Nigel Gatherer wrote: > Could the eightsome reel benefit from specially written measured tunes? > It's just that whenever I've played for it we've played a series of > reels AABBAB, giving 24 bars - it's difficult when you're not used to > it! Would 12-bar reels played make sense from the dancer's point of > view? I really mean would it make any difference to the dancers? > Confuse the heck out of the musicians!
In the RSCDS there's a saying that "the music will tell you what to do." This is an exaggeration but dancers do rely on the music, either consciously or unconsciously, to provide clues as to what comes next, so it's a good practice to match its phrases to the dance figures if possible. In the Eightsome Reel which has 8-bar figures I don't think it would be a good idea to substitute a 12x4 tune for an 8x6 one, since some of the figures would be cross-phrased. The more aware dancers would likely opine that the music doesn't fit the dance while those not as attuned to the music would probably just have a sense that something's not quite right! Coincidentally, the worst example of the music not matching the dance that I've encountered was with Foss' Wee Cooper o' Fife, which Anselm already mentioned. It's a 40-bar reel in 4 10-bar phrases and one evening the musicians who were playing for a class I attended didn't have the music so decided to substitute a reel with 5 8-bar phrases. The music started and chaos quickly ensued! -Steve -- Steve Wyrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Concord, California Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
