Hornpipe Tempo

[hillfolk22]

What is the average tempo of most hornpipes?

And while I am asking... why are hornpipes notated one way yet played another way???

Laura

[hillfolk22]

Ok... I am going to add to the question.

I just visited ABC tunefinder.

I looked up Staten Island Hornpipe.

In the subtitle of one of the tunes suggested there it says that the tune is a hornpipe, reel..... this confuses me....

Is it played like a hornpipe or a reel?

My friend and I have been playing this tune. She plays it on her hammer dulcimer like a reel and I back her up on Guitar.
She asked me if she was playing it wrong since the title says hornpipe.
I thought perhaps she was.

So what is it then?

Laura

[Aodhan]

What is the average tempo of most hornpipes?

And while I am asking... why are hornpipes notated one way yet played another way???

Laura

Laura-

This was a post from my girlfriend (An Open Championship level Irish dancer), on the Crossings on almost exactly the same subject...

Reels are usually pretty fast, I think up around 113 for championships speed, a little faster for beginners, or even faster if you want.... Slip jigs are about the same, but you can play them slower if you want, you dont want them too fast though, it kills the gracefulness in the dancing. Treble jigs for beginners are anywhere from 84ish to 96ish, though the dancers will appreciate in the lower end of that range, for advanced, standard is right around 73. Hornpipes go at 110-115 for advanced, and 120 something for beginners. As for Set dances, the championship sets often go at about the same tempo as the dance whose rhythm they share, maybe a little slower. Hornpipe sets will go around 109, treble jig sets from 69 to 73. Sometimes a dancer will do a hornpipe set at a really slow speed like in the 69-80 range. If you're playing sets for dancers, ask them what speed, and they should be able to give you a metronome tempo, as they have to give that to the musician when they check in.
Now, there are also other sets that are traditional sets, including St Patricks Day, Job of Journeywork, Garden of Daisies, the Blackbird, King of the fairies, Jockey to the faire, and those will probably be at about the tempo of thier corresponding beginner dance (St. Patricks Day should be at about 94) (KOTF is also a popular non-trad set)

Hope that helps!

Aodhan

[Jens_Hoppe]

Well, I am no expert on the Staten Island in particular, but it certainly looks hornpipe-ish to me (the two identical quarter notes ending each section being a good indication thereof).

The question is whether it matters that much what you call the tune - because hornpipes and reels aren't that different after all... Yes, hornpipes are generally played with more swing (a more "dotted" rhythm if you will) than reels, and reels are generally played faster, but on the other hand reels can be played slowly, and reels do have an inherent amount of swing in them too. And sometimes hornpipes are played more or less straight, ie. with little or no swing...

The main difference IMHO lies in the melodic structure of the two kinds of tunes: Hornpipes are generally more melodically intricate, ie. featuring more unique, "interesting" phrases, triplets, etc., whereas reels tend to be more melodically simple, with many repeated sections.

But there is nothing to keep someone from slightly speeding up a hornpipe and ending with a reel of sorts (it will probably sound pretty sloppy though), and reels can be slowed down and have a bit extra swing added to make them more hornpipe-ish (but many reels will make for really boring hornpipes!).

Hornpipes are usually notated with straight eighth notes, but - as with reels (or jigs for that matter) - that doesn't mean you should play the notes completely straight. The "straight eighth note" notation is convenient because no other, more involved way of notating the tunes does a noticeably better job of describing what the tune actually sounds like. You have to know by ear and heart what a "hornpipe sounds like". Knowing that, you can add that sound to the information contained in the written notation, in order to end up with the final product. Note that notating hornpipes as "dotted eighth note - sixteenth note" pairs actually doesn't represent the tune any better than the straight notation. If anything, a more accurate notation would be for hornpipes to be in 12/8 rhythm, with each bar composed of four quarter note - eighth note pairs. That however makes for clunky reading...

Hope I helped muddy the waters a bit...

Jens

[Feadan]

Ok... I am going to add to the question.

