Jig rythm/beat

I’m a Swedish fiddler learning irish fiddling and I recently heard from an Irish fiddler who tought me a jig saying that the the third and sixth note should be acentuated, as opposed to the first and fourth like i usually play, giving the tune kind of a back-beat rythm. Is this generally true for jigs or might it be a regional variation? On most recordings I’ve listened to the fiddlers seem to accentuate the first and fourth note more than the third and sixth though, somtimes very heavilly, but I havn’t heard any fiddler play a markedly back beat jig.

Jigs would normally be played with the accent on the 1st note of each group of three, generally speaking.

It would be unusual to have the 3rd note of each group accented.

As you listen more you’ll hear Irish fiddlers working the back beat as well as the “front” beat. As a player, the key is to be able to emphasize either or both, and in sometimes-varying degrees, even for different parts of the tune. The one/four is still likely prominent, but only by a little.

What you don’t hear is an even ONE-two-three-FOUR-five-six throughout the tune.

The first beat is accented . Its compound 2 so strong weak strong weak .
1+ A 2+ A .
If the first is equal to the 2 Nd beat it becomes 2 bars of 3/8 not 1 bar of 6/8 .

Get your man to demonstrate , ive no idea what hes on about personally …..😎
There are 2 beats in a bar of 6/8. The other notes are not necessarily evenly spaced . But 1 and 2 are by the very nature of the duple time.
Hope that helps . Cheers

Did the Irish fiddler say the 3rd & 6th quavers should be accented *as opposed to* the 1st & 4th (i.e. downbeat vs backbeat)?

The fiddler may have been referring to how jigs are played with lift from different degrees of accent & swing.

Here’s something from an old forum thread which may help. At least I hope it sheds some light on your question.

“There is a natural accent on the down beat like that. Partially because that note is longer than the other two. But if ALL you’re accenting is the down beat, it is not lifted at all - it is a march, basically. To achieve lift in a jig, there has to be some accenting of other bits, and accenting the 3rd (and 6th) notes can help provide a yearning for the next note, and can actually help accentuate the down beat as well.”

Posted by Reverend August 22nd, 2007
https://thesession.org/discussions/14869#comment306678

“Did the Irish fiddler say the 3rd & 6th quavers should be accented *as opposed to* the 1st & 4th (i.e. downbeat vs backbeat)?”

No - didn’t say that.

“The fiddler may have been referring to how jigs are played with lift from different degrees of accent & swing.”

Yes, exactly. Here’s an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgiz-o59rvY

play video

With all due respect, Ergo, I was asking Blackfield (the OP).

That was an awesome video. I love the feel that the music has with these different accents. Very very nice.

Ergo has it right. It’s not just jigs, either. The nature of Irish music is that the degree of accent, as well as which beats are accented, and even how they’re accented varies throughout the tune.

Absolutely. Lovely. Spot on.
Excuse me for ever asking the OP’s version.

🙁

Ben-sorry-I didn’t mean to be snide or rude to you. and looking back at the OP he does say “the third and sixth note should be acentuated, as opposed to the first and fourth”
Which would not be correct.

That’s just the point. I would very much like to find out how Blackfield was instructed. I don’t doubt it will turn out as you say. Still, I don’t know how the opera ends until the OP’s Irish fiddler has spoken.

I always try to keep an open mind to how various players’ hear (& play) their jigs, their music…

Just going from what’s in the OP. No offense intended, Ergo. Thank you for Rebecca’s clip. 🙂

“Thank you for Rebecca’s clip…”

My pleasure - she’s got a lovely style, eh?

Yes, Rebecca McCarthy does indeed have a lovely style of playing.

Blackfield, does any of this help? Sorry for pulling you off track…

Surely Rebecca is playing a waltz: 123, 123,123,..
not a jig at all, which would be 123456, 123456,..?

No its a jig.
A jig is counted conventionally 1 andA , 2 and A .
Its compound duple time.
Ie a slip jig in 9/8 , compound triple time is counted
1+a 2+a3+a
A4/4 reel
1+2+3+4
A reel in 2/2
1e+a 2e+a
a12/8 jig 1+a 2+ a 3+a 4+a

This is more important in complex pieces if music but the standards are there for many reasons.
Cheers

Lovely clip, thanks 🙂

So where do “rashers and sausages” or “carrots and cabbages” come into it ? 😉

It’s a slip jig in the clip.

Jim

.

Cheers jim, It is indeed, so it’s compound triple time, still a jig of course but counted 1+a 2+a 3+a .
Marvellous playing anyhow.

You can count any way that works for you, but legit players would use one-and-a two-and-a to count an eighth note and two sixteenth notes (that’s a quaver and two semi-quavers for you former members of the E.U.) rather than three equal (?) eight notes.

No 5 string your mistaken.
Firstly you give no context , you don’t say what time sig you are talking about so your post is meaningless . Secondly a count of three equal notes can hardly be used for 3 unequal notes can it …..

No, Will, I am not mistaken. The context was your post which implied as 6/8 (or 9/8 once you realized the clip was a slip jig) And legit musicians do not use one-and-a to count three equal notes.

