>I've been learning Shetland fiddle tunes recently. There's one aspect of a
>lot of the tunes that made me curious: many seem to be 4 bars A (with
>repeat) followed by 4 bars B (with repeat) -- half the length of the 32 bar
>contradance music that I'm also working on.
A great deal of Scottish music is like that too. To use it for contra
dancing, I think the best thing to do is keep track of how many times you
play it and play those short reels an even number of times so it doesn't
throw off dancers who are cuing from the phrasing (or worse, confuse the
caller). In Cape Breton, it doesn't matter to the dances. I have wondered
if all those great short reels don't get used for Scottish Country dancing
because of the phrasing, but it has been so long since I've gone to SCD
that I can't remember. Anybody? Probably they're okay as long as the
musicians make the total amount of music come out okay. At the few contra
dances I've been to where Cape Breton fiddlers were playing, the caller has
suggested playing a lot of jigs, since they're, almost without exception,
standard length.
- Kate D.
--
Kate Dunlay & David Greenberg
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
http://www.total.net/~dungreen
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