piano studies. But we don't say the word "song" knowing that we should call it a "tune". Thats when it gets offensive. It's all we know how to say. (just like the word love*which has about 6 different meanings, outside of English)
fiddlelearner: it's a small thing, but it's important to use the right word, because it makes you seem ignorant if you don't. It doesn't matter what the history of it is. Melodies played on instruments and not sung are tunes, not songs.
Digital audio devices and software (even iTunes) tend to refer to a piece of music a Song or a Track but not a Tune. A lot of (most?) people mainly access music using such devices nowadays.
Thanks for understanding Kennedy. But so you know, i avoid letting the word "song" slip out when i mean "tune". Someone corrected me a looong time ago when i 1st started posting on this website. I'm just standing at the defense of those that are ignorant. And the reality is, if we don't know, we are ignorant, and the average American doesn't know. I just want everyone to understand that we don't go around blatantly calling tunes "songs" to offend the Irish culture. But like i said before, for some reason, ignorance is offensive.
Please do us all a favor and give up defending the ignorant. It only makes other people think all of us are that way, and then you see the casual anti-American swipes I'm starting to see on this board more often now then I ever have.
It's not their fault that they don't know. Maybe someone that does know should come over here and teach them instead of getting all upset and offended. And you can't deny that over here in America, a lot... A LOT of people don't know squat about music. All they know is that they like it.
There is a widely held belief here in the islands to the upper left of Europe that Americans o th e whole don't have much 'general knowledge', are rather kept in a shallow dark naivity and are easily startled & astounded with fairly moderate demonstrations of information and trivia.
Yes, yhaalhouse, that's true, and it's been that way for a very long time. It still doesn't excuse the insults that some of us have to endure on behalf of the entire US population. Especially on this board---I've been reading many more anti-American comments here in the last few months, and I'm not sure what's causing it. I don't like it, that's for sure, and I can't be the only one.
I do think about the concept of 1 person virtually destroying the fragments of a culture, due to ignorance. I look back and it has happened. I think Columbus calling the natives here "Indians" is one of the more... disappointing ones that i've discovered.
>> Someone corrected me a looong time ago when i 1st started posting on this website.
LOL, wasn't that like 6 months ago, fiddlelearner?
I wouldn't necessarily blame it on iTunes, which has only been around roughly as long as this forum... I think fiddlelearner got it right. In the US, and many other places, the majority of music that people grew up with was actually songs. So that's the word that we naturally associate with a short pieces of music. I made the mistake of calling them songs when I first started. And I have yet to see a beginner that didn't need to be corrected. But as soon as people get corrected, they generally learn, and stop calling them songs...
Maybe that's it Mix - they are using the word that is less ambigious - not both a noun and a verb - and so more easily translated. Respect for other cultures. Like llig said.
Some folks like to take potshots at us Yanks because of our imperialist approach to "diplomacy." That's understandable. But they forget that many of us, as individuals, are often just as disappointed (I'm being polite) in our government's behavior as anyone. And it's not uncommon for folks to forget that we're a huge (310 million), diverse population run as a republic (not a pure democracy). Yanks don't all think alike, don't all suffer the same levels of edufication, and we don't have much voice in how the corporate-military complex runs the show.
Regardless, when we generalize about people this way, it dehumanizes them. Makes it easier to deride or dismiss them.
FWIW, I don't know anyone on the west side of the pond who actually plays this music who would call a tune a song.
It is the destiny of Americans, as is widely known, to constantly be begged to set things right in the wilting wider world. This, yes, includes encouraging less rigorous cultures to once again properly attach the term “song” to anything even remotely musical: humpback whales, Volga boatmen, Eurovision entrants, birds, Andrew Lloyd Webber, siamangs, the smiling Irish peasantry, and the wind through the sycamores.
I’m dead certain that Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Abe Lincoln, Annie Oakley, John Wayne, and Audie Murphy called any and all music “songs,” so I reckon the issue is settled, isn’t it?
"FWIW, I don't know anyone on the west side of the pond who actually plays this music who would call a tune a song." Will Harmon
Online I'd say the term almost always comes from the US. That said any americans I've ever had a tune with (quite a few), call a tune a tune. I hear it from some of the musically ignorant here in scotland also.
Online the fora are awash with it, but that in it's self doesn't signal the end of the world as we know it : >)
I was part serious. Could it be that only the one noun found its way into widespread use in American english because immigrants had a range of first languages ?
"As an American, all I really want to know is why Newcastle United is sometimes refered to as The Toon?"
Have you heard a proper Geordie accent?
"I'm ganning doon the toon and then I'm ganning hyem agin" Or something like that. No doubt there is 'Larn Yerself Geordie' somewhere on YouTube.
