Types of Tunes
Types of Tunes
Folk tunes in Britain and Ireland are grouped by their rhythmic characteristics or time signatures; often this is because they are the traditional tune for a particular type of dancing. Just as people today dance at weddings, parties and clubs, in the past social dancing to live music also formed an important part of family and community gatherings. Dances have travelled across regional and national borders for centuries and been enjoyed by all sections of communities – from royal courts to village squares. This accounts for some of the similarities between the types of folk tunes played in England and those found in other countries.
The most common types of English folk tune are jigs, polkas, hornpipes, waltzes and reels, and you can find out more about these and see examples below. These types of tune have the same titles as the types of dance they are played for.
Structure
The structure of an English folk tune is usually quite short. A typical tune will be made up of an 8 bar phrase (commonly called an ‘A’ part), which repeats, and then a subsequent 8 bar phrase (‘B’ part), which also repeats. In practice, the whole tune (AABB) would be played through a few times before finishing. It is common for tunes to be played in ‘sets’ – one tune played a few times, followed by a second complementary tune – before stopping or continuing into additional tunes.
There are of course, many exceptions to the ‘typical’ example above such as:
- some tunes having more parts than just As and Bs (eg. A, B, C, D etc)
- some having more than 8 bars within each part
- some do not repeat some of the parts
- some tunes repeat different parts at different times!
