Friday, April 10th, 2009
Since so much of Irish music is geared towards dancing, it makes sense to take a look at the different forms of Irish dancing — because here is not just one form. There are many.
Irish music is made up of a huge collection of tunes. Each tune is a melody that contains two or more parts. Three or four parts is not unusual, but two parts is most common. So it is common to speak of the “A” part and the “B” part. Each part repeats once before moving on to the next part, and the entire tune is generally played twice.
Although it is common, these days, to see a guitar or other chording instrument in a session, that is largely because Irish music has become more widely known in areas of the world where accompaniment is the norm. For that reason, many of the new tune collections that are printed up have chords in them. But in the old, traditional collections, there is not one chord to be found.
There are five basic kinds of tunes in Irish music, the waltz, the reel, the jig, the hornpipe, and the polka.
Whichever you like to have as your dancing background is up to your own taste.
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Tags: Irish Dance Music cd