I remember encountering the “song” usage at least as far back as the early 1960’s and not infrequently ever since. It was probably common even earlier.
It's Retsim Gill's dailysex that gets his murds woddled. I know exactly what he means except for the bits I don't understand, but the bits I don't understand are sometimes the best bits. "obnoxious of gloats..." it's poetry, man.
Thanks for your comment. A point that occurs to me is that Carolan's acredited note sequences are commonly referred to as tunes, but I am pretty sure they were written as songs in praise of his friends and sponsors. Did he invent the idea, or was he following common practice?
Actually, he did write words for some of them, as I understand. In fact, I seem to recall reading that his contribution to "Sidhe bheag, shidh mhor" was more lyrical than melodic - the tune was an older one, wasn't it?
For all US chaps (and other hot water bottle collectors) who have trouble with general knowledge and, yes! irony, go to this link and all will be explained... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgmIWOzQRTA
Play loads of tunes with loads of folks here in the U.S. Have only encountered one fellow who calls tunes songs. I'll see if I can straighten that out.
I know! Maybe I got to see it at a lower tide when I was there...The clip makes the island look to be a lot closer to shore too. For some reason, I had it as being farther out to sea. It was a lucky break how the Atlantic was so calm for that shoot.
As mentioned by Rev and others above, American popular culture simply does not have the wealth of tune types found in traditional Irish music. So ‘song’ is a useful one-size-fits-all term. But calling a tune a song is like calling a jig a polka: confusing at best and just plain wrong.
But can someone tell me the difference between ‘ceol’ and ‘foinn’?
Lyrics tend to affect how a tune is played. If it constricts variation too much you may lose one of the good things about playing with tunes.
As far as using the terms interchangeably I have experienced jazz singers commonly referring to their songs as tunes.
"As mentioned by Rev and others above, American popular culture simply does not have the wealth of tune types found in traditional Irish music."
That's nonsense. American popular culture has absorbed Russian Jewish theatre songs, Hawaiian dances, several different kinds of Latin American music, gospel, blues, rap, Central European military marches, Czech/Polish oompah, English music hall, German Protestant hymns, Japanese folktunes in video games... amounting to a vastly wider range of musical idioms than you get in Irish music.
Most Americans don't think about all that but they can't help hearing it.
"Lyrics tend to affect how a tune is played. If it constricts variation too much you may lose one of the good things about playing with tunes. " Maybe if they are a set of banal pop song lyrics fitted to the tune. But most multi-verse folk song lyrics require stretching and pulling of a tune to fit the words.
"But most multi-verse folk song lyrics require stretching and pulling of a tune to fit the words." David50
Never a truer word said on that issue, but I always regarded that as one of those little details you pick up on the way when dealing with tunes that double with song melodies in both irish and scots trad. Often the stretching varies with the individual singer but thats another detail that just adds to hazard of jumping in there.
Jack, I'm not saying that other genres and influences don't exist here—Irish traditional music, obviously, is one. Plus countless other musics from ethnicities from across the globe. The predominant commercial ‘style’ you will hear, though, that drowns out all the others like a 747 flying over a wren’s nest is 4/4 time, maybe with a slight blues shuffle if they’re getting funky. With lyrics. It’s a formula.
Thracians were always sulking, claiming superiority when it came to music, saying Roman music was inferior. Of course Rome had years before blithely soaked up all Thracian music, all Thracian gods, all of their cuisine and their culture—as well as all of that same stuff from Rome’s other colonies.
At home, Romans would slip on headphones and enjoy making mash-ups of all that diverse cultural bootie in their cushy home recording studios, while some truly fabulous-looking Nubians—lounging over there on that triclinium upholstered with Etruscan silk—peeled grapes for them.
I remember reading about that in my high school history books New Pure Drops - That was primarily under the reign of Mixmaster Gluteous Maximus. However, I'm told busting rhymes in Latin was very difficult. Very much along the lines previous comments about words being stretched or contracted to fit existing melody lines in folk tunes.
Is this calling a tune a song really an American thing?? What word do the Germans use for "tune?" Lied for song but what for tune? What about French? or Greek? or....
If it really is a US thing, it seems to me that the explanation already offered that the vast majority of popular music in the US really is song (well, you may have to stretch the concept a bit, but at least there is someone "singing" words or syllables). So, as Will suggested folks tend to apply the term song to any short musical work...or indeed any work. I've heard Mozart Symphonies referred to as "songs." That said, it seems to me this sort of confusion is just a matter of the active vocabulary of the people involved. And that, I think, is declining everywhere.
I must admit to a bit of frustration at being slagged because I'm from the US. Go ahead and jump on my opinions, but don't blame them on where I live.
