Favorite Hornpipe?

[BBarton]

I second Allen H -- although they're played a lot, I still like Rights of Man and Rickett's on either banjo or mandolin. But there are so many...

[Eddie Sheehy]

My 3 favs right now are:

The Glengeigh Hornpipe
The Galway Hornpipe
The Belfast Hornpipe

[mandocrucian]

Bantry Bay
(favorite recorded rendition by Martin Byrnes)

also:
Trumpet Hornpipe
(have liked this since hearing on both an early High Level Ranters LP and on Fairport's "Babbacome Lee" ; no doubt folk in the UK are really tired of it because it was used as a TV theme)

Barrington Hornpipe
(a Northumbrian tune (I suppose) off of Alaistair Anderson's "Concertina Workshop" album

[David Surette]

Another vote for Byrne's, and how about The Stage? Great tune in G.

[liestman]

Belfast, The Acrobat, City of Savannah, and The Flowing Tide for me please.

[Gelsenbury]

You are right, Downfall of Paris seems to be listed as a set dance everywhere. I must admit that I don't really know what a set dance is. The piece always sounded hornpipey to me.

[Randi Gormley]

Gelsonbury, if nobody pipes up, I'll hit up some of the dancers in my group on Monday for a definition. I know we play a couple-three when we're playing for dancers (Sweets of May and St. Patrick's Day come immediately to mind) and they're very specific dances with very specific steps that start and end after a set time, that everybody always dances it exactly regardless of where they live, but there may be a much better definition.

[Tosh Marshall]

Because I'm from that side of the Pennines, I'd have to say Manchester Hornpipe aka Ricketts Hornpipe. For my friends on t'other side I would choose the Sheffield Hornpipe..........

[JeffD]

I'd have to say Manchester Hornpipe aka Ricketts Hornpipe. ...

I love that tune. I play it often.

I was at a jam in far western NY and brought that tune out innocently enough. One of the folks I was jamming with, who I was later to learn was Jim Kimball, the fiddler, musicologist, and music professor at SUNY Geneseo, was particularly delighted. He explained that the tune had kind of lost favor in local jams in upstate New York, which was and is a shame, because it is a great tune. Rickets Hornpipe was apparently a very very popular in this part of the country back in the way back.

[Sandy Beckler]

I only know two hornpipes so far: Off to California, and Harvest Home. I love their rhythm and would like to learn a couple more (King of the Faeries and Chief O'Neill's Favorite are on the short list).

I play them dotted, but for some reason I get hand cramps (right hand) when I do that. I never get hand cramps playing them like a reel, or whenever I play a jig. Does anyone else have this problem? I'm not playing particularly fast, so that's not my issue.

Anne.

It may be too late Anne....you may be hooked!

Just finished "London Hornpipe" and really like it, before that "Ball and Chain Hornpipe" (another good one) and am about to start "Witch of the Glen"

Sandy

[Bertram Henze]

I play them dotted, but for some reason I get hand cramps (right hand) when I do that. I never get hand cramps playing them like a reel, or whenever I play a jig. Does anyone else have this problem? I'm not playing particularly fast, so that's not my issue.

Sounds like an attempt at concious control vs. natural feel. It is important to put emphasis on the long notes and always pick them downwards if possible (it is even better to leave a short note out if it helps to maintain pick direction). I tend to feel a hornpipe like a jig, i.e. two eighth notes to the long, one eighth to the short note, despite its being written differently.

[Eddie Sheehy]

Set Dances are synchronized steps to a "set" of tunes - usually reels, jigs, polkas or hornpipes. A Set dance is neither a type of tune nor a specific meter. e.g. The Siege of Ennis (polkas), The Sweets of May (jigs) etc.

I have seen reels and hornpipes (4/4) that are played at a slower tempo and called Barndances... but I don't know that it is a specific "type" either...

[wildpikr]

Green Castle Hornpipe is a nice one.

[Bertram Henze]

Set Dances are synchronized steps to a "set" of tunes - usually reels, jigs, polkas or hornpipes. A Set dance is neither a type of tune nor a specific meter. e.g. The Siege of Ennis (polkas), The Sweets of May (jigs) etc.

I have seen reels and hornpipes (4/4) that are played at a slower tempo and called Barndances... but I don't know that it is a specific "type" either...

I used to think Set Dance is an invention of thesession.org to provide a default class for tunes that don't fit any of the others.

[Randi Gormley]

It being Tuesday, I had a chance to ask one of our band members to define a set dance. She said it was a dance that was "set" in time/space/being. It had specific steps one uses all the time wherever you dance or wherever the tune is played and danced. So Sweets of May would be danced exactly the same in Connecticut as it is in Tipperary as it is in Brisbane. Now I recall, the head of the dance school that usually allows us to play for them at events tells the audience that "this dance is danced exactly the same all over the world," at which time we all whisper to each other, "remember play the A part three times and the B twice and stop!" ... or was it "play the B once and stop ..." shoot. Now I'll have to ask again!

