Tune Skeletons
We believe that the music we play in our sessions was created to be shared, played and danced to in community, and we’re committed to keeping these traditions alive. We know how good it feels to play music with other people, and we want to make this experience as accessible as possible.
To help people to join in with tunes, particularly when they are being played fast, we’ve created tune skeletons – simplified versions of session tunes (the bare bones!) that still sound like the tune but have fewer notes, and are therefore easier to play. To illustrate how this works, here is a recording of tune skeletons for a pair of jigs, Father O’Flynn & The Old Favourite, with the session tune playing in the background at full speed.
We’ve taken care to make sure that the simplified versions of the tunes are fun and satisfying to play, and that the original tune is still recognisable.
Every note in the tune skeleton occurs at it’s correct place, in unison with the original melody. Notes are simply held for longer, to replace notes that have been removed in order to make it easier to play at speed. If a player wants to progress to playing the full tune, missing notes can be gradually reintroduced.
Two collections are available:
These books contain the jig, reel and hornpipe sets that we play in our online sessions.