This isn't something I've paid attention to either way, to be honest, but I think like cboody and Will has said, it's just a matter of the active vocabulary of the individuals involved, not something that can be generalized to an entire country. Certainly American bluegrass and old-time players would know the difference between a song and a tune! I suppose in Scotland and Ireland, trad music is around a bit more for people who are not into it to hear. Even if you hate the stuff with a passion, you'll have encountered it at a university society ceilidh, wedding, etc.
If its something you haven't paid attention to then the association of the word "song" with singing and the human voice may be weaker for you that some people. For me it is that association, rather than anything to so with trad music, that makes it seem so wrong. As someone said at the top songs have words, that's all there is to it.
As this thread starts off on a pedantic theme, it seems fitting to be pedantic on this subject.
Although it appears that Carolan was a good reader in the days before he contracted smallpox, there is no record of him actually writing any of his songs or poems - indeed, it is said that he composed his music on the buttons of his coat.
He composed music, songs and poetry but didn't write any of it.
Weejie, when you're too pedantic for me, I think you've really surpassed yourself.
We usually allow that Helen Keller "wrote" her autobiography, Stevie Wonder "writes" his songs, and Ray Charles "wrote" his arrangements. Can we not do the same courtesy to an old blind harper?
"We usually allow that Helen Keller "wrote" her autobiography, Stevie Wonder "writes" his songs, and Ray Charles "wrote" his arrangements. Can we not do the same courtesy to an old blind harper?"
Well, at no time does O'Sullivan say that Carolan "wrote" anything, but I'm willing to accept the slight discrepancy. Then again, I'm willing to accept the word "song" instead of "tune", unlike the pedants contributing to this rather pointless thread - which seems to serve as a springboard for anti-American sentiment.
PS - Helen Keller did indeed write her autobiography:
"Braille has been a most precious aid to me in many ways. It made my going to college possible--it was the only method by which I could take notes of lectures. All my examination papers were copied for me in this system. I use Braille as a spider uses its web--to catch thoughts that flit across my mind for speeches, messages and manuscripts."
songs and tunes
songs and tunes
A comment in a recent reminded me of a comment I made in a thread some time ago, about the American habit of calling tunes songs. I suggested that at one time most, if not all, tunes were associated with songs (or, at least, a few words).
Unfortunately I don't have any knowledge to back this up and I can't remember where I read it, but I still wonder if this "Americanism" (no offence intended) is the result of a carry over from the early days. Does anyone know more about this?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by greg sheils
Re: songs and tunes
Americans are very proud to carry things on from their early days. The place has such a long and complex history.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by ...
Re: songs and tunes
It's a very recent phenomenon. Nothing at all to do with early American history.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: songs and tunes
I'd rather venture a wild guess that is has something to do with calling fiddles "violins".
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Janek
Re: songs and tunes
Well, when the early Americans came over, they brought along a lot of European ideas, culture, and music. Most of the people with more Scottish or sometimes Irish roots, tended to settle more in the Appalachian/Kentucky area, so that would be a lot of the reason why Bluegrass music sounds so close to Irish and Scottish music. This ties in to your question because I have a fiddle book with American and Irish tunes in them. Some of them sounded curiously similar, but they had different names. That says that a lot of the music that was carried over got a little mixed up. Also, the journey from Europe to America was very long, and some people died, so some people probably forgot a lot of the words to a song, but carried on the melody. So they probably knew that they were songs, but they couldn't get the words to it. That is what I think.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by an fidleir
Re: songs and tunes
Violins were used as classical before fiddle Janek.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by an fidleir
Re: songs and tunes
I suppose this is why Americans are so respectful of other cultures.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by ...
Re: songs and tunes
I know, Adam. I was just pointing out that probably answer is much less dramatic - most people do not know the terminology, and "songs" is the first thing that comes to their mind - it has a melody, doesn't it, just like Shakira's stuff. I also wanted to avoid saying implicitly that trying to explain something with collective spiritual connection to certain nation's ancestry, especially in modern post-industrial societies, bears to me some distant but itching similarity to worshipping spirits of trees by beating a bodhran.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Janek
Re: songs and tunes
itunes calls everything a song. yet they don't refer to the site as isongs.
i can whistle the tune of a song. i can make up diddly words to diddle a tune. i love mouth music/puirt a beul.
i think the whole argument is more interesting as a window into the attitudes of the people arguing and less enlightening as to the music.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by full measure
Re: songs and tunes
Bird's songs don't have words. More than one of the the 'psychology' books on music use song rather than tune. Maybe that is deliberate rather than just following the usage of the itunes generation. Irritating though.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
Yes, it's all i-Tunes' fault. It shows the power of ignorance when the language of the English-speaking world can be sabotaged by one idiot in charge of marketing. All the rest of us have to do is go along with the idiocy. Some of us actually care -- but the ones who don't can ruin things for everybody.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by gam
Re: songs and tunes
@ David50 what do you mean bird's (sic) songs don't have words? What do you think the birds are doing. whistling? What do you think whales do, hum along? It's only kettles that sing without words, but then they don't sing songs, they just sing.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by gam
Re: songs and tunes
A tune is a tune a song is a song. Sometimes a song & tune share the same or similar melody, if sung it's a song, if played instrumentally it's a tune, check out the dictionary.
