Nigel Gatherer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I think as you said we need Anselm or David South to come in with their > thoughts now.
SCD strathspeys are at 116 »ticks« per minute or so if you let your metronome tick four times per bar. (I'm desperately trying to avoid the issue of »beats« to the bar -- the SCD teacher in me says that the strathspey step is really four beats rather than two. Marches have two beats per bar but not strathspeys, and with the strathspey there is a big emphasis on the 1 and a not-so-big one on the 3). 32 bars (that is, 128 »ticks«) of strathspey time at SCD speed take somewhat more than a minute or so, so you can take it from there. 116 is really quite zippy already -- except for Glasgow Highlanders, which is played a good bit faster, and some other dances involving Highland setting steps, such as »Schiehallion« or the »Garry Strathspey«. > As for dancers not knowing the difference between a reel and a jig: why > on earth should they? I can't see that it's very relevant to how they > dance. One plays 2 or 4 notes to the beat, the other 3, but the beat > remains the same, doesn't it? Nope. Most SCD dance steps are composed of four separate »actions« (such as »hop-step-close-step« or »step-beat-beat-hold«). Simplifying things somewhat for the sake of argument, in reel time, these actions take place on beats 1, 2, 3, 4 of a bar (assuming 4/4, common or cut-common time), and in jig time on beats 1, 3, 4, and 6. The RSCDS sells a nice book called »Any good tune«, by Muriel A. Johnstone (who as some of you may be aware of is the doyenne of RSCDS-style SCD music) which is targeted at beginning SCD musicians and contains a nice selection of well-known and useful country dance tunes, arranged for piano. The introduction to that book gives various hints about playing SCD music, including tempo specifications, and it says: »Tempos vary greatly according to different situations and different preferences. A metronome marking lying between <half note> = 104 and <half note> = 112 for reel time <quarter note> = 104 and <quarter note> = 116 for strathspey time <dotted quarter> = 104 and <dotted quarter> = 112 for jig time would cover most dancers' needs from the expert demonstration dancer to young children learning; from a formal ball to a barn dance. Tempo is not something that should become an obsession since music that has powerful rhythm and good lift swings along and brings the dancers with it, even at a relaxed speed. [...] It is important to remember that a VERY SLIGHT [Muriel's emphasis] alteration in the speed of the music can make an enormous difference to the dancers. [...] If you notice people struggling to balance and dancing ahead of the music then the speed is too slow. If the dancers are repeatedly late for the next figure of the dance and look rushed and ungainly with a loss of any accuracy in the steps, then your music is too fast.« Mind you that this is, more or less, the official RSCDS position. You will find very popular dance bands who take their strathspeys rather a lot quicker than the suggested 116, and I have a recording of another very famous and popular band whose rendition of the 8x32 »strathspey«, The Duchess Tree, clocks in at something like 9'20", which is *way* too slow even from the RSCDS perspective. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau .......................................... [EMAIL PROTECTED] I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
