What is a Crooked tune and how do you identify it?

[MarkB]

I was given only brief description of what a crooked tune was and I don't have much music theory in me.

My questions are what makes a crooked tune? How do you identify a crooked tune? And how do you play it?


An inquiring mind would like to know please.

MarkB

[SteveK]

I learned about crooked tunes mostly from American old time musicians. Most tunes have a regular structure where the first part is four or eight bars which are repeated. There is not always a repeat but generally there is. The second part usually has the same number of bars as the first and is also repeated. If you deviate from that in any way, either by omitting or adding one or more beats the tune becomes crooked. Sometimes an added beat is subtle and it requires some close listening to detect it. Did you look at that version of Chinkapin Hunting I mentioned on your other thread. In the first part there are three measures of 4/4 and then one of 6/4-two extra beats. This occurs twice. (I should have a listen to this because I'm not sure they've got the whole tune there but that doesn't matter right now). Many of the Rufus Guinchard tunes in my little book are 6/8 jigs which have a 9/8 measure, usually at the end of a part. If you are in any doubt about whether or not the tune is crooked, you just have to listen to it and count the beats.

Steve

[colomon]

I learned about crooked tunes mostly from American old time musicians. Most tunes have a regular structure where the first part is four or eight bars which are repeated. There is not always a repeat but generally there is. The second part usually has the same number of bars as the first and is also repeated. If you deviate from that in any way, either by omitting or adding one or more beats the tune becomes crooked.

Actually, when you put it this way, it seems to include tunes "The Sailor's Bonnet", which I don't think anyone would consider crooked even though the A and B parts are different lengths -- essentially it is a single reel for the first part and a double for the second.

It might be simpler to thing of crooked reel or jig as a tune in which one or more of the parts (counting repeats) has something other than 8, 16, 32, or 64 beats in it, or those beats are not all the same length (as in the Thunderhead). (That's assuming the jig is not a slipjig!)

So that can range from simple (like the many Guinchard "doubles" which have a part with 17 beats in them) to fairly complex (like the Quebecois tune "La Belle Catherine", which has A part 8 beats repeated 3 times, B part 7 beats repeated 4 times, C part 16 beats repeated twice).

Incidentally, some of those extra beats in the Guinchard tunes are optional -- we've got a video of him playing with Jim Payne where he is clearly deciding on the fly whether or not to include the extra beat. At Goderich this year, Christina Smith suggested that this might have been to give dancers a chance to catch up if they had fallen a little bit behind.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Sailor's Bonnet has equal length parts as I've always heard it, perhaps you're playing someone's unique take on it?
Grey Larsen uses the term "crooked" in his flute book to describe Irish tunes that had odd length phrases, creating the impression that there was a time signature change with a longer bar, followed by a shorter bar. In the end you still wound up with 8 bars of 4/4 in each part. While he did borrow the term "crooked" from Old Time to describe these tunes they aren't crooked in the sense being described here.
I'd noticed the tunes with the funny contours before and wondered about them myself, this was one of the valuable things I got from Grey's book.
Irish Set Dances (Blackbird, Job of Journeywork, etc.) are crooked like the Old Time or French Canadian tunes - 8 bars in the first part, 12 or 14 etc. in the second.

[colomon]

Sailor's Bonnet has equal length parts as I've always heard it, perhaps you're playing someone's unique take on it?

Nope, I'm playing the standard version, as played by Michael Coleman, the Bothy Band, etc. The last tune in the Tarbolton Set. A part is 4 bars repeated, B part is 8 repeated.

There are lots of tunes with that pattern, and no one that I know of would consider them crooked. (Or similar patterns, like the "Convenience", with two four bar parts and one eight bar part.)

[MarkB]

Thanks again, I've got my work cut out this winter in learning some music theory and learning to recognize this type of tune.

Thanks again.

MarkB

[SteveShaw]

I know it's not Irish, but there's a great tune with a hornpipe feel about it called "The Surprise" written by the great Northumbrian piper Billy Pigg, the "surprise" being that the 'B' music has two extra bars.

Steve

[SteveK]

Colomon, I agree that The Sailor's Bonnet isn't crooked. Maybe my description would say that it is. One thing I was wondering about was Grey's 7/8 version of Thunderhead. In the other thread I said it was crooked. It seems to me a square 7/8 version would have 56 beats (8 bars X 7 beats). But the recorded version on the album Thunderhead has one measure of 6/8 thus making it a crooked 7/8 tune. Anyway, this is not a big problem in practice since most tunes are 4/4, cut time and 6/8. I don't remember if Rufus Guinchard had any crookd 9/8 tunes.

