The Fastest Song

After much research on Google and such, most places saying that reels are the fast songs in Irish music, just what IS the fastest reel or song in Irish music?

I thas to be one in C. There’s nothing faster than C.

Actually, that should be lower case c.

I can sing 3 Blind Mice pretty quickly.

The fastest song in Irish Music is Daniel O‘Donnell singing ’Make the World Go Away’ after just being thrown off the Cliffs of Moher.

That is slagging by the way, for those who wouldn’t know slagging if it slagged them in the arse…oh, that is also slagging.

Regards,

H.

Professor Spoonenberg, of course. But if you have a reel travelling at a sub-relativistic velocity, say 9c/10, ie 90% of the speed of light, its mass would be getting on towards infinity. But of course that is relative to all other stationary tunes. Daniel O’Donnell’s repertoire probably falls into this category, when it is not going backwards through time whereupon it would be classified as “anti-music”.

A stationery tune is also one written down on paper.

Thus it would have to be one of the so-called Big Tunes. This of course does not imply it has many parts although it may have. Just that it has colossal Gravitas. The Biggest Tune I can think of that fits this description is Trim the Velvet.

Except it’s better if you don’t play TtV too fast…..hmm…let me see…I’ll have to look at my calculations again……

I don’t understand why your google search didn’t work, Ravyn. When I tried it, I found the world’s fastest reel straight away:

"Torium TOR20 CS2700 Live Bait Combo
Price Range: $200
Product rating:
World’s fastest reel at a gear ratio of 6.2:1, the Torium is balanced matched to an Outer Banks Custom Power Stick live bait rod. Ideal for fishing mackerel, kingfish and wahoo. Strong, sensitive e-glass blank with a solid tip, aluminum oxide guides, padded stainless hoods on graphite reel seats and quick-set butts with gimbals. The combination makes this one of the best and fastest live bait combos available."

Dow, please stop taking the wee wee out of new users. Soon you’ll have scared everyone away from this site and there’ll be no-one left except you. Do you seriously want that to happen, now do you?

Does it really matter if it is played badly-if only speed is an issue.

Also, why play it if listeners at some point run from the room shouting “enough already” as they are beaten about the head with continued high energy speed music?

There seems to be an arrogance in showing off one’s technique at the expense of the tune and the appreciation of the listener.

Why has nobody thought of “Speed the Plough”?

What’s to stop you playing a jig faster than a reel? You can play anything fast… ‘too fast’ is a relative perception, and will always lead to the wonderful ‘I prefer the length of MY piece of string’ debate.

The Five Mile Chase, The Black Mare of Fanad, The Piper on Horseback, The Blast of Wind…

Regards,

Harry.

“The Hurricane of Reels” as sung/lilted by Cathal McConnell and friends.
You find it in the Celtic Shores radio archive.

“TheotherdayIgotmyselfinvitedtoafuneralbuttomydissapointamentthefelladidn’tdie” - et cetera - to the tune of The Teetotaller reel.

In real life,The Mason’s Apron is prone to being played particularly fast, sometimes by players who can actually do this well.

I’m just wondering why Ravyn is looking for the fastest tunes because this is definitely not what the tradition is all about. Listen to Joe Cooley, Tony McMaon or any of the East Clare musicians and you’ll hear great music but you won’t be conscious of any rush in their playing. At the risk of being repetitive, I’d like to refer Ravyn to a piece by Wayne Webster at http://comhaltas.ie/music/treoir/detail/speed_kills/ which to me says an awful lot on this topic.

Also the English drinking song “Here’s good luck to the pint pot, good luck to the Barley Mow”; the speeded-up bit at the end certainly isn’t easy without plenty of practise, it’s a real tongue-twister.

Damn- I missed that Daniel O’Donnell gig at the Cliffs of Moher. Do you think it will be repeated?

I dont know the name, but it would definitely be red! Everyone knows red is the fastest!

If you play a tune fast enough, you start to hear it backwards at half speed.

Would that be an African Song or a European Song?

😉

And Strange diabolic messages can be made out, whispering, “Go even faster… Go even faster…” And you will feel compelled to obey, until your fingers start to crack and smoke, and if you’re in Northern Ireland today, the landlord will say, “You must leave this establishment, or you will have a £50 fine, as we have entered a new era in the protection of public health. In years to come, people will be amazed that smoking was once permitted in enclosed workplaces and public places!”

So be warned

The Ballydesmond Polkas, certainly the way we play them, no-one could possibly dance to them, far too fast, but then you can’t tell the “musicians” as they are in a higher caste than us poor backers.

As the famous French savant and literary creation of Flann O’Brien, I demand to be heard on the subject of the Fastest Reel!

Reels cannot, of course, ever go any faster than the speed of sound. If they do, they get turned inside out and come out backwards, in extreme cases finishing before they’ve started.

Sacre bleu !

