Whitewater Whirl!
a mini dance vacation in WV's New River Gorge area

Fiddle tunes can be structured in many ways, and can be any length. But perhaps the most typical length is 64 beats of music, and it's that length I'll be focusing on here.

Every fiddle tune worth its rosin has structure, which is defined by the use of repetition throughout the tune. A tune that had no repetition would not satisfy, as there would not be anything familiar to "tie the tune together."

Every contra dance is exactly the same length - 64 beats. Our band plays a couple of tunes twice that long (which means it takes twice through the dance to get through these oddball tunes once), but all the others are 64 beats long, which is the standard. 

Dance figures - lines forward and back, for example - are all based on units of eight steps, or beats. So a really boring dance might consist of lines forward and back eight times in a row. 8 X 8 = 64. Very boring.

Dance tunes have their structural divisions, too. The standard dance tune is comprised of two sections.

"A" section - 32 beats
"B" section - 32 beats

Each of these sections is in turn divided in half.

A1 - 16 beats
A2 - 16 beats
B1 - 16 beats
B2 - 16 beats

Let's take a look at and a listen to one of the oldest chestnuts in the repertoire, "Whiskey Before Breakfast." It's a good tune to examine because it works so well, yet has a formal simplicity that lends itself perfectly to the understanding of how a great tune is put together.

"Whiskey's" composer used repetition to make writing it much easier than you might imagine. To begin with, this tune has identical "A parts": A1 is exactly the same music as A2. This means that once the clever composer created the first 16 beats of music, s/he just repeated it. What a timesaver repetion is! Know this, young Skywalker:

Repetition is your friend

Actually, there's even more repetition in the first half of "Whiskey" than we've seen so far. Check this out:

(Each colored rectangle = one "unit" of 4 beats. Units with identical music are colored the same.)  The chart illustrates a number of things common to  the majority of contra tunes:

• That both parts - A1 and A2 - are the same length. This will always be true.
• That all units are identical in length - 4 beats. Though theoretically possible, I can't think of a tune where this isn't the case.
• That A1 and A2 are identical. In most instances where they're not, they are almost always nearly so.
• That the first musical "unit" in A1 (colored red) is used four times; and a related observation:
• The first unit of the A1 is repeated in the 3rd unit of that part. The same goes for the A2 part. This format is found in the vast majority of fiddle tunes. Why? Because (1) it seems to ideally balance the need for repetition with the need for novelty; and (2) Repeating the beginning element (unit) somehow satisfies in a way that other permutations don't. This same form is used effectively in the following line from a children's poem, here repeated twice:

A1: Peas porridge hot  Peas porridge cold

A2: Peas porridge hot  Peas porridge cold

(You'll get to hear the tune in just a moment.)

So it becomes apparent that there's very little unique music in the first half of the tune - only 3 different, tiny units of music, each represented by its own color. Through use of repetition, 12 beats of original music becomes 32 beats of music - half the tune.

And it gets better. The same five bulleted observations we just made for the first half of fiddle tunes apply equally to the second half. So a mere 24 beats of original music combine to create a complete fiddle tune that can stand up to being played for a 10-12 minute dance set. That's bang for the buck.

Here's the chart for the entire tune:

As you can see, the "B's" are made up of different music than the "A's" but are, again, identical to each other. Now, click on the following link and listen to "Whiskey" while you follow along on this chart, 4 beats per rectangle. (When the file opens, you should see a slider on your screen, and it will progress from left to right as the file plays. Thus, the position of the moving slider will visually cue you as to where in the tune you are, e.g., when the slider is exactly at the midpoint, B1 is just beginning.) Listen to the tune several times, until you can associate each color block with its 4-beat unit.

Whiskey MIDI file

Repeat after me:

"Repetition is your friend!"

Next time, I'll talk a little more about structure, and go on from there. I want to encourage you to write a tune if you haven't before. It's fun, and really enjoyable to hear your own work played once you turn out a good one. No promises here, but we'll certainly consider adding any tune to our set list that we really like.

Try writing a tune with the same structure as "Whiskey Before Breakfast." If you email me a tune in progress (in Finale format) and would like feedback, I'll be glad to help you as I find time. I may post your tune-in-progress for illustrative purposes.  I'll also post completed tunes as time and space allow.

Here's a tune of mine, Big Bambu, which includes piano accompaniment. It's unusual in a few ways, but it is the standard length, and has the expected A1-A2-B1-B2 format. Warning: this tune has less repetition in it than "Whiskey." I'll color-chart it for you when we take a closer look at it in a future installment.