[Musicians] worthiness of a tune for contra?

James Saxe via Musicians musicians at lists.sharedweight.net
Thu Jul 30 01:58:06 PDT 2015


I'm a mere caller and pretty much a musical muggle, but
here are some observations about the jig for what they're
worth.

First off, in the video the jig is played at about 93 or 94
beats per minute (based on my stopwatch timing, which also
appears to agree closely with the YouTube time counter).
You might get a better idea of how it would sound as a dance
tuen by playing it at 1.25x speed.  (Click on the gear-shaped
"Settings" button near the lower right of the YouTube video
frame; then click on the Speed box (typically defaulting
to "Normal"); then click "1.25" in the menu that pops up.
YouTube should then play at 1.25x normal speed but with the
audio pitch-shifted back down to normal pitch.)

Also, the jig is played 3 1/2 times through--112 bars (not
counting the lead-in and the extra ending notes).  I'd
count this as AABBAABBAABBAA, but when Emily writes about

> ... weird phrasing (especially in the A) ...

I'm not sure whether what she means by "the A" what I've
just indicated as the A part or whether she means what I'm
calling the B part.  The part where I think the phrasing
is most likely to be deceptive is beats 13-16 of what I
reckon as the B part.  Specifically, I think it may be
easy to hear that part as if beat 13 were beat 1 of a new
phrase.  On repeated listening, I find that familiarity
with the tune has made me far less tempted to fall into
mis-hearing the phrasing in that way.

Bottom line:  I think it could be an OK (but unspectacular)
contra dance tune if played at a normal dance tempo.  It
could be helpful for the band to give a clear 4-beat intro
(so it's absolutely unambiguous which beat is beat 1 of
the first A1 and for the caller to indicate correct timing
clearly and confidently during the first couple rounds,
to help dancers lock onto hearing the phrasing correctly.

--Jim

> On Jul 29, 2015, at 7:48 PM, Emily Addison via Musicians <musicians at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> 
> Hello fellow musicians!
> 
> I've had the following two tunes suggested for our contra band.  The reel at the end seems straight forward (with some doubling up) but the jig seems to have really weird phrasing (especially in the A) that would make it hard for dancers to follow. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DkJQ9xNGuU
> 
> I'm curious what you guys think!
> 
> Emily in Ottawa
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