Ha, AB, funny that you quoted me on that! I don’t actually remember posting that exactly, but I was going to post something similar in here, so it must have been me 😉

I’m not a fiddler, but I think this is why fiddlers often slur their bowing into the beat, meaning that they’re not changing bow directions between the 3 and the 1. This can accentuate the 3, but can also accentuate the 1 while giving it nice flow, and not be pounding the down beat like a march…

Sigh, compound 2/4 2 beats divided into three equal parts. 1and a 2 and a . Its not complex .
Were it 2/4 it would be 1e+a 2e+ a
However please feel free to explain your understanding as how you as a ‘ legit ’musician would count it …. personally I think I spent enough time studying percussion notation to grasp the basics of .6/8 But I’m open minded .
So explain how you would count 6/8 or 9/8 or 12/8 or for that matter 7/8 or 21/8

I, and all the other trained musicians I know, would count 6/8 as 1-2-3-4-5-6. 7/8 as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. 21/8 would probably get counted as groups of 3’s and 2’s depending on the accents. However, it doesn’t really matter what syllables you use- rashers-and- sausages works fine if it gets you to play the rhythm correctly. That, after all, is the point.

“…I think this is why fiddlers often slur their bowing into the beat, meaning that they’re not changing bow directions between the 3 and the 1. This can accentuate the 3, but can also accentuate the 1 while giving it nice flow, and not be pounding the down beat like a march…”

True. And it’s fine to slur into the “three” as well as the “one.” All of that depends on the feel you want from that tune.

Here’s Rebecca playing a 6/8 jig. This also has a nice backbeat-kind of feel, a little trickier to do because she’s got Guido’s drumming to contend with. The jigs start at 1:40.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6TPVqgTIr4

play video

Perhaps you’d better have a look here 5 string for basic beginner drum conventions. http://www.drumlessons.net/understanding-time/

http://www.drummagazine.com/lessons/post/drumkey

7/8 rhythms are generally groups of 2 and 3 as are 21/8 11/8 etcetera
So 7/8 with 3 beats per bar is counted 1+a 2+3+ ,
11/8 with 5 beats could be 1+a 2+ 3+ 4+a 5+
15/8 with 6 beats a bar could be 1+a 2+ 3 +a 4+ 5 + 6 +a
After that I tend to not use this standard system as 7 has 2 syllables …..
Etc etc
A 12/8 jig just has four beats in a bar so its counted 4 not 12
, 6/8 has 2 beats per bar , counted 2 not 6 as there are not 6 beats.
subdivisions are conventionally not allocated numbers but the syllables I described and as the very basics of drum notation instruction linked confirm.

Will Evans- if you look at the last line of music on the page that you linked to, on combined quarter, eight and sixteenth notes you will see that they describe the exact way of counting that I posted- 4-and-a for an eight note and two sixteenth notes.
No trained musician would ever count 7/8 the way you describe.

Not in 6/8 which was why i questioned what you were talking about, thats 4/4 . You will note in one of the links that the count continues even with no notes on the score……
Do you play or compose music in odd time sigs?
On my page is a link to a piece of mine i wrote in 10/8 how would you count it or something similar?
The time signature does not indicate the rhyme , its more fundamental than that , it basically indicates the beat of the foot.
That piece of mine in 10/8 ; the tenth piper , has 4 uneven beats , not 10.

There is no real discussion here, its not a matter of opinion its merely a matter of convention which is as I have described…..

Does anyone know the name of the slip jig in the first by Rebecca McCarthy-Kent?

If anyone’s up for a spot of pattern-busting, a good one is (for a 6/8 jig, 123 123), putting accents on the “2” all the way through.

Try it on a 9/8 jig too (123 123 123).

Let me know at what bar you give up 🙂

Gusty’s frolics.

Thanks, Stiamh 🙂

“…putting accents on the ”2“ all the way through….”

I do all of these bowings from time to time with jigs, just for fun (and practice). Hit the ones and fours; hit the threes and sixes (and nines). Hit the twos. Hit every “four” in a 6/8 grouping. I try any and all of these from time to time, typically with simple tunes. I then find myself open to new ideas when I’m playing jigs “normally.”

“ I recently heard from an Irish fiddler who tought me a jig saying that the the third and sixth note should be acentuated, as opposed to the first and fourth”

If I were to tally them all up, I suspect I probably emphasise the third and sixth beats more in B parts than in A parts of a tune.

I’m learning/practicing “Night At the Fair” at the moment, and I’m playing the A part “RASHers and SAUsages”, heavily emphasising the 1 of each 1-2-3 1-2-3 and the B part “rashers AND sausaGES”, heavily emphasising the 3 of each 1-2-3 1-2-3.

“and the B part ”rashers AND sausaGES“, heavily emphasising the 3 of each 1-2-3 1-2-3.” but I guess you would still get us tapping our feet on the 1.

Isn’t that part of the way dance tunes work? You can move the emphasis around but the beat stays in the same place. Accentuating the beat isn’t the same as accentuating something else.