[Eddie Sheehy]

Actually for the Sweets of May the first tune is always The Sweets of May - 3 parts. The rest of the tunes are 6/8 jigs and there is no set tunes - and they are TWO parts with the 3rd part of the Sweets of May played as a 3rd part for each (the claps etc.)... When we play it we use:
The Sweets of May 3xA, 2xB, 2xC
Lannigans Ball 3xA, 2XB, 2xC sweets of May
Munster Buttermilk 3xA, 2xB, 2xC Sweets of May
Dingle Regatta 2xA,2xB,1xC, 1xC Sweets of May...
or something like that....

[Jim Nollman]

This discussion about the definition of a set dance started in an attempt to classify "The Downfall of Paris.

Kevin Burke's recording is where I first heard it. He plays it in three parts, and arranges the C part as a showcase for some very inspired harmonies. I had originally thought the tune was a reel, and that KB simply slowed it down to pursue his own arrangement.

Like everyone who plays contra dances, our band often gathers tunes into sets of three. We don't pay much attention to the origin of a tune, but we do pay a lot of attention to choosing our sets to move the dance forward via mood, key, and melodic phrasing.

Once in a while, a band member introduces a tune to the group that simply doesn't work when speeded up. I know the The Downfall of Paris as one of our most significant failures. We tried so hard to make it work as a reel at 110 bpm. It simply falls apart at that speed.

In my failure to turn the tune into one part of a contra dance set, I realized that, as a dance tune, it works quite well on its own, as a fox trot. I am not saying it was written as a fox trot, but rather, that the lilt of the tune would make it an apt choice for some 1930's big band playing a slow lady's choice.

I'm not really explaining it very well, so I'm hoping someone here can follow up with a better explanation. What dance within the European folk tradition is most "like" a fox trot?

[allenhopkins]

...I was at a jam in far western NY and brought that tune out innocently enough. One of the folks I was jamming with, who I was later to learn was Jim Kimball, the fiddler, musicologist, and music professor at SUNY Geneseo, was particularly delighted. He explained that the tune had kind of lost favor in local jams in upstate New York, which was and is a shame, because it is a great tune. Rickets Hornpipe was apparently a very very popular in this part of the country back in the way back.

Jim and I have played Rickett's quite a few times at the Old-Time Fiddlers' Fair at Genesee Country Village. There does seem to be some WNY disagreement as to which part is "A" and which "B"; some regional fiddlers start the tune with what I think is the "B" part.

[Miss Lonelyhearts]

Some confusion here over "set dance."

For step dancers (girls in curls), a set dance is a tune that has a specific sequence of steps to it, such as Job of Journeywork or The Blackbird (both hornpipe in form). The term "set dance" doesn't tell you what type of tune it is--set dances can take any tune form, though jigs and hornpipes seem most common. They often have extra bars and/or repeat one part but not the other.

For set dancers (e.g. for ceilis), a set dance is a sequence of tunes, sometimes all of the same form (e.g., jigs), and sometimes changing form (e.g., jigs to hornpipes to polkas). Two different things.

Favorite hornpipes? The Hangman's Rope, written by Frank McCollum (who also wrote Home Ruler). Galway Bay, in Gm. Sherlock's. And Job of Journeywork.

There's more to hornpipes than a slight swing or dotted rhythm (not everyone swings them, even in Ireland, even for dancers). The form hinges on the three quarter-note ending (oom pah pah), and runs of folded triplets (e.g.: (3efe (3dcB (3ABA (3GFE ). Also, many though not all hornpipes tend to feature a B part that states a new motif once, then restates the motif from the A part. Hornpipes do this more than any other tune form. As was mentioned above, the tune fits a particular type of dance. For step dancers, the more accomplished the dancer, the slower they want the pace so they can fit in a flurry of fancy footwork. In contrast, ceili dancers often like their hornpipes fast.

[RobP]

I like one called New Century Hornpipe.... Norman Blake recorded it on one of his albums, but I learned it from "The Mandolin Player's Pastime" book from Voyager Records.

[JCook]

The Pumpherston Hornpipe, learned from a Gerald Trimble LP.

Jack

[Donzen]

Alexander's Hornpipe is another great one.......

and to the point of this posting, does anybody have a book of Hornpipes they might recommend in standard notation..?

Many thanks,
Don

[Dave Weiss]

I picked up a book called Favorite American Hornpipes for Fiddle (Mel Bay), by Stacy Phillips. It's got a hundred plus tunes, all in standard notation. I really like it, but many of the tunes mentioned in this thread aren't there... Still, chock full of good, easy to read and play hornpipes.

[zoukboy]

"The Last of the Twins" in O'Neill's

[Gelsenbury]

I picked up a book called Favorite American Hornpipes for Fiddle (Mel Bay), by Stacy Phillips. It's got a hundred plus tunes, all in standard notation. I really like it, but many of the tunes mentioned in this thread aren't there... Still, chock full of good, easy to read and play hornpipes.

Could the information in bold print be the reason, perhaps? Many of the ones mentioned here are Irish. I couldn't even name an American hornpipe, but I'm sure some of them have been mentioned already.