Bpm

[Wayne Bagley]

I am attempting to learn “Bach’s Frolics”.
I is a lot for me, but I am pleased as it is coming along just fine. Hopefully some of you have heard of this song.

What is the “BPM” that I should be striving for in this song?

Thanks so much.

[Jim Garber]

Beats per minute. If you have a metronome you can set it to that number. It should have a quarter or eighth note with an equal sign indicated on the sheet music so you can count the clicks per measure.

[Wayne Bagley]

Thanks Jim. My fault. I understand how to work the metronome. What I guess I was attempting to ask is: what speed is this song normally played? 120? 80? 140? That is what I am attempting to learn.

[Jim Garber]

Sorry. I misread your post. I am not familiar with this tune. I assume you don't have a recording?

[Wayne Bagley]

No I’m afraid not. No recording.

[Beanzy]

I went looking for this & found out it’s it a slip-jig arranged as a mickey-take by “DrDow” on The Session.

With a slip Jig or a slide I always find it helps to think of an auld fella dancing to get the ‘easy’ swing feel going.
If you play your quavers at about 120-130 bpm in groups of three, with the first one heavier than the 2nd & 3rd you should be about right. It may be better to set the metronome to 40-45 and use it to mark the groups of 3, so you can be a bit flexy with the first note of each 3.
The speed is less important than the feel of being relaxed and easy-going.
I think his joke kind of comes from the funny emphasis you get with that first 3 being heavy and the little flourishes at each section.

Here’s a MIDI mp3 of it at 128bpm, but without the swing&feel you need
Bach’s Frolics MP3

And here’s a notation & tab so people know what we’re talking about
Bach’s Frolics PDF

[Mark Gunter]

Now that's a cool one, thanks Eoin.

[JCook]

It's not actually a slip jig, not Irish at all, but a pretty famous Bach piece written in 9/8 time called "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." It's from Bach's Cantata No. 147. This DrDow fellow must have just decided to rename it as it sounds like a slip jig. It's generally not played too fast, and not really in a real slip jig sort of rhythm. It's a beautiful piece of music. Here's a YouTube link to it played by an orchestra:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwWL8Y-qsJg

Jack

[David L]

It's not actually a slip jig, not Irish at all, but a pretty famous Bach piece written in 9/8 time called "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." It's from Bach's Cantata No. 147. This DrDow fellow must have just decided to rename it as it sounds like a slip jig. It's generally not played too fast, and not really in a real slip jig sort of rhythm. It's a beautiful piece of music. Here's a YouTube link to it played by an orchestra:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwWL8Y-qsJg

Jack

Yes, DrDow could have given Bach more credit, but he probably figured everyone knew it was Bach's. This part is actually more of an accompaniment figure. The "real tune" is a slow (half-notes and dotted-quarters) chorale figure that goes along with this .

[Beanzy]

It's not actually a slip jig, not Irish at all, but a pretty famous Bach piece written in 9/8 time called "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." It's from Bach's Cantata No. 147. This DrDow fellow must have just decided to rename it as it sounds like a slip jig. It's generally not played too fast, and not really in a real slip jig sort of rhythm. It's a beautiful piece of music. Here's a YouTube link to it played by an orchestra:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwWL8Y-qsJg
Jack

It is a slip jig, if you don’t play it as a slip-jig you’ll miss the joke.
Here’s the link to The Session info so you get what’s happening;
https://thesession.org/tunes/6908
As indicated it was done in response to an earlier one called Pachelbel’s Frolics. We have a bit of a thing going in Ireland where you take any tune and try to make it ‘Irish’ by playing it as a jig, reel, slide etc. You can do it with loads of styles of tune, I ve heard people do TV theme tunes and pop songs etc, but it can get a bit tired as a joke after one or two in a session. The idea is the tune stays recognisable but you shoe-horn it into whichever style makes it sound Irish.

