I'm looking to learn some set dances. At present I know pleanty og jigs and reels. But I'm somewhat lacking in the dance department. Any tunes that you'd recommend I should learn. It would be especially helpful as many of my friend enjoy dancing. Please remember I like to learn from a records. So prefurably from any of the Chieftains albums.
I think ye are a little mixed up here...The music for set dances IS Jigs Reels Polkas Slides and Hornpipes....so ye can play any of these.There are some set dances aside which may be confusing ye a bit..The Blackbird et all.
2Books and tapes from NPU Music for the Sets Yellow and Blue,will give ye all the dance music ye can handle.
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam
If ye are intersted in helping our cause to cure leprosy feel free to PM me.
Come on now Uilliam don't go nitpicking, there's music for the sets and there are set-dances. Blackbird, Job of Journeywork, Garden of Daisies, Mount Phoebus Hunt, An Suisin Ban, Madam Bonaparte, Downfall of Paris, Sean O Duihir an Gleanna, Jockey at the Fair, you know the ones he means.
There's a lovely 6 part slip jig which isn't difficult to learn or play. It's called the Strayaway Child. The Bothy Band do a fast version of it on their first album. The Chieftains play a slow version on their album Celebration. I usually play it for dancers. The speed I use is somewhere between the Bothy and Chieftain versions, approx. 80 on the metronome. I usually only have to play it once, it's so long.
Perhaps there is some confusion over the term "set dance". A set dance is a fixed, performance dance - often solo - and the dance is specific to the tune. Peter has given some good examples. This is not the same as set dancing/quadrilles, where the dance steps are specific, but the tunes are not, as long as they are of the correct rhythm and number of bars, e.g. the NPU collection that Uilliam mentions.
djm
I'd rather be atop the foothills than beneath them.
Usually 'The hunt' for short but applied to the version played around here by the West Clare fiddlers, patrick kelly used the name. There's another version (leo rowsome played it like that for example, it's in O Neill's like that) that starts the second part on three distict F naturals
Joseph E. Smith wrote:I believe the Strayaway Child is a double jig.
Chieftains Celebration lists it as a slip jig - played, I believe in 12/8. The Bothy Band version is slightly different. But there's so little difference between the two, I don't think we should fall out over this. Let's just agree to differ -
By the way, half my repertoir of hornpipes are just reels played slowly, and most of my slow airs are hornpipes when I'm feeling really lazy.
Moi!! 
