Irish airs
An air has no strict metre. It comes from a song, and the phrasing follows the words, which is why two players will never play one the same way. There is no tempo to give you, and anyone who gives you one is guessing.
- Time signature
- Free, or loosely 3/4 or 4/4
- How you count it
- You do not. The phrasing follows the song the air came from.
- Tempo
- None. Free rhythm is the defining feature
- Structure
- Often AABA, following the verse rather than the usual AABB
- Share of the tradition
- 4.4% of all tunes, 2.2% of tunes played at sessions
Where the air came from
Tomás Ó Canainn put the problem plainly in Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland (1995): "Because of the free rhythm it is impossible to notate the tune as it is actually played, and different players will have different interpretations."
The Londonderry Air shows what that means. Jane Ross noted it down in Limavady and Petrie published it in 1855. In 1934 Anne Geddes Gilchrist argued that the player's rhythmic freedom had caused Ross to write the wrong metre, and that the tune was originally in 3/4 rather than 4/4. In 1974 Hugh Shields matched it to a tune Bunting had transcribed in 1792 from the harper Denis Hempson, who lived near Limavady. One tune, and the notation was arguably wrong for over a century.
How a air is built
Airs usually follow the verse of the song they came from, so AABA is more common than the AABB of dance music. They are played on their own rather than in sets.
Playing airs on banjo and mandolin
Airs are the hardest thing to play on a banjo and the least taught. The instrument is built for drive, and an air wants the opposite. Enda Scahill puts his finger on it: Irish music has a pull and push that cannot really be written, and the picking action makes that harder because the motion easily turns metronomic. The documented workarounds are tremolo on long notes only, unison open strings paired with slides so the note does not die, drones on the open A and E, and knowing when not to play. Marla Fibish's 89-lesson Irish mandolin course covers ten tune types and airs are not among them.
New airs from players
Sent in by the people who play them, too new for the books this library is built from. Each one has notation, tab, playback and a metronome.
Every air in the library
36 airs, each with tab already written.
Showing all 36 airs
Questions about Irish airs
A tune played in free rhythm, without a strict pulse, almost always derived from the melody of a song. It is played solo rather than in a session set, and the phrasing follows the words of the original song.
There is no tempo. Free rhythm is the whole point, and putting a metronome to one would remove the thing that makes it an air. If a source gives you a BPM for a slow air, it is inventing it.
Learn the song first. The advice that recurs across every teacher is to know the words, because the phrasing, the breathing and the emphasis all follow from them.
A tune written in honour of a patron, most associated with the harper Turlough O'Carolan. The word has at least four competing explanations and none is settled. The Oxford English Dictionary first records it in 1790, calls it "sportive and animated", says the origin is unknown and notes it is "evidently not a native Irish word".
The other tune types
Each one counts differently and runs at a different speed.
Tempo ranges, structure percentages and repertoire shares from Alan Ng,irishtune.info Irish Traditional Music Tune Index. Historical sources are named in the text.