Re: Are Irish Jigs More Written or "Discovered?"
Originally Posted by
foldedpath
I would advise caution about adopting an "Americana" style of tune composing, often done by players of fretted instruments (guitars, mainly), where you start with a fixed chord progression and improvise a melody line over the chords. I think it's fair to say that almost all the traditional repertoire (and many of the newer compositions) were composed on single-note melody instruments like pipes, whistles, flutes, and fiddles. Historically speaking, chordal accompaniment came much later.
This. I think most Irish tunes have crystallized out of noodling, but it was noodling with melody snippets of other tunes, not improvisation over chords.
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