If a reel approaches a black hole deep in the centre of a galaxy, and it gets sucked in beyond the event horizon at the point where time stands still, it will go on forever. Imagine that. And you thought those long sets of 5-6 tunes in a row were bad.
And not only that, because of the way time distorts close to the event horizon, one end of the tune will be playing at a different speed from the other end, the leading end quicker, and of course the leading end will be flat and the other end will be relatively sharp. And you thought those big sessions with 15+ players were bad. Just thank your lucky stars you’re not in a session at an event horizon, that’s all I can say.

Sorry, the leading end will of course be slower, before anyone spots this mistake.

Ravyn, just on the offchance this was a serious query and you are wondering about the unhelpful replies (though you’ve been around here for a while, so I guess you probably do know this)…

1) They are tunes, not songs.

2) Tunes are as fast (or as slow) as they are played, and a blistering reel one day might be played at a gentle pace the next. It has little to do with what the tune is (though some tunes do seem to encourage speed more than others).

Danny, these reels which go on forever (or just seem to on Thursday nights), are, thankfully, receding away from us at relativistic speeds and their existence is, frankly, doubtful. In fact if you play “Stephen Hawking’s” too fast it becomes an 11-dimensional superstring which would only appeal to a certain class of superfiddler.
Personally I’d rather have a Bunty.

Ravyn, we can all look like a bunch of total jerks here. Just realize that it’s nothing personal and go along for the ride.

Max, I generally play ‘Steven Hawking’s’ as a hornpipe.

If you play a reel at 100 bpm on a moving train with constant accelaration, at what point does the reel reach dance tempo? Will the observer on the platform of the third station ask you to speed up or slow down?

Unfortunately, I’m playing at The Event Horizon tonight, I believe; they give snacks but not beer. It could only help.

I like to sing “I’ll Tell Me Ma” at a quick reel pace. The words all blur together, but my granddaughter has a short attention span!

I agree, Professor Maxenstein, but reels played on other galaxies by the hyperintelligent pandimensional beings that live in these remote far flung regions of the cosmos can of course slip through wormholes in the fabric of the space-time continuum and turn up at your very own session, quite often taking on bizarre forms. These may be episodes like bodhran solos lasting many minutes, whereupon the unsuspecting goatwhacker is suddenly siezed by the desire to perform two-sided quadruple triplets on the edge of the drum and other such feats. The longest recorded such episode was at a session in The Ice Axe and Trotsky Irish theme pub in Novosibirsk, Siberia in 1938 and was a duet involving a shaky egg and a rainstick playing the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy version of The Tarbolton Set. This went on for 83 minutes 47 seconds and only terminated due to the rainsticker’s right arm falling off, as the version was somewhat lively. These events are largely discouraged nowadays and I hear Ireland has broken off diplomatic relations with the central stellar cluster of the Andromeda galaxy. However some experts consider this a rather futile cosmetic gesture as the signal from the Dail won’t reach Andromeda for another 21,300 years. But the government felt compelled to bow to populism. Huh. So much for the ideals of the Republic. Makes me sick.

It only just occurred to me that the “Event Horizon” would be a great name for a venue.

The Irish Descendents version of ‘The Bog Down In The Valley’ gets pretty tricky; and they don’t miss a word of it, even on the live recording.

We’ll be able to try out tunes at the event horizon soon enough, once they switch on the hadron accelerator.

🙁

… sorry. That should have read Large Hadron Collider.

And I’m NOT looking forward to meeting the God particle.

… good name for a tune though …

What about the “Steeplechase” and if that isn’t fast enough, I’m sure that modern technology which has given us “amazing slowdowners” could surely also deliver “speed uppers”. It would be a preferred option to hovering precariously over Black Holes.

Definately The Glasgow Reel!!!

Reminds me of a funny story at a session where a young lady on a box was asked to play a solo. Being a considerate type, she said “any suggestions ?” to which I replied “anything you like apart from the Tamlin reel” . This she immediately launched into much to the amusement of all present. When she finished and we explained why everyone was falling around, she said “but I just played the Glasgow reel!”. And if you’re wondering, it was very fast and wandered through a number of key changes!

Yeah, as a Glasgow man I’m disloyal, as I can’t stand the tune - by whatever name. Gives me a heddick.

BTW, Slowdowners CAN speed up.

But, but…..I LIKE the Glasgow Reel. **tears well up in her eyes, lip quivers**

Guitar players speed up, also.

It is the most abominable excrescence of a tune ever to infest the poor old world with its mangy, scabby, pusillanimous, anodyne (nicked from michael 🙂 ) sh!t-laden, whrmsp ladskjflmn aslha,.dkad;kgfda;oig;a.g fglihd;lijhfdgljhfdg gfdagfdadfg;ou!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think it’s much much worse than that, Ben.

Just for that, I’m off to play it through, right now, and I hope you hear echos of it in your sleep. (And I can really slaughter this tune, let me tell you.) Bwahahahahahah.

just stumbled on this thread when searching for into on the Glasgow Reel (my kids dance the brush dance to this tune) and this thread has to be on of the funniest on this site - excellent 🙂