I don't see what's so difficult in that. Perhaps the North American habit of miscalling tunes "songs" has got something to do with the fact that most old time and older bluegrass tunes are/were based on popular songs, it's the same with some jazz standards. Many of the modern bluegrass tunes aren't based on songs but the tunes are still referred to as songs, by many. Could this have something to do with it?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Solidmahog
Re: songs and tunes
... and sometimes, a song is sung to a different tune. That would really confuse the Yanks
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by ...
Re: songs and tunes
What's mouth music ?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
Duh, it's where you sing a song without words. Or is it "sing a tune"?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by ...
Re: songs and tunes
"What's mouth music ?" David50
Tunes communicated by voice in the form of a song where the stress is on the tune.
http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Puirt_a_beul?qsrc=3044
From the link:
"Puirt a beul originates in Scotland and Northern Ireland where, the traditional cultures of the countries were repressed. All musical instruments were banned. Puirt a beul was invented as a substitute for instruments when music was required for entertainment - and especially for dancing.
Once this prohibition was lifted, and instruments were legalised, Puirt a beul still remained as a musical from in the Celtic regions and remains so until this day."
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Solidmahog
Re: songs and tunes
Slow day Llig ?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by bazouki dave
Re: songs and tunes
Thanks.
(I was just stirring the mud)
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
Most Americans grew up in a music culture that wasn’t much interested in the idea of a tune that might be played on a variety of instruments in a variety of settings. A “song” without words was a one-off novelty called an “instrumental” and was seen as a whole unit, including the choice of instruments and arrangement. If you wanted to play that instrumental, you copied the original recording as closely as possible. It was only natural for “song” to become the generic term for a complete unit of music.
In my experience, people who grew up in an old-time music environment are more likely to call a tune a tune.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Bob himself
Re: songs and tunes
ask.com is, usual, a pile of steaming doodah.
The idea that puirt a beul is a response to any sort of ban is 95% crap. Most of those areas were just too poor to ever have much instrumental tradition. The Kirk (and to a lesser extent the Catholic Church) did discourage instruments sporadically in some areas, but they only place they ever got near to a complete ban was in St Kilda (where the only instrument the people had left by the end of the 19th century was the jews harp). St Kilda is unlikely to have ever had more than one or two fiddlers anyway.
Puirt a beul predates the fiddle in Scotland. And probably predates Gaelic, for that matter. Vocal dance music with semi-nonsensical words is found all over the world.
There never was a moment when instruments were "legalised". Churches don't operate that way. They just slowly lost their cultural hegemony.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: songs and tunes
Maybe it's in the pronounciation...
'TOON' or 'TYOON' or 'CHOON'?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by yhaalhouse
Re: songs and tunes
Oh, the church, I assumed they were blaming it on the Saxons so didn't want to meddle. The 'ban' I mean, not the poverty ...
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
Hey,
Can't find Fire in the Glen chords....anywhere...will figure out if nobody has them, seems simple
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by liam916
Re: songs and tunes
?????????
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by minijackpot
Re: songs and tunes
Over here in America, the word "Tune" is almost unnecessary because most(meaning, a little over 90%) of popular music is "song". People write lyrics for everything. I'm not even sure if i know anyone who uses the word "tune", ever, other than my session pals. And you will not hear a "piece" on the radio unless it's on a classical radio station(or you have access to satellite radio). So us Americans having the habit of calling tunes "songs", comes from the fact that we call all of our music "song", cause all of our music is "song" We don't have to get all worked up over it though. It's just a word.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: songs and tunes
>We don't have to get all worked up over it though. It's just a word.
Oh right, if you say so.
