Or, perhaps, liven it up even more by playing it against a repeating pattern of no chords at all. 
While you do have a point, I should very much like to know how that can possibly compete with playing it against an Em with no 3rd, because that’s some progressive and lively stuff right there!
I should very much like to know how that can possibly compete with playing it against an Em with no 3rd, because that’s some progressive and lively stuff right there!
Isn’t it more like a cliche that’s been done to dead over the past thirty years or so?
Really? Because I’ve never heard, neither in ITM or any other type of music, in my ten years of playing an Em, or any other minor chord for that matter, without a 3rd!
Without the third, how is it a minor chord? Emaj without the third is identical to Em without the third…
@Ben - agreed, there are tunes that can be played as both hop and slip, and some that blur the line. So ultimately it is indeed just how you play the tunes. And I play them differently. So for me there is a definite, clear distinction. I’d be as happy to lump everything under slip jig and just say there are two distinct ways (and a spectrum in between, as well as other ways) to play them, but I just like having two labels.
That’s what I was getting at all along, good sir!
Thread necromancy, I know. But I found one that should go here. It’s called “Another Jig Will Do”, and it’s in O’Neill’s. Has a neat back-and-forth between Cnat and C# in the B section.
John Doonan has a great version of this, one of my favorite slip jigs. I’ll second (or third or fourth or whatever) An Phis Fliuch, as well as Fig for a Kiss, Hardiman the Fiddler, and the Swaggerin’ Jig.
I love slip jigs, and try to learn a lot of them, mainly because I feel like if I don’t start a set no one will. Why are they so neglected at sessions (at least the ones I go to)?
Yes these three are favourites of mine! I first head Donald Willie and his Dog back in the late 1970s and I thought it was the coolest tune ever, and I’ve been playing it ever since.
Terry Ho The Grinder is often played as a 9/8 march, and that category has quite a few great tunes, any of which can also be played as slip jigs, such as
Heights of Dargai
Brose and Butter
Battle of the Somme
Bonnie Highland Mary
I Have a Wife of my Own
Banks of the Lossie
As far as Irish slip jigs go, my favourite set is
O Farrell’s Welcome to Limerick > Elizabeth Kelly’s Delight
The Boys of Ballisodare and Open the Door for Three haven’t been mentioned yet (I think). I’ll also put in another vote for The Arra (or Arragh) Mountains.
A Fig For A Kiss
The Disused Railway
Chloe’s Passion
The Countess Cathleen
The Snowy Path
off of Altan.
Baby Rory?
how do you tell a slip jig from a hop jig?
I think it’s easiest to just think of some obvious examples:
See The Kid on the Mountain? That’s a slip jig.
See The Butterfly? That’s a hop jig.
It’s reasonably clear, I think, that those two have quite different rhythms.
Mind you, the terms do seem to have been fluid over time and in different places, so it’s not totally black and white …
So what is My Mind Will Never be Aisy, Mr. Hall?
; )
Speaking of fluid.
Sorry, didn’t answer the OP’s ?
~
Garech’s Wedding Slip Jig
If Spotify works for you it’s track 7, 1st tune on The Road Less Travelled by Danú > > https://play.spotify.com/album/2lzC9iOG6mkX2BWFRfD28V
It’s a slip jig. As usually played.
True that. In my neck of the ITM woods, those who strongly differentiate slip and hop jigs think of hop jigs as being really better thought of as in 3/2 meter, including tunes such as The Dusty Miller or Rocky Road to Dublin. Yes, I know they’re frequently transcribed in 9/8, and personally I don’t get that. Those tunes are closer to a mazurka than a slip jig, if you think about it. And also remember that it’s a characteristic of these tunes that they are typically played singly - that is, without repeats. They tend to repeat within themselves, anyway.
For me, The Butterfly could never be a hop jig. It fits solidly in 9/8, but its structure strikes me very much as slide-ish. I give it a category of its own and call it a slip-slide. 
Remember further that context counts: a hop jig to a dancer is melodically a single jig to me, and if I play for dancers, it behooves me to remember that. But when the dancers are safely tucked away, my fellow musicians and I are now free to have “hop jig” mean something melodically altogether different, again The Dusty Miller, etc. 
And then again, come to think of it, I know one or two people who would never fail to remind me that a 3/2 tune would be considered a species of hornpipe in certain English contexts!
Thing is … Slip/Hop is as much an approach to playing a 9/8 tune as something inherent in the tune itself. So arguing whether a particular tune is one or the other is somewhat moot. It depends on how you count, place accents and add/drop notes.
Listen to Julie Fowlis and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh playing “Rocky Road” (An Bairille). It’s clearly a 9/8 slip jig here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raOhfgsft8I
And this harp setting of The Butterfly sounds strongly 3/2 hoppy to me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX1OBhSzVLI
I think Nico and I had a go at this issue here a few years ago.
Not to me with the first song (Tha 'm buntàta mòr, something about a big potato), MTG. To me that’s really more a 3/2, just not as drive-y as what I think of as hop jigs. But on that we’ll just have to agree to disagree. The second song is of course definitely 9/8. 
A damn wonderfully fine set in any case, isn’t it. 
I do catch what you’re saying about the harp piece. As you say, how you play it will make all the difference.