[Kevin Stueve]

I have a violin arrangement of Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring. I have been playing at it for a year on mando repressing the urge to jiggity it. Guess I'll stop repressing the urge :D

[sblock]

It is a slip jig, if you don’t play it as a slip-jig you’ll miss the joke.
Here’s the link to The Session info so you get what’s happening;
https://thesession.org/tunes/6908
As indicated it was done in response to an earlier one called Pachelbel’s Frolics. We have a bit of a thing going in Ireland where you take any tune and try to make it ‘Irish’ by playing it as a jig, reel, slide etc. You can do it with loads of styles of tune, I ve heard people do TV theme tunes and pop songs etc, but it can get a bit tired as a joke after one or two in a session. The idea is the tune stays recognisable but you shoe-horn it into whichever style makes it sound Irish.

Well, I can definitely understand the musical "joke" if you take a tune that's not normally in jig time (6/8 or 9/8) and proceed to play it as a jig. Or, say, you take a reel and play it as a waltz, or vice versa. Folks do this quite a bit.

But what I really don't get, in this case, is that Bach's famous "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" (from Cantata #147) is originally written as a composition in 9/8 time!! That's the same time signature as a slip jig. So nothing whatsoever changes when you play it as a slip jig. I suppose you can try to over-emphasize the stronger beats, and try to give it some "lilt," but to my ear, that doesn't make the tune any more recognizably "Irish" at all. It's not!

The original piece is usually played "Moderato", so the BPM would be somewhere around 60-80. But you hear this particular piece with all sorts of tempos!

[James Rankine]

.

But what I really don't get, in this case, is that Bach's famous "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" (from Cantata #147) is originally written as a composition in 9/8 time!! That's the same time signature as a slip jig. So nothing whatsoever changes when you play it as a slip jig.

I think that is the joke, at least that's how I appreciated it having started playing through it expecting to be able to put my best Jig picking pattern on it and had a straight up rendition of Jesu Joy come out. It's a gentle dig from the inside at the Irish notion that anything noted 9/8 must be a slip Jig and be Irish, and then you stick a skippy sounding Irish tune title to it. Well I was amused anyway.

[foldedpath]

Right, it shouldn't be taken too seriously. You can turn the tables on Irish trad the same way, like playing the slip jig "The Butterfly" in 5/4 time. Which I've done, more than once.

[Wayne Bagley]

This is so helpful. Thanks so much.

[Beanzy]

It does work, probably the best way to get it is if you listen to someone who knows the style well playing a slip-jig, then play this tune along so it locks in with the feel of that. Once it locks in then let the listening track stop & see what it sounds like, then try to get back to the lovely legato flow of the Bach piece as it is normally played, that’s when you realise how far from Bach you may have wandered. Like Sblock asks about, is this a particularly good example to use? To quote Frank Carson “ It’s the way I tell em”. In this case it’s a bit more subtle than when you have a tune you shunt across time signatures, but once you get it in the right zone it will show you how there’s so much more than the time signature which makes up a tune style. Having said that it’s not that good an example of the trick (look how little follow-up it had on The Session) definitely not in the same class as mid-set doing the theme tune to Neighbours as a jig, Come On Everybody as a hornpipe or even just dropping the theme to The Magic Roundabout straight in.

One caveat though, if you play baroque music having done much of this malarkey you’ll probably end up getting the beady eye during rehearsals, as it slips in a little too easily once you do it a bit & you need to rein yourself in like Kevin has wisely been doing. I recently had ‘that look’ from a couple of playing partners followed by “you’re swinging it”, after a weekend with a few performances at a folk festival including some sets of slides, I was starting to play the tune inflecting it like a slide.

[Mark Gunter]

I think it's a mash-up from Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring but I haven't compared it to the actual Bach music, has anyone done that? I got that impression from thession.org at the link Beanzy provided the other day: "Melodic motifs of Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring have been butchered and patched back together again in the form of a slip jig."

I think it's a cool one, started trying it out last night.