Vagina is a word and c**t is a word, both meaning the same. But some people take offence to the second word being used. Why is that?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Rudall the time
Re: songs and tunes
Ok Rudall i get your point. But would you be offended if a little kid that didn't know what a meant said it? Some of us are really poorly educated when it comes to music. I myself, learned the word "piece" very very late in my piano studies. But we don't say the word "song" knowing that we should call it a "tune". Thats when it gets offensive. It's all we know how to say. (just like the word love*which has about 6 different meanings, outside of English)
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: songs and tunes
llig: bug*er off.
fiddlelearner: it's a small thing, but it's important to use the right word, because it makes you seem ignorant if you don't. It doesn't matter what the history of it is. Melodies played on instruments and not sung are tunes, not songs.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by kennedy
Re: songs and tunes
Digital audio devices and software (even iTunes) tend to refer to a piece of music a Song or a Track but not a Tune. A lot of (most?) people mainly access music using such devices nowadays.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by harmonic miner
Re: songs and tunes
Thanks for understanding Kennedy. But so you know, i avoid letting the word "song" slip out when i mean "tune". Someone corrected me a looong time ago when i 1st started posting on this website. I'm just standing at the defense of those that are ignorant. And the reality is, if we don't know, we are ignorant, and the average American doesn't know. I just want everyone to understand that we don't go around blatantly calling tunes "songs" to offend the Irish culture. But like i said before, for some reason, ignorance is offensive.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: songs and tunes
Please do us all a favor and give up defending the ignorant. It only makes other people think all of us are that way, and then you see the casual anti-American swipes I'm starting to see on this board more often now then I ever have.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by kennedy
Re: songs and tunes
that rubbish you hear Kenny G playing in hotel elevators all over the US, what are those noises called?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Theirlandais
Re: songs and tunes
Elevator musak?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by John Culhane
Re: songs and tunes
"Oh, the church, I assumed they were blaming it on the Saxons"
They probably were.
I'm sure they have way of seeing the (Irish) House Dance Act of 1935 as an English Protestant conspiracy.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: songs and tunes
It's not their fault that they don't know. Maybe someone that does know should come over here and teach them instead of getting all upset and offended. And you can't deny that over here in America, a lot... A LOT of people don't know squat about music. All they know is that they like it.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: songs and tunes
Me dumb American. Me no know. Ooga ma booga.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: songs and tunes
Kennedy: " ...but it's important to use the right word, because it makes you seem ignorant if you don't."
Indeed, you are right ...
,,, and also consider these phrases:
"Tune up" = Tune your instrument to the correct pitch.
"Sing up" = Sing louder.
... and also this saying:
"It's the singer, not the song"
"It's the tuner, not the tune" - wouldn't have the same meaning, would it? ....
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: songs and tunes
There is a widely held belief here in the islands to the upper left of Europe that Americans o th e whole don't have much 'general knowledge', are rather kept in a shallow dark naivity and are easily startled & astounded with fairly moderate demonstrations of information and trivia.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by yhaalhouse
Re: songs and tunes
'on the whole'...
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by yhaalhouse
Re: songs and tunes
"Oh, the church, I assumed they were blaming it on the Saxons"
I think people in power, whoever they are, get uneasy if the masses seem to be onto a good thing. So they ban it or tax it.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by minijackpot
Re: songs and tunes
Yes, yhaalhouse, that's true, and it's been that way for a very long time. It still doesn't excuse the insults that some of us have to endure on behalf of the entire US population. Especially on this board---I've been reading many more anti-American comments here in the last few months, and I'm not sure what's causing it. I don't like it, that's for sure, and I can't be the only one.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by kennedy
Re: songs and tunes
I do think about the concept of 1 person virtually destroying the fragments of a culture, due to ignorance. I look back and it has happened. I think Columbus calling the natives here "Indians" is one of the more... disappointing ones that i've discovered.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by fiddlelearner
Re: songs and tunes
>> Someone corrected me a looong time ago when i 1st started posting on this website.
LOL, wasn't that like 6 months ago, fiddlelearner?
I wouldn't necessarily blame it on iTunes, which has only been around roughly as long as this forum... I think fiddlelearner got it right. In the US, and many other places, the majority of music that people grew up with was actually songs. So that's the word that we naturally associate with a short pieces of music. I made the mistake of calling them songs when I first started. And I have yet to see a beginner that didn't need to be corrected. But as soon as people get corrected, they generally learn, and stop calling them songs...
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Reverend
Re: songs and tunes
Maybe that's it Mix - they are using the word that is less ambigious - not both a noun and a verb - and so more easily translated. Respect for other cultures. Like llig said.
Perhaps.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
Human ignorance knows no geopolitical bounds.
Some folks like to take potshots at us Yanks because of our imperialist approach to "diplomacy." That's understandable. But they forget that many of us, as individuals, are often just as disappointed (I'm being polite) in our government's behavior as anyone. And it's not uncommon for folks to forget that we're a huge (310 million), diverse population run as a republic (not a pure democracy). Yanks don't all think alike, don't all suffer the same levels of edufication, and we don't have much voice in how the corporate-military complex runs the show.
Regardless, when we generalize about people this way, it dehumanizes them. Makes it easier to deride or dismiss them.