I just visited ABC tunefinder.

I looked up Staten Island Hornpipe.

In the subtitle of one of the tunes suggested there it says that the tune is a hornpipe, reel..... this confuses me....

Is it played like a hornpipe or a reel?

It is a hornpipe. Taking hornpipes and turning them into reels is not an uncommon phenomenon :roll: . IMHO, it is usually to the detriment of the tune. Thus said, I feel that the hornpipe version of “The Staten Island Hornpipe” sounds better than the reel. I think it has far more character.

Cheers,
David

[SteveK]

Staten Island has turned into sort of a universal tune. Somewhere in my undexed tape collection I have it played by a Upiper. As I recall, it's taken at about regular hornpipe tempo. But along with Fishers and Rickett's Hornpipes, it is also played by American old time musicians. Often at pretty fast speeds. I have SI on a clawhammer banjo album along with those other two. The tempo isn't too fast but the tunes are not really played like hornpipes either.

Steve

[SteveK]

Out of curiosity I looked up Staten Island in the fiddler's companion. This is a valuable resource for tune histories. Here's part of what is says about Staten Island.

STATEN ISLAND (HORNPIPE). AKA and see "The Arranmore Ferry," "Burns' Hornpipe," "None So Pretty." Scottish, English, Irish, American; Hornpipe. USA; New England, southwestern Pa. Ireland, County Donegal. D Major. Standard. AABB. "Staten Island Hornpipe" was first printed in I.A. Aird's Selection of Scotch, English, Irish, and Foreign Airs, printed in Glasgow, c. 1780, in which it is identical to version played today. Burchenal associates the tune with the New England contra dance The Haymakers, or The Merry Haymakers. Bayard (1981) sees a general resemblance to "The Athole Volunteers" printed in McDonald's Gesto Collection. In Donegal the tune is known as "Arranmore Ferry."

Here's the address for searching the companion.

http://www.ceolas.org/cgi-bin/ht2/ht2-fc/case=yes

Steve

[Martin Milner]

The main difference IMHO lies in the melodic structure of the two kinds of tunes: Hornpipes are generally more melodically intricate, ie. featuring more unique, "interesting" phrases, triplets, etc., whereas reels tend to be more melodically simple, with many repeated sections.

Jens

Strangely, I observed a similar thing over a year ago, and got a raised eyebrow from Peter Laban. I found hornpipes more interesting, and was myself playing them more on my mandolin as a result.

Since then I've switched to reels on the whistle, though I think the reels I'm playing are modern creations.

[Jens_Hoppe]

Strangely, I observed a similar thing over a year ago, and got a raised eyebrow from Peter Laban.

Uh-oh, I guess that means I'm in trouble.

Edited to add:

Having done a search, I guess you are referring to <a href="http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php ... e">this</a> thread. Actually, it doesn't sound to me as if Peter was in serious disagreement with you. What I mean is that reels and hornpipes are rhythmically similar, but melodically very different. So you could convert one kind of tune to the other, but the result is often strange, because the two kinds of tunes are so melodically different...

[StevieJ]

There are many ways to skin a cat and many ways to play a tune. The same tune can sound lovely slow and fast. It just has to be played well.

Outside the strict requirements of dancers, a hornpipe or a reel can be played at a wide range of speeds with good results. A hornpipe isn't always necessarily slower than a reel.

I'd venture to suggest that, aside from typical differences in tune structure discussed by Jens, what makes a hornpipe sound like a hornpipe and a reel a reel has less to do with tempo and more to do with the phrasing.

As an experiment and to try to illustrate the point I have just recorded <a href="http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/b ... .mp3">this little clip</a> of 8 bars of a common hornpipe and a common reel that have very similar patterns of notes. I tried to keep the same tempo. Obviously the phrase endings are constructed very differently but in the parts that are the same, I naturally want to play them slightly differently.

