On tunes and musicians' relationships to tunes.

The positive impact of the O’Neill collections of tunes, the most significant of which was published one hundred years ago this year, is widely acknowledged, but the focus on written collections in traditional music can obscure the intangible qualities of tunes – and musicians’ relationships to tunes.

Tunes are musical goods that we tamper with, the focus of our temporary experiments with the aesthetics of this music, with our own technique, with the challenge of finding musical unity in playing sixteen bars three times over. Tunes are patterns that we arrange, undo and reassemble. Sometimes musicians will erupt in the middle of a performance with a rush of variation and ornamentation, only to then quickly talk the tune back down and play it through straight...