FWIW, I don't know anyone on the west side of the pond who actually plays this music who would call a tune a song.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: songs and tunes
Where I grew up in the USA, many fiddle tunes were called "this one."
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by horatio spens the blademan
Re: songs and tunes
It is the destiny of Americans, as is widely known, to constantly be begged to set things right in the wilting wider world. This, yes, includes encouraging less rigorous cultures to once again properly attach the term “song” to anything even remotely musical: humpback whales, Volga boatmen, Eurovision entrants, birds, Andrew Lloyd Webber, siamangs, the smiling Irish peasantry, and the wind through the sycamores.
I’m dead certain that Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Abe Lincoln, Annie Oakley, John Wayne, and Audie Murphy called any and all music “songs,” so I reckon the issue is settled, isn’t it?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: songs and tunes
"FWIW, I don't know anyone on the west side of the pond who actually plays this music who would call a tune a song." Will Harmon
Online I'd say the term almost always comes from the US. That said any americans I've ever had a tune with (quite a few), call a tune a tune. I hear it from some of the musically ignorant here in scotland also.
Online the fora are awash with it, but that in it's self doesn't signal the end of the world as we know it : >)
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Solidmahog
Re: songs and tunes
I was part serious. Could it be that only the one noun found its way into widespread use in American english because immigrants had a range of first languages ?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
No it couldn't, because this is a RECENT innovation. When I lived in the US in the 1970s I never encountered it.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: songs and tunes
Could blame it on itunes, but then the Apple subculture might claim it was being victimised
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
Often among American traditional musicians I hear the opposite.
[After a song] 'That's a great tune.'
[My smart ass] 'Yes, and the lyrics were good, too.'
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: songs and tunes
Normandy.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by saltcast
Re: songs and tunes
As an American, all I really want to know is why Newcastle United is sometimes refered to as The Toon?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: songs and tunes
coz it would be stupid to call them 'The Song'
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by cStu
Re: songs and tunes
Where do whale songs fit in all this?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by MorganYYZ
Re: songs and tunes
"As an American, all I really want to know is why Newcastle United is sometimes refered to as The Toon?"
Have you heard a proper Geordie accent?
"I'm ganning doon the toon and then I'm ganning hyem agin" Or something like that. No doubt there is 'Larn Yerself Geordie' somewhere on YouTube.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by minijackpot
Re: songs and tunes
"The Town" eh? I thought that seemed too obvious. I thought perhaps it was some sort of slang Geordie term for "under constant threat of religation"
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: songs and tunes
I remember encountering the “song” usage at least as far back as the early 1960’s and not infrequently ever since. It was probably common even earlier.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Bob himself
Re: songs and tunes
I never have any problem with ignorance. Though I do, however, consider those who poor scorn on ignorance to be the obnoxious of gloats.
We are all born ignorant, and life's journey is merely the ongoing quest of its irradiation
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by ...
Re: songs and tunes
Who are you and what have you done with Michael Gill?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: songs and tunes
the most obnoxious of gloats
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by ...
Re: songs and tunes
It's Retsim Gill's dailysex that gets his murds woddled. I know exactly what he means except for the bits I don't understand, but the bits I don't understand are sometimes the best bits. "obnoxious of gloats..." it's poetry, man.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by gam
Re: songs and tunes
At my age life's journey seems to include a gradual loss of memory. But I suppose, Mr. Leahcim, you are waxing poetically about the journey of life.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: songs and tunes
Did he meam obnoxious of goats ? - he usually does.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by ormepipes
Re: songs and tunes
This is all troubling and controversial of course, but what's deeply and mindbogglingly ironic is the fact that Tommy TUNE is a SONG and dance man.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ZZ-CqtHjAnk/SdOtWs-0V1I/AAAAAAABXf8/rMr16_Hk4PE/s400/Tommy+Tune.jpg
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: songs and tunes
I like more details about the irradiation bit;
http://fairfoodfight.com/2010/07/14/cafos-irradiation-and-you/
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: songs and tunes
Thanks for your comment. A point that occurs to me is that Carolan's acredited note sequences are commonly referred to as tunes, but I am pretty sure they were written as songs in praise of his friends and sponsors. Did he invent the idea, or was he following common practice?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by greg sheils
Re: songs and tunes
He didn't write songs.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by gam
Re: songs and tunes
How can you lot make something that is so easy so difficult?
If a song is performed without the words its a tune. If a tune has words sung to it, its a song.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by ormepipes
Re: songs and tunes
Actually, he did write words for some of them, as I understand. In fact, I seem to recall reading that his contribution to "Sidhe bheag, shidh mhor" was more lyrical than melodic - the tune was an older one, wasn't it?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: songs and tunes
ormepipes, you seem to have missed that the distinction you're making was made right up front, in the OP.