As for why hornpipes, reels and jigs are not written the way they are played: 1) different people actually play them quite differently 2) notating any one style accurately as regards note lengths would be much harder to read, and is actually unnecessary. Imagine reading a newspaper and having marks to show you how exactly each word in the sentence should be emphasized.

BTW if you want to hear Staten Island played fast and sounding good, I have a recording of Frankie Gavin playing it somewhere, I think it's on his Up and Away record. The set I think is called "McLaughlin's Flings", the reference being to Derry fiddler Dermot McLaughlin.

[Ridseard]

Just an observation about differences between notation and the way a tune is played. This happens also in classical music. Consider a Johann Strauss waltz. There is usually an oom-pah-pah rhythmic accompainment (by the string basses and French horns). Many orchestras play these squarely on the beats (as written), 1 (oom), 2 (pah), 3 (pah), etc. However, some European orchestras, most notably the Vienna Philharmonic, play it as follows: oom is squarely on the 1st beat of each measure; the first pah is slightly before the 2nd beat, and the second pah lags slightly behind the 3rd beat. It makes the waltz skip along rather than having a perfectly smooth flow.

[The Weekenders]

man, I would never say hornpipes are more melodically interesting or intricate. Its all in the approach.

I think that most hornpipes sound more familiar to non-Irish but European ears in terms of the way they can be harmonized. They are much easier to play harmony to on your secondary melody instrument, for example, if you are so inclined.

I also think that hornpipes are more RHYTHMICALLY DETERMINED to cadence. When you reach the end of the phrase you sometimes want to just stomp your foot because its so definitive, whereas I sometimes find that reels want to keep "spinning" (for want of better word) into next phrase or repeat or have multiple note upbeats that sort of weaken the sense of section endings.

[FJohnSharp]

Just an observation about differences between notation and the way a tune is played. This happens also in classical music. Consider a Johann Strauss waltz. There is usually an oom-pah-pah rhythmic accompainment (by the string basses and French horns). Many orchestras play these squarely on the beats (as written), 1 (oom), 2 (pah), 3 (pah), etc. However, some European orchestras, most notably the Vienna Philharmonic, play it as follows: oom is squarely on the 1st beat of each measure; the first pah is slightly before the 2nd beat, and the second pah lags slightly behind the 3rd beat. It makes the waltz skip along rather than having a perfectly smooth flow.

Jazz has the same thing. Swing is written one way and played another. I think it's too hard to write and to read it if its cluttered up with all the dotted notes.

[Ridseard]

Jazz has the same thing. Swing is written one way and played another. I think it's too hard to write and to read it if its cluttered up with all the dotted notes.

Also, the swing is not exactly like a dotted eighth and sixteenth anyway. It's not even like a quarter and eighth note in a triplet time (6/8 or 12/8 ). Since there's no exact notation, one just has to "feel" it. It is, however, so natural that I wonder whether swing might be synchronized with some kind of rhythm in our hypothalamus or something.

[hillfolk22]

Thanks to all of your replies folks.

Right now I am a wee bit ticked off at myself.

I am not much of a writer, however, in keeping with why I started this thread I was in the process of writing a delightful little story that I wanted to share with you folks about the gig my friend and I played at an adult day care center. (Staten Island Hornpipe) was one of the tunes played in that gig... thus the reason for my asking.

I was writing down my thoughts about the gig on word perfect when the phone rang just as I was saving it causing me to jump and click no save rather than save.... Arggggg!!!! and when will I get a quite moment like that again or the free time to rewrite it?

So, some american fiddle tune hornpipes are played as reels. Hmmm.. My friend learned this tune at a Hammer Dulcimer workshop. And learned it as a reel. Personally, I think it sounds better as a hornpipe as well.

I love the B part with the C natural. It is a pleasure to play on Guitar... at least with strumming.

Perhaps when I recollect my thoughts I will share the Adult Day Care Gig...Right now, the kids are arriving from school and I am so angry... ( I am not a violent person however I could throw the phone out the window right now if I did not need it for this hook up! )

Instant writers block!

Thanks again,

Laura