Tobin’s Jig and Hardiman’s Fancy

NB. Hardiman’s now has updated chords.

When playing Tobin’s Jig last week, we initially struggled to give the tune a sense of lift, lilt or dance – our solutions were:

  • Have the long line of each four-bar phrase our heads before we started, with it’s peaks and troughs. This got us away from focussing too much on the individual notes and patterns, and from the mechanics of playing this tune on our respective instruments.
  • Add some subtle dynamics – we followed the rise of the melody with a small crescendo (gradual increase in volume) and the fall of the melody with a diminuendo (gradual decrease in volume). Subtle is the operative word here! It isn’t always the case that we need to rise and fall with the melody, this can become a little obvious and predictable, but the idea is that we’re giving an additional dimension, or melodic shaping, to the tune.
  • Add some slurs over the bar lines (this is updated on the original post) – this can give the sense of moving forward across the bar line, with some very subtle syncopation in the phrasing.

Author: debfiddle

Deborah is a violinist and violist specialising in English folk music. She trained in viola and Baroque viola at Birmingham Conservatoire, before returning to her first love of traditional music, song and dance. Deborah has developed a passion for playing for dancing since joining her first ceilidh band at age 13. She is a member of Stepling, a band performing English music, step-dance, song and percussion, and also plays with Folk Dance Remixed, a dance company combining traditional dance with hip hop and street dance styles, with whom she has performed as such events as Car Fest, the Southbank's Festival of Love and Glasgow's Commonwealth Games Festival. Deborah records on a regular basis for a number of people, including The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra, and for Laurel Swift's 'Travelling with Thomas' musical. She teaches music, song and dance regularly for The English Folk Dance and Song Society, as well as on a freelance basis for various workshop series, festivals and music services. Deborah recently completed The Teaching Musician MA degree course at Trinity Laban, graduating with Distinction.

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