Yes, I chickened out. I did initially put the words ‘Girls of Belfast’ into the A.I. Image generator but the result was not at all flattering, and having met a few Northern Irish women I have no intention of getting on their wrong side. A new tune this week, this time it’s the first tune in the Belfast to New York set, joining John Ryan’s Polka (see previous blog post) and New York Girls (see future blog post).
First things first, it's traditional, it's Irish, it’s a jig, and a pretty standard one at that. It’s 6/8 time, which means you are counting the beats in each bar like this: 1 2 3 2 2 3 (not 1 2 3 4 5 6, for that would be silly, musicians never count past 4!) What’s more, each bar in the tune is a fairly common example of a jig rhythm.
Jigs Rhythms Exercise.
Start by learning to count like a robot, none of this ‘1! take a look at the ceiling, 2! wander around the living room, 3! sit down have some Madeira m’dear.’ No, no, you must count the numbers 1 2 3 2 2 3, in that order, like you have just been newly birthed from Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. You don’t have to count fast, just regular, each number lasting the same amount of time. Then accent the 1 and the second 2 (the numbers in bold). You can do this by just saying them a little louder and/or tapping your foot on these numbers. This separates the bar into two sets of three beats, which is what really defines a jig as a jig.
Now, either clap, tap or play a single note on your instrument in time with the underlined numbers in the following examples:
Note: bar numbers refer to the bars in the tune that use this rhythm.
Example 1. (Bars 1, 5 & 13)
1 2 3 2 2 3
Example 2. (Bars 4, 8, 10, 12 & 16)
1 2 3 2 2 3
Example 3. (Bars 3, 7, 11 & 15)
1 2 3 2 2 3
Example 4. (Bars 2, 6, & 14)
1 2 3 2 2 3
Now see if you can spot which bar from the tune has been left out and work out the rhythm for yourself. Comment below if you do.
Here is the tune itself in notation for fiddle and tablature for mandolin.
What else can be said? Well, the key for a start, let’s work it out.
Student: “The tune starts on an A, ends on an A, there are ten A major chords in the sequence, so it must be A Major right?”
Teacher: “Wrong!”
Student: “A minor?”
Teacher: “Nope.”
Student: “It’s something stupid isn’t it?”
Teacher: “Of course! It’s in D Major.”
But whilst we use the notes of D Major in this tune we are continually hugging the A note as the place we want to go back to. For those who wish to give this sociopathic disdain for the common D note a name it is A Mixylodian, well done those who got there first.
Rhythmic Deviance
This is a good tune for us to talk about rhythmic variation. This is quite a slow jig by all accounts which gives us the opportunity to mess around with the note values. The reason that we may want to do this is purely to give the tune a bit more character. Not that the tune hasn't got plenty of character played straight but by adding these 'frilly bits' we can personalise the tune to our own style. These frilly bits are to be used cautiously, too many and the tune becomes unrecognisable and if playing with others then listening to what else is being played, making a decision of whether a frilly bit fits in with what else is happening is crucial. Here is a version of the same tune but the first note in bars 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14 and 15 has been elongated, forcing the second to be shortened. This gives the tune an extra little skip to it, which I find pleasing at least.
Here is a play along backing track with both the straight versions, rhythmic variant and both together.
Have fun, look out for our next tune coming soon. Folk On People.
Chris
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Bar 9.
Will this post on Girls of Belfast be on patreon?)