Need help with Jigs

[Gelsenbury]

It's dangerous to make bold pronouncements to the effect that the "generally accepted correct (sic)" way is the method that you happen to play and prefer!

That is correct, which is why I criticised the original poster's teacher for making just such a pronouncement.

You will not find any words in my post to suggest that I claim DUD DUD to be the only correct pattern. But it's by far the most common in my experience, which refutes the claim (which I cited in my post) that the correct way for the mandolin is DUD UDU.

[sblock]

sblock, your link was to Tim O'Brien playing a set of reels. Tim plays Jigs DUD DUD

Not so! The video clip that I posted was to Tim O'Brien playing his tune "Land's End." This tune is not a reel! It's in 6/8 time. Please go back and count it out carefully. There are 6 notes per measure, not 8.

Actually, Tim O'Brien uses both forms of picking and is very fluid in his approach. Chris Thile is no different in that regard.

Some of you folks would do well to adopt a less dogmatic approach to pickstroke direction, I'd say. It is not necessary to pick jigs DUD-DUD. DUD-UDU works well, too, and so do other patterns, particularly when you start adding ornamentation, which can sometimes break the dominant pattern. As I wrote earlier, it's all about the end result, not about following rules on how to get there. In folk music, there are conventions, sure, but there is no rule book. And thank goodness for that, I say!

[James Rankine]

Not so! The video clip that I posted was to Tim O'Brien playing his tune "Land's End." This tune is not a reel! It's in 6/8 time. Please go back and count it out carefully. There are 6 notes per measure, not 8.

OK my bad to simplify it as a reel. I was talking about Irish Jigs. I should have said that Tim O'Brien plays Irish Jigs DUD DUD. The piece if music you linked to is great but not an example of an Irish, Scottish or English Jig. Just because you could write it 6/8 doesn't make it a jig. We are obviously talking about completely different types of music - that may be the Atlantic divide for you!

[Gary Leonard]

Learn Blarney Pilgrim. DUD DUD. If that doesn't do it for ya, then move on. At least you will have another tool in the toolkit, and another song under your fingers.

And I have to chime in on the jig picking debate. In my vast experience (ha!) it's DUD DUD. Nothing dogmatic about it, learn it this way, then expand as necessary. I agree that you need to be flexible when it comes to ornamentation, but DUD DUD just sounds more Irish. Even if you are doing DUD UDU, you will be swinging an 8th note somewhere. It is just way easier to do it on DUD DUD.

Not to refute what sblock has said, but calling Land's End a jig is kinda like calling the Dead's Shakedown Street disco. A recent example that opened my eyes to the point sblock is making was the tune "The Road to Lisdoonvarna". It was presented as a 6/8 jig in a class I took. When playing with the backing track, I would dial into rhythm and bounce like a jig is supposed to. Yet when I play it solo, I would have a tendency to not swing as much. So I looked it up on the session.org, and it was presented as a 12/8 slide. wth is a slide, and I can barely wrap my head around what a slip jig is, now I gotta figure out 12/8??

But this toon works way better as a slide than a jig. The preponderance of quarter notes just leant itself to squaring those 8th notes. While I was doing that (to a point) while playing a strict DUD DUD, it may be better to end a beat on an up stroke. As a fiddler said last night in the session I attend, "Sometimes you just gotta feel it". Regardless of the tool you use, its the result you are looking for.

[sblock]

Well, the only salient difference between 12/8 and 6/8 is that the measures are twice as long! The beat emphasis and phrasing are pretty much identical. What winds up happening is that you play it s-l-o-w-e-r in 12/8, for a typical 1/4 note value chosen to fall in the range of 80-160 BPM. But, of course, you can get the exact same result by simply lowering the BPM and leaving the piece entirely in 6/8 time at a reduced tempo!! Put another way, the 1 beat and the 6 beat in 12/8 time don't tend to get different emphasis: the first 6 notes and the second 6 notes of the measures in this particular tune (when set in 12/8) carry the same phrasing, not different phrasing. All of which puts into question the reason for using a 12/8 signature where it's not needed.

If you Google some images of the sheet music to "The Road to Lisdoonvarna," you'll find that about 90% of these are found in 6/8 time, not in 12/8 time. The issue with notating this in a 12/8 time signature (insofar as there is any issue, that is) is that the A- and B-parts wind up with just 4 measures each, instead of the usual 8. That's uncommon, because fiddle tunes often have about 16 measures. But hey, whatever floats your boat. You could notate it in 24/8 (A part in two measures) or 48/8 (A part in just one measure!) if you wanted to.

