Feb 2022 irish celtic slip-jig trad
A few days ago @ajna1960 hosted a skirmish with the theme "Ireland". The idea was to post a song that had something to do with Ireland for St. Patrick's day next month. Most people wrote about family stories, green hills or leprechauns . . . but not me. My first thought was to write something about the Blarney stone, but then I thought, what could be more Irish than a slip jig?
Most musicians know that a jig is a lively dance tune in 6/8 time and is heavily associated with Ireland. (Renaissance musicians appropriated the form, renamed it the 'gigue' and made it stately and respectable. Phooey on that.) O'Neill's Music of Ireland lists hundreds of different jigs collected from musicians, primarily in North America and Ireland.
The slip jig is far less common and not very well known. O'Neill's only lists a couple dozen slip jigs out of thousands of tunes (including jigs, airs, hornpipes and reels). You can think of a slip jig as a jig, but in 9/8 time rather than 6/8.
For the skirmish I posted a melody I called "Slip Of A Colleen," the idea being to meld the ideas of Irishness, the "slip" of "slip jig" and the phrase "slip of a girl". It was rushed and obviously incomplete but a number of people asked to hear the finished product when I got around to doing one. (I've tagged you below to let you know it's up.) The flute part came out great; the "fiddle" (a general MIDI patch) and the "pipe" (another MIDI patch, this one allegedly an oboe) want some tweaking. I might be able to do it in Logic Pro, but I wanted to get this up before the end of the month. I also thought it changed enough to warrant a new title, this one celebrating my home town. (Several pieces in O'Neill's are named "The Humors Of [location]", and I thought that sounded like as good a title as any,)
Thank you to everyone who listened and commented on the first version, which you can hear at https://fawm.org/songs/133585/ :
@corinnecurcio
@porrectus
@pearlmanhattan
@sheilerk
@vainhirvain
@wylddandelyon
@ajna1960
@mikeskliar
@tcelliott
@andrea
@berni1954
Hope you enjoy it!
No lyrics, just dance!!
@wylddandelyon Mar 2022
Oh, I like this! It makes me smile and want to dance.
#tit4tat
@philmcmill Feb 2022
Very pleasant melodies over the very nice jig. The fiddle in the middle adds some variety. Well done!
@gmcgath Feb 2022
I love unusual time signatures. 9/8 jigs are more common in classical music than in folk music. (When doing classical music, you spell it "gigue.")
@davidr Feb 2022
This is good fun to listen to, I'm totally enjoying the triplets of triplets!
@feb21sundari Feb 2022
Marvelous. The music is so cheerful and invites to dance. I like that it's a 9/8. Didn't hear it at first...
@tuneslayer Feb 2022
Tagging all the people who said during the Irish skirmish they'd like to hear the finished version of my slip jig:
@corinnecurcio
@porrectus
@pearlmanhattan
@sheilerk
@vainhirvain
@wylddandelyon
@ajna1960
@mikeskliar
@tcelliott
@andrea
@berni1954
I'm not sure you can tag people in liner notes.
@jimeddy9 Feb 2022
I quite enjoyed your slip jig! In your naming convention I was taken back to my rudimentary understanding of Shakespeare's "humors," describing all personalities as combining one or more of the four categories/qualities known as Melancholic, Choleric, Phlegmatic, and Sanguine. Lovely tune!