Irish style dance has influenced American dance styles including jazz and tap. Irish music has also provided quite an influence in other nation s dances. The most important and most commonly overlooked instrument is the hard shoed foot. The thing of great importance in Irish dancing, Mr. Hill says, is the music of the shoes. In the eleven years that I have been dancing, the greater part of my attention has been spent on the development and control of the variety of tones that can be produced by taps of heels and soles on the floor and against each other.
Style is necessary, of course, as in any other dancing, and so is exactness in tricky time.
But control of a good variety of sounds which is the most difficult part of Irish dancing, is the most important because it is the most Irish. What parted the Irish harp in similarities from other variations was the solid and robust construction of the Irish harp. Many sources researched for this paper inform that the fiddle is considered interchangeable with the violin of today. It quickly became the most widely used instrument at dances. As observed at the Renaissance Faire in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in October 2000, the uilleann pipes were smaller than their counterpart, the War pipe.