I entirely agree with the remarks about "you just gotta feel it!" Unfortunately, declaring that some tune is "a jig" or "a slide" carries no meaning at all to anyone who's not steeped in certain traditions. On the page by itself, it's pretty useless (a computer or naive player would not know what to do with it). Moreover, you have to realize that there are different, often competing traditions and regional styles that use the same terms! For example, a "hornpipe" means very different things -- about the phrasing, the tempo, AND the meter -- to musicians in different folk traditions today. Furthermore, back in the 18th and 19th centuries, it meant something entirely different from what we think of today as a hornpipe (e.g., 3/2 time or 9/8 time, and not 4/4 or 2/2).

The truly important distinction -- and this applies to the notation as well as the picking direction -- is whether it's a "4-count" or a "3-count." Jigs (and slipped jigs) and waltzes are all 3-counts. Reels, breakdowns, polkas, etc., are all 4-counts.

Finally, a good picker can choose to place phrasing emphasis on any given upstroke, as well as on any given downstroke, at will. In other words, you can achieve the same bounce with "DUD-UDU" as with "DUD-DUD" -- this, despite what some folks have said. You just have to impart the proper feel to the music, appropriate to the tune and to its setting.

[James Rankine]

But this toon works way better as a slide than a jig. The preponderance of quarter notes just leant itself to squaring those 8th notes. While I was doing that (to a point) while playing a strict DUD DUD, it may be better to end a beat on an up stroke. As a fiddler said last night in the session I attend, "Sometimes you just gotta feel it". Regardless of the tool you use, its the result you are looking for.

Marla Fibish has a great lesson on The road to Lisdoonvarna on her peghead nation course. She plays it first as a Jig DUD DUD then shows you how to play it as a slide, which is basically DU for the quarter eighth notes and DUD for the 3 note 8th notes which she points out is basically the same picking pattern as a reel treating the 3 note 8th notes as a triplet ornamentation, although of course the whole rhythm is completely different to a reel. It's sounds like basically what you have worked out instinctively Gary, but it's really great to have someone strip things down to the mechanics to explain exactly what is going on. As Mike Marshall says - no matter how complex something seems on the mandolin you can strip it down to simple pockets of technique - and for what it's worth, the great bluegrass player that he is, he teaches DUD DUD for Jigs.

[Gary Leonard]

..

If you Google some images of the sheet music to "The Road to Lisdoonvarna," you'll find that about 90% of these are found in 6/8 time, not in 12/8 time. The issue with notating this in a 12/8 time signature (insofar as there is any issue, that is) is that the A- and B-parts wind up with just 4 measures each, instead of the usual 8. That's uncommon, because fiddle tunes often have about 16 measures. But hey, whatever floats your boat. You could notate it in 24/8 (A part in two measures) or 48/8 (A part in just one measure!) if you wanted to.

Check out thesession.org: https://thesession.org/tunes/250 here it is universally a slide. My favorite quote on this from the session:

"It’s a slide. I don’t know what universe plays it as a jig; certainly not one where there’s any set dancing anyway. Maybe in slow sessions, I suppose, but it makes a rather boring tune played as a jig. Part of the problem with this tune, (here in the out-back of ITM that is,) is that it was used widely as a beginner tune, over played by a million screeching tin whistles, and dragged through sessions by novices adnauseam. It’s actually a very lovely and danceable slide that suffers from guilty by association."

But this person accurately describes me, beginner, over played by a screeching mandolin, a novice dragging tunes through sessions..Thank goodness I have a reasonable session I can sit with, and if one of the 16 or so tunes I know comes up, I can add my notes to it, regardless how well they are played!

[Gary Leonard]

Marla Fibish has a great lesson on The road to Lisdoonvarna on her peghead nation course. She plays it first as a Jig DUD DUD then shows you how to play it as a slide, which is basically DU for the quarter eighth notes and DUD for the 3 note 8th notes which she points out is basically the same picking pattern as a reel treating the 3 note 8th notes as a triplet ornamentation, although of course the whole rhythm is completely different to a reel. It's sounds like basically what you have worked out instinctively Gary, but it's really great to have someone strip things down to the mechanics to explain exactly what is going on. As Mike Marshall says - no matter how complex something seems on the mandolin you can strip it down to simple pockets of technique - and for what it's worth, the great bluegrass player that he is, he teaches DUD DUD for Jigs.

I may have to join Marla's course just for this tune, thanks for this James! As I was writing my first post, I was actually thinking about this, what do I do with the 3 eighth notes then? I wasn't happy with the thought that it was simply a Frankenstein mish-mash of two different patterns. You are so correct, when someone breaks down the mechanics and explains it in a manner you are already familiar with, it seems so simple!

[Mark Gunter]

This has turned in to a great discussion on timing, now, love it ... though it's gone beyond the OP question.

On Road To Lisdoonvarna, when I learned that tune I found that the way for me to play it was as though it were a reel with triplets thrown in - and I prefer to play triplets with hammer-ons and pull-offs where possible, rather than breaking an alternating groove with DUD thrown in.