And what the Reverend said.

The only time I would count out the full 123456 in 6/8 is if it is an exceptionally slow tune. (And I am a trained musician: not what I learned in my music theory: we were taught to conduct 6/8 as 2 beats and 9/8 as 3).
Otherwise, for a fast jig, I would usually just count 1 2 2 2 etc with each number representing a dotted crotchet (or 3 quavers, if you prefer.) However, if as commonly, there is a lead note (anacrusis) on 6th quaver of the entry, it helps to count 1 and 2 and, 2 and 2 and: that first lead note is on the final “and”. (The numbers = a crotchet and the “ands” a quaver, and this sets the jig rhythm.)
So, before anyone shoots me down in flames, let me say that I frequently do the “count-ins” for our little group, and it works for us! But you do need a minimum of 2 bars so that everyone “gets it”.
Likewise in 9/8, either 1 2 3 2 2 3 or 1 and 2 and 3 and, etc.

We’re it 6/4 or 7/4 etc then the top number indicates the number of beats per measure, so a 6 or 7 count here would be absolutely correct.
But no one counts 12 for a 12/8 jig for example that would be ridiculous , or 9 for a slip! Because , quite simply there are 4 ( and 3) beats not 12 or 9.
Generally The 16th note take the “e” syllable . So in a jig with triplets in the 2 nd bar ( that’s are not actually triplets anyhow 🙂 ) 1+a 2+ a | 1e+a 2e+a |
Remember melody players don’t really have to deal with this level of counting in this genre It’s percussionists and rhythm players that do which is why there is a whole standardised system in place.
For example 1+a 2+ 3+ | 1+a 2e+ 3e+ |1e+a 2+3+ | a7/8 rhythm with triplets ( actually2x1/16 and 1x1/8)
There are a few different other 7/8 rhythms 1+ 2+ 3+a , or 1+ 2+a 3+ or a 4 beat 1+2+3+4| and they can be combined .
Me loves these odd time sigs and crazy rhythms 🙂
And of course there are the odd exception.
Saying that they can also be counted 123 12 12 or 12 123 12 etc etc as long as the emphasis is in the right place: strong weak weak. etc

Will- the problem with your method of counting is that you use the same syllables to count different rhythms depending on the time signature-so: one-and-a is a different rhythm in 4/4 than it is in6/8- i.e. in 4/4 it would be an eight followed by two sixteenths, and in 6/8 it would be three more or less even eighth notes. While this may work fine for you it is pedagogically inadvisable. The way that the method of counting rhythms has developed is to have the same type of rhythm counted in the same way, and different rhythms counted differently. Consistency, in other words. There is an onomatopoeic aspect to this- to someone trained in this system one-and-a is associated with the sound of the eighth and sixteenth note rhythm. Using the same syllables for a different rhythm undercuts this. Now I doubt I can convince you of this, or anything else for that matter,and in fact if the way you have been counting works for you, there is no need to change it, but advising students or inexperienced players to count your way is just not a good idea.

It’s not my way at all! , it’s the standard system as taught in the western world .
A jig is not counted 123456 .
It is counted 1and a , 2 and a ….. 2 groups of three because it’s compound couple time.
But count the 123456 if you please but it’s your own idiosyncratic system ,no skin of my nose .

If you count 123456789 10 11. 12 for a12/8 jig then at least your system is consistent. 🙂
Or 123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 for a 15/8 piece ……. Does that really make any sense to you or anyone ever?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature
Now granted they give 123. 456 as well but that falls apart as soon as you advance beyond 7/8 certainly meters like 21/8 which I have composed in many years ago or even standard jigs and slips 9 and 12 simply can’t be practically counted that way.
So how do you count 12/8 ? I rest my case 🙂

21/8?! Mmmmm??!!
7 groups of 3 (‘Dah-da-da’)
Count: ‘1-da-da, 2-da-da, 3-da-da’…’ & so forth.
Or…if it was Irish-ish (!) a bar of slipjig followed by two bars of regular standard 6/8 jig.
Nice!

Not quite that would maybe be easier as 7 bars of 3/8 .
Thus was groups of 2 and 3 . I’d have to find the dots to remember An example of a similar rhythm : 123 12 12 12 123 123 12 12 12. You can’t break it down into equal bars .
If there was a 2 nd strong beat it could be 1 bar of 9 and one of 11 …… Etc
But if there is just the one strong beat then it’s more accurately 21/8
Now counting the beats we come across the same problem of 7 having 2 syllables . So to avoid confusion its best as be 1+a 2+ 3+ 4 + 5+a 6+a 7 ven 8+ 9+ .| so if someone is counting 2 bars silence or whatever it’s clear when to come in.
I think that’s what makes it a better approach than just counting 1 23 12 etc but At this level anyone playing will probably be able to apply either way. 9 uneven beats per bar with the stress on the 1 .


I can’t remember the melody but it followed a similar pattern. Any number can be mixed like that .

Thanks to this great discussion. It’s very helpful for me, as well.