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The tunes in this section are my selections from various sources,
mainly American and British.
I have put tunes from the Celtic areas of the British Isles (Scotland,
Shetland, Wales, etc.) in the
Celtic section and the Irish tunes in the
Irish
section
to break up the very large collection of
tunes into managable groups. I have included some Irish and
Scottish tunes in this section instead of the Celtic or Irish sections when they are
well known to American musicians
("Old Mother Flanagan"
is one example). There are also some Canadian tunes, a French polka
("Polka du Périgord")
and a waltz from Finland
("Emma's Waltz").
Tunes are most often used for dancing but there are a number of "listening tunes" that were played simply for the sound of the interesting melody. Dance tunes most often have a two part structure with each part being repeated once before repeating the entire tune for as long as the dance caller requires (AABBAABB...). Some tunes do have more parts, all of which may or may not be repeated. Most parts are either four or eight measures long although some tunes (probably not used for dancing) have odd measures of differing numbers of beats or extra measures inserted (or deleted). These are usually called "crooked tunes" by the players. The version of "Cherokee Shuffle" in D is a good example'. As I said in the Preface, I am not a dancer and I can't describe much of anything about dance steps. The types of dances found in traditional music are:
Dances in the US are usually reels, either with square dances or contra (line) dances with an occasional waltz. The other types appear in immigrant communities in the US or in the UK, Scotland and Ireland. There is a page of tune types in this section. Unlike songs that have lyrics or themes from which to draw titles, instrumental tunes have no content from which to form a title. The titles, therefore, are sometimes whimsical. Some of my favorites are: I have paid a lot of attention to Samuel Bayard's collections. In particular, I have included most of the tunes that he collected from Mrs. Sarah Armstrong who lived near Derry in Westmoreland County Pennsylvania and who contributed at least a third of the tunes printed in Hill Country Tunes published in 1944. The migration of traditional tunes from Scotland, through Ulster and into America is very well explained in Fiona Ritchie's Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia. Traditional tunes that have a long history often use the older modal scales rather than the major or minor scales used by more modern compositions. The scales most often seen in traditional tunes are major, minor, mixolydian (major with a flattened 7th) and dorian (minor with sharpened 6th). This is sometimes misinterpreted by modern players who want to resolve modal tunes into major or minor models. Samuel Bayard once pointed out that most truly traditional players have no musical training whatsoever and are content to let a tune end on whatever note it happens to end on without trying to resolve it to anything. Some tunes further confuse players by changing modes, having the A part in one mode and the B part in a related but different mode, e.g: "Dust in the Lane" that switches between A minor and A dorian. (Click here for a brief explanation of modal scales.) In general, American tunes and American versions of European tunes are more plain and repetitious than European tunes, as might be expected in the no-nonsense, frontier, pioneering setting of the American Appalachians. Most of the tunes are of undetermined age although some of them are possibly creations of more recent musicians, e.g.: "Greasy String", "Kitchen Girl" and "Old Grey Cat" were recorded from the playing of Henry Reed but whether he composed them or learned them from other players is unknown. |
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Some sources (original or traditional) of some of these tunes are:
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