Some dances are traditionally danced to with only one or the other type of shoe, while others are danced to with both, albeit with entirely different steps. They bear a passing resemblence to pointe shoes, but without any sort of hard support to stand on in the toe. Hard shoes resemble heavy black Oxfords with very large fiberglass heels and fiberglass toe taps. There are hundreds of different reel, jig, slipjig, and hornpipe tunes and each teacher usually makes his or her own steps. Failing to start and end the steps with the beginnings of the musical phrase is one of the most blantant ways of being off time to the music.
Set dances are usually in either hornpipe or jig time.
The music to set dances does not have equal length phrases. Because this would make for a very long dance, most people usually stop before the repeat of the longer phrase. The popularity of tunes waxes and wanes, but they all have colorful names. Figure Dancing Figure dancing is step dancing for groups of two, three, four, six, or eight dancers, though six is fairly uncommon. Instead of emphasizing complicated individual choreography, figure dances emphasize precision execution of complicated patterns of people.