crooked-tunes · rockwell2011-crooked-road

The term “crooked tune” is in common use among current practitioners of bluegrass and old-time music, primarily with regard to fiddle repertoire that in some way denies temporal regularity ... For the most part, the piece contains the typical structure of a bluegrass breakdown or fiddle tune, in which two repeated 8-bar strains create an AABB form. The second strain, though, contains an extra beat ... Since this temporal discrepancy defies a listener's expectation of a regular half-note pulse, “Clinch Mountain Backstep” can be regarded as a “crooked tune.” ... This study conceives of a “crooked tune” as music that includes a disruption of an expected pulse layer.