Steve

[colomon]

I don't remember if Rufus Guinchard had any crookd 9/8 tunes.

He does, a great tune called "Payne's Choice". A part is 4 bars of 9/8, B part is 3 bars of 9/8, and you add an extra beat at the end of the first time through the A part and the second time through the B part. (Actually, I suppose it might be easier to think of it as add a beat each time before you you start the A part, but that beat is clearly attached to the measure it ends rather than the beginning of the next measure, if that makes any sense.)

I've never seen it notated in a way that makes sense, but if you listen to the old recording of Rufus playing it, it's clearly as I describe above (though to complicate matters, he starts on what I think of as the B part).

[Guest]

Since my misspent youth in Ireland I was under

the impression that 'cooked' tunes were all of

them fiddler's unique bowings of standard tunes,

eg Merry Blacksmith, and accordingly I never ever

ever heard a word about tunes such as 'The

Blackbird' being 'crooked' while there and in the

middle of a strong traditional music boom in the

1950's - Tulla Ceilidh Band era - and later in

the 1960's - Show Band era ( Oirland OC cor

blimey ).

But who are we to be disputing with the likes of

Mr Larsen or Mr Cooper?

[colomon]

Um, hello, we're talking about Canadian and Old Time American music and terminology here, not Irish, even though we've discussed how that terminology would be applied to Irish music. "Crooked" is exactly the right word; 30 seconds on Google would have shown you we are using it the way it is commonly used in these parts.

Having said that, I think my gut feeling is Grey Larsen is on the right track when he suggests crooked tunes were probably much more common a century ago in Irish music -- in his flute/tinwhistle book, he provides two examples, from the playing of John McKenna and Michael J Kennedy, of old Irish tunes with extra beats. Certainly the Newfoundland tunes of Irish origin seem to be crooked as often as not.... the only question is whether that crookedness is something left over from the old days, or something that mutated as it traveled over the Atlantic.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

I've heard heaps of 78s and wax cylinders, LPs and archival recordings, etc., and can scarcely think of a crooked tune (as Grey defines it) in the lot. Beats me why he'd say they were commonplace once.
Crooked (?) tunes:

Paddy Killoran and Paddy Sweeny - Batt Henry's Favorite (Barndance)
Galtee Reel
Tailor's Choice (or Fancy) - played by Paddy Carty (not on available recordings, it's on the Mountain Road played by a whistler)
Michael Kennedy's Cuckoo's Nest
Corry Boys (played by John McKenna, these last two transcribed by Larsen)

[colomon]

I've heard heaps of 78s and wax cylinders, LPs and archival recordings, etc., and can scarcely think of a crooked tune (as Grey defines it) in the lot. Beats me why he'd say they were commonplace once.

Because Michael J Kennedy was a major early influence on him, and (to quote Grey) "Kennedy had many crooked tunes in his repetoire". These tunes were all learned before 1923 in an out-of-the-way corner in Ireland.

Likewise, Frank Maher, from an Irish neighborthood of Newfoundland, has a lovely crooked jig he got from the playing of his grandfather. At a guess, it probably came over from Ireland around 1900 or before.

It's possible their backgrounds both reflect some small corner of Ireland that was particularly fond of crooked tunes. But certainly this represents some evidence that crooked tunes were probably once more common....

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

I've a recording of Sligo C whistler Jim Donoghue playing the reel usually called after him, he adds a bar at the end of the first part. I think this is crooked in the New World sense - 9 bars, 8 bars in the 2nd part. I haven't written it out or carefully tapped my foot to it, counted bars. It just sounds strange. Other players have "corrected" Jim's version, bad cess to them as the expression goes.
I've the Michael Kennedy LP - I think mostly he plays straight tunes there but that doesn't mean he didn't have them of course. I'll have to have a listen again. It's a great record, too.

[colomon]

I've a recording of Sligo C whistler Jim Donoghue playing the reel usually called after him, he adds a bar at the end of the first part. I think this is crooked in the New World sense - 9 bars, 8 bars in the 2nd part. I haven't written it out or carefully tapped my foot to it, counted bars. It just sounds strange. Other players have "corrected" Jim's version, bad cess to them as the expression goes.

Where the heck did you find this recording? I've tried to track down everything I could of his playing, and I've only ever heard of four tracks, non of them "Jim Donoghue's".

That's funny, it's always seemed to me there was something a bit weird about the end of the A part -- people seem to have wildly different versions of it, if nothing else. But I never dreamed he might have played it crooked...