But thanks for your righteous echo anyway.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: songs and tunes
"We are all born ignorant, and life's journey is merely the ongoing quest of its irradiation"
eradication, perhaps, is what's meant?
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: songs and tunes
Yes, Jon, unless you're using radiation to remove the ignorant
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: songs and tunes
Would that the idiots who built nuclear reactors in a seismologically active area could be irradiated/eradicated to stop 'em doing it again...
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by john knoss
Re: songs and tunes
sorry, that comment not relevant to the OP; just the way I'm thinking.
# Posted on March 30th 2011 by john knoss
Interim round up...
For all US chaps (and other hot water bottle collectors) who have trouble with general knowledge and, yes! irony, go to this link and all will be explained...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgmIWOzQRTA
Wig glue upon you...
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by yhaalhouse
Re: songs and tunes
Play loads of tunes with loads of folks here in the U.S. Have only encountered one fellow who calls tunes songs. I'll see if I can straighten that out.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by oriley
Re: songs and tunes
that island is a lot smaller than I'd imagined it
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by airport
Re: songs and tunes
I know! Maybe I got to see it at a lower tide when I was there...The clip makes the island look to be a lot closer to shore too. For some reason, I had it as being farther out to sea. It was a lucky break how the Atlantic was so calm for that shoot.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: songs and tunes
LOL, great clip, yhaalhouse! I love the crowd forming to wait for the drama of high tide!
And the caption. Now we can expect a fare rising flood of newbies will start threads asking for the dots to the song (ahem), "Accordion on the Rock."
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Will Harmon
Re: songs and tunes
In the event of a water landing, your flotation device will be underneath the bass reeds of your accordion.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: songs and tunes
Then of course an air is the tune for a song!
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by curamach
Re: songs and tunes
I had heard about some ancient cultures banishing accordion players to rocky out-croppings. I didn't know that custom still existed.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: songs and tunes
worse , john knoss, if it's already shared right
around the northern hemisphere which seems to be the consensus.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: songs and tunes
As mentioned by Rev and others above, American popular culture simply does not have the wealth of tune types found in traditional Irish music. So ‘song’ is a useful one-size-fits-all term. But calling a tune a song is like calling a jig a polka: confusing at best and just plain wrong.
But can someone tell me the difference between ‘ceol’ and ‘foinn’?
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by fidkid
Re: songs and tunes
I believe the Eskimos have the best solution. They simply put the accordion players to sea on an ice berg.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: songs and tunes
Lyrics tend to affect how a tune is played. If it constricts variation too much you may lose one of the good things about playing with tunes.
As far as using the terms interchangeably I have experienced jazz singers commonly referring to their songs as tunes.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: songs and tunes
"As mentioned by Rev and others above, American popular culture simply does not have the wealth of tune types found in traditional Irish music."
That's nonsense. American popular culture has absorbed Russian Jewish theatre songs, Hawaiian dances, several different kinds of Latin American music, gospel, blues, rap, Central European military marches, Czech/Polish oompah, English music hall, German Protestant hymns, Japanese folktunes in video games... amounting to a vastly wider range of musical idioms than you get in Irish music.
Most Americans don't think about all that but they can't help hearing it.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: songs and tunes
That type of absorption tends to produce homogeneity. Is the result to be considered ' a wealth of tune types ' ?
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: songs and tunes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tdZk2rzJuY&feature=related
get real you blokes.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: songs and tunes
"Lyrics tend to affect how a tune is played. If it constricts variation too much you may lose one of the good things about playing with tunes. " Maybe if they are a set of banal pop song lyrics fitted to the tune. But most multi-verse folk song lyrics require stretching and pulling of a tune to fit the words.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
"That type of absorption tends to produce homogeneity."
It hasn't. Unless you can't tell Lady Gaga from a college marching band.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: songs and tunes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5F9iWEYsng&feature=related
so missing out with this stuff.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: songs and tunes
"But most multi-verse folk song lyrics require stretching and pulling of a tune to fit the words." David50
Never a truer word said on that issue, but I always regarded that as one of those little details you pick up on the way when dealing with tunes that double with song melodies in both irish and scots trad. Often the stretching varies with the individual singer but thats another detail that just adds to hazard of jumping in there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj5Q_I6YAFU
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Solidmahog
Re: songs and tunes
Jack, I'm not saying that other genres and influences don't exist here—Irish traditional music, obviously, is one. Plus countless other musics from ethnicities from across the globe. The predominant commercial ‘style’ you will hear, though, that drowns out all the others like a 747 flying over a wren’s nest is 4/4 time, maybe with a slight blues shuffle if they’re getting funky. With lyrics. It’s a formula.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by fidkid
Re: songs and tunes
Thracians were always sulking, claiming superiority when it came to music, saying Roman music was inferior. Of course Rome had years before blithely soaked up all Thracian music, all Thracian gods, all of their cuisine and their culture—as well as all of that same stuff from Rome’s other colonies.
