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Here in the Inner Circle, we have looked at many tunes in depth. In the coming days, we'll be looking at even more, including reels. Reels fall into two basic categories: round (no dot-cuts) and pointed (lots of dot-cuts). One of the features of bagpipe music in general that separates it from many other types of music is the importance of the dot-cut rhythm. It's everywhere in our tunes. In fact, only a few types of pipe tunes don't have the dot-cut. Jigs, round reels, and round hornpipes don't have it but every other type of tune has dot-cut combinations: 2/4 marches 3/4 marches 4/4 marches 6/8 marches 9/8 marches strathspeys reels (the traditional dot/cut, competition style) hornpipes (the traditional dot/cut style) In conventional (non-piping) music theory, the dot increases the length of the note by half of its original value. However, in pipe music, we hold the dotted notes even longer so that the ...