Regarding sblock's first paragraph on 12/8, there is a very big difference between 12/8 time and 6/8 from a practical standpoint, having to do with speed and length of the measures, as he does mention. I play a tune by Dylan, Just Like A Woman, which offers a good example. The first line of that song goes: Nobody feels any pain ... About 16 beats are required to sing that phrase in 12/8 time. To change the time signature to 6/8 in writing the music would of course double the number of measures in the score, and a lyric line would look pretty funny with a measure for nearly each word (ok, small exaggeration, but close).

I believe it's characteristic of some 12/8 songs that the beats go by at a fast clip, while the lyrics & melody go at a slow clip. That Dylan tune is one example, and I could probably find more in the church hymnals.

[Mark Gunter]

I just thumbed through a hymnal rather quickly, and didn't notice any 12/8 time signatures ... 12/8 is a compound quadruple meter ... but I did see a 9/4, which is a compound triple meter, and also illustrates the beats going apace while the melody moves languidly. The Hymn is Have Thine Own Way, Lord. The words "way" and "Lord" each last for three beats, the words "waiting" and "still" in that tune each last for six beats.

[foldedpath]

I entirely agree with the remarks about "you just gotta feel it!" Unfortunately, declaring that some tune is "a jig" or "a slide" carries no meaning at all to anyone who's not steeped in certain traditions. On the page by itself, it's pretty useless (a computer or naive player would not know what to do with it).

This is indeed, the main consideration with slides and jigs. The difference between a jig (actually a double jig) and slide is getting pretty deep into the weeds of Irish music. You'll hear some people say a slide is the same as a single jig, except all single jigs are not slides. Confused much?


The two names do represent different dances, with jigs more often played for step dancers and slides played for set dancers, so the phrasing and emphasis is a little different. Hard to put into words though, and better learned by just listening to a bunch of this music. I can't say that I'm always phrasing slides the right way, but I do try to follow good examples in recordings.

[Beanzy]

As we seem to have focussed in on the Irish types of jig here; If you follow the info in this ITMA page to the YouTube playlist there are some good examples of the steps involved in Clare style jigs, reels, hornpipes, slip-jigs etc. (I find these particular videos mesmerising, some will initially find them strange or comical, that’s ok, they are quite alien to most people’s experience but you eventually tune into them & begin to get what’s going on)

As has been pointed out many times by many folks, without an understanding of the dance steps people very often play these tunes with completely the wrong feel and way too fast losing any connection to the music & dance. You might notice that the different lifts, slips and slide movements happen in different parts of the tunes and you will see that reflected in how they are notated to group the phrases correctly.

Having said that once these tunes have been shifted outside the tradition, they will likely have different phrasing depending on where they end up. You can see that with the pub session tradition here in england which seems to push for quite a high speed while discarding many aspects of the phrasing. Alterations happened to the English Hornpipe when it moved to Ireland and it has been the same with the movement of many popular or faddish dances of Europe over the centuries. It’s not always easy to switch either, I laugh when I think how often I kick off something like the reel Red Haired Boy in exactly the wrong style for the session or jam I’m at.
Which makes me wonder if the OPs teacher might have a different expectation of how a reel should be played than what we might assume they’re aiming at.

Anyway I hope some people enjoy the videos.

[Gelsenbury]

Having said that once these tunes have been shifted outside the tradition, they will likely have different phrasing depending on where they end up. You can see that with the pub session tradition here in england which seems to push for quite a high speed while discarding many aspects of the phrasing.

The difference for the double jig is quite striking, actually. The slip jig in these videos is at a speed that feels familiar, but the double jig is much slower.

Now, P E R S O N A L L Y (since the phrase about other methods not being wrong was obviously not clear enough last time) I hear a rhythm that's got DUD DUD written all over it. The 1, 3, 4, and 6 have a longer duration and greater emphasis than the 2 and 5. DUD UDU would seem like squeezing the tune into alternate pick direction with a lot of effort. It may enable speeds at which I just can't play, but getting the rhythm right in DUD UDU seems to me to be quite a challenge. Not, of course, for players of Thile or O'Brien calibre. But, presumably, that's not the level we're discussing here.

So, again, if the aim is to break habits inherited from the guitar, a jig with DUD DUD picking makes sense to me. A jig in DUD UDU slightly less so.

[MontanaMatt]

sblock, your link was to Tim O'Brien playing a set of reels. Tim plays Jigs DUD DUD

I don’t think that video syncs with the music, I certainly don’t hear there fiddles playing...?

[James Rankine]

I don’t think that video syncs with the music, I certainly don’t hear there fiddles playing...?

Maybe listen with headphones- quite clear a lot ot drone double stop accompaniment in addition to melodu playing. There is a welcome boost to the mandolin in the mix up agsinst three fidles. It’s the guitar I’m struggling to hear.

[Paul Brett]

Here's a great jig, the tune played in the solo is called "Kerfunken Jig"