At home, Romans would slip on headphones and enjoy making mash-ups of all that diverse cultural bootie in their cushy home recording studios, while some truly fabulous-looking Nubians—lounging over there on that triclinium upholstered with Etruscan silk—peeled grapes for them.
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: songs and tunes
I remember reading about that in my high school history books New Pure Drops - That was primarily under the reign of Mixmaster Gluteous Maximus. However, I'm told busting rhymes in Latin was very difficult. Very much along the lines previous comments about words being stretched or contracted to fit existing melody lines in folk tunes.
Rapito ergo sum
# Posted on March 31st 2011 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: songs and tunes
I got yelled at back in my early days by someone here for calling a tune a song. Haven't dared to do it since then.
# Posted on April 1st 2011 by sara505sings
Re: songs and tunes
Is this calling a tune a song really an American thing?? What word do the Germans use for "tune?" Lied for song but what for tune? What about French? or Greek? or....
If it really is a US thing, it seems to me that the explanation already offered that the vast majority of popular music in the US really is song (well, you may have to stretch the concept a bit, but at least there is someone "singing" words or syllables). So, as Will suggested folks tend to apply the term song to any short musical work...or indeed any work. I've heard Mozart Symphonies referred to as "songs." That said, it seems to me this sort of confusion is just a matter of the active vocabulary of the people involved. And that, I think, is declining everywhere.
I must admit to a bit of frustration at being slagged because I'm from the US. Go ahead and jump on my opinions, but don't blame them on where I live.
# Posted on April 1st 2011 by cboody
Re: songs and tunes
This isn't something I've paid attention to either way, to be honest, but I think like cboody and Will has said, it's just a matter of the active vocabulary of the individuals involved, not something that can be generalized to an entire country. Certainly American bluegrass and old-time players would know the difference between a song and a tune! I suppose in Scotland and Ireland, trad music is around a bit more for people who are not into it to hear. Even if you hate the stuff with a passion, you'll have encountered it at a university society ceilidh, wedding, etc.
# Posted on April 1st 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: songs and tunes
If its something you haven't paid attention to then the association of the word "song" with singing and the human voice may be weaker for you that some people. For me it is that association, rather than anything to so with trad music, that makes it seem so wrong. As someone said at the top songs have words, that's all there is to it.
# Posted on April 1st 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
Or maybe the association with a vocalisation with or without a "message" - lets the birds and whales in.
# Posted on April 1st 2011 by David50
Re: songs and tunes
"He [Carolan] didn't write songs."
He didn't write tunes either.
# Posted on April 8th 2011 by Weejie
Re: songs and tunes
Of course he wrote songs.
# Posted on April 8th 2011 by Bob himself
Re: songs and tunes
"Of course he wrote songs."
As this thread starts off on a pedantic theme, it seems fitting to be pedantic on this subject.
Although it appears that Carolan was a good reader in the days before he contracted smallpox, there is no record of him actually writing any of his songs or poems - indeed, it is said that he composed his music on the buttons of his coat.
He composed music, songs and poetry but didn't write any of it.
# Posted on April 8th 2011 by Weejie
Re: songs and tunes
Weejie, when you're too pedantic for me, I think you've really surpassed yourself.
We usually allow that Helen Keller "wrote" her autobiography, Stevie Wonder "writes" his songs, and Ray Charles "wrote" his arrangements. Can we not do the same courtesy to an old blind harper?
# Posted on April 8th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: songs and tunes
"We usually allow that Helen Keller "wrote" her autobiography, Stevie Wonder "writes" his songs, and Ray Charles "wrote" his arrangements. Can we not do the same courtesy to an old blind harper?"
Well, at no time does O'Sullivan say that Carolan "wrote" anything, but I'm willing to accept the slight discrepancy. Then again, I'm willing to accept the word "song" instead of "tune", unlike the pedants contributing to this rather pointless thread - which seems to serve as a springboard for anti-American sentiment.
# Posted on April 8th 2011 by Weejie
Re: songs and tunes
PS - Helen Keller did indeed write her autobiography:
"Braille has been a most precious aid to me in many ways. It made my going to college possible--it was the only method by which I could take notes of lectures. All my examination papers were copied for me in this system. I use Braille as a spider uses its web--to catch thoughts that flit across my mind for speeches, messages and manuscripts."
# Posted on April 8th 2011 by Weejie