I’ve been struggling along with my practice, and I have a question about ornamentation.
In Great Highland Bagpipe playing, many embellishments seem to have fairly established functions and conventions regarding where and how they are used. For example, a G gracenote is often played on the beat, and certain gracenote combinations tend to follow particular patterns.
Is there anything similar in uilleann piping? In other words, are there any generally accepted rules or conventions about which ornaments are normally used in particular situations?
What I am really trying to find out is whether there is a reasonably systematic way to learn ornamentation from the basic skeleton of a tune—for example, from the relatively plain versions of tunes found on TheSession.org—and then work out where rolls, cuts, pats, crans, etc. would naturally be added.
Of course, I understand that one of the fundamental principles of traditional music is to listen carefully and learn by ear, and I am not looking for a substitute for that. I am simply curious whether there are any useful general rules or patterns that a beginner can study as a starting point.
I would be very grateful for any advice or insight.
Not really. There are no proscriptive rules, although there are the bounds of style and good taste but within those it’s very much up to the individual player.
I’m the sort of person who likes things to be fairly systematic and structured, not only in music but in almost everything I do, so I think this aspect of uilleann piping may be quite challenging for me.
It sounds as though I’ll need to spend a lot of time simply listening, developing my ear, and gradually learning what sounds natural and appropriate within the style. I suspect that will be a very long process, but probably an important part of learning the instrument properly.
Do you have a teacher? It’s best to work with a teacher, who will be able to show you how and when to play (or not to play) ornamentation, and explain what sounds good or bad (completely subjective, i know).
If you are learning on your own, you might be picking up bad habits with realizing it.
I do not have in-person-to-person teacher. There are no known pipers in South Korea. But my pipemaker provide real time online lesson, intermittently. Maybe I should ask him next time!
Plenty of pipers offer online lessons. You should ask around and see who is offering lessons, and try it out. It is a very good investment when you are starting.
Being in Korea, your main problem will be the time difference.
There are plenty of books with detailed notations of the playing if various pipers.
Joe Doyle’s books, for example. They may help getting an idea of what goes on in the tunes. Ideally in combination with the recordings they were taken from.
You know what? I actually bought all six of Joe Doyle’s books already, and they’re on their way!
I have no intention of ignoring the “learn by ear” rule, but I wanted something a bit more formal and reliable as a reference than TheSession.org. I’m hoping the books, together with the recordings, will help me understand what’s really happening in the tunes.
Highland piping has idiomatic conventions just as there are in uilleann piping, where uilleann pipers put a cran in a certain tune for example. You can hear dozens of different uilleann pipers play the same tune all of them putting a cran in the same place, just as you’ll hear dozens of Highland pipers, though playing different settings of a certain tune, put a taorluath in the same place.
“Proscriptive rule” or “the bounds of style and good taste”? Whatever one wants to call it.
Some of the advice I’ve been given over the years regarding ornamentation:
Favor the down beat for the grace notes/don’t play a grace note on the off beat notes
Don’t end a phrase with a roll or a triplet
Don’t over-use bending/slurring
Don’t over-use ghost D
There are different types of crans - learn them and when to use them
But these are all based on what teachers heard in my piping. It could be entirely different for you. It’s important to learn how to play as many ornaments as you can, but that is just technical learning. The real art is knowing when to use and not to use ornamentation. That’s the real challenge.
Perhaps you could compare the ‘unornamented’ version of a tune from The Session to versions played by your favourite pipers and make a note of which ornamentations they use and when.
I’m at a beginning stage of learning the whistle and will go through a few tunes learning the basic notes, then apply ornamentations -
When I can actually play them correctly at the relevant tempo :),
When I have breath left (not a concern for pipers),
When I have space/ time.
In a video regarding playing Uilleann techniques on a whistle, Jason Rouse goes over when and how some ornamentations are played, and he gives examples on both instruments - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SzD8qLjPas
Also, congratulations on being a lone piper in SK! More power to ye!
In response to the title of this thread, I have an huge issue with the whole “Rules of ornamentation” distinction and approach.
Ornamentation isn’t something that you add to tunes as an afterthought like adding hot chili powder to a dish at a Thai restaurant.
It is inherently part of the music as performed.
Rather than think of “the tune” and “the ornamentation” as two separate things, I suggest a more holistic approach.
Yes, there are tunes and there are techniques, but the tunes will tell you what to do if you let them.
For example, there are three repeated notes or a long sustained note in a jig. There’s an opportunity for all kinds of ornamentation or variations. A descending B A G scale passage might feel more interesting with a quick ABA bounce on the A.
My suggestion is to listen deeply to the players you enjoy and take it all in as a whole, not “oh, he did a cut here and a cran there”.
What’s the effect on you of the variations or ornaments?
Do they make the tune feel more interesting, reinforce a particular rhythm, or just seemed gratuitous.
This is the sort of thing you hear when you visit thesession a lot. I don’t know, I don’t want to introduce the sort of discussion you see there on this forum. A lot of it involves interpretation/semantics and all that. Different views.
However, let’s separate ‘the tune’ from, let’s say, ‘the performance’ for a minute, for the sake of this.
There are certain ‘things’ that you add to a tune to help it along, to separate or emphasise notes etc. Some would say ‘articulations’ but let’s not enter that discussion either. They are really the basics. Then there’s things you can add to tunes to make them shine, additional layers. Most tune are quite happy without the addition of rolls, they exist perfectly fine in a basic, simple form. As an example: a while ago I played a version of the Flogging reel that I got from Tony Linnane. Afterward another piper commented it was ‘without rolls?’. It was, mostly. And for me that was the charm and attractiveness of that particular version. And the tune never asked, let alone told me, it wanted more than I gave it.
Now, you can add a few more layers of variation, different things: open or tight triplets, tonal variation, filling of intervals, (multipe) rolls, runs, long notes, rhythmic variation and what have you. All the stuff you do to enhance the ‘performance’ of the tune but really, these are extra layers, additions. Ornamentation, embellishment or whatever you like to call it. That’s how I look at it anyway.
All I’m saying is that ornamentation in this music isn’t some purely deterministic algorithm one should follow, that’s all.
The OP was literally asking for rules to follow, and I’d discourage that rigid algorithmic mindset.
During the COVID shutdowns I taught a workshop called “34 Variations on the First Six Notes of Jimmy Ward’s Jig” to encourage exploration in the area of ornamentation and variation. I prefer that sort of approach.
I honestly didn’t expect so many people to put this much time and thought into answering such a simple and rather insignificant question of mine. Although everyone seems to have slightly different opinions, am I right in understanding that, in the end, what determines whether to use ornamentation—and what kind to use—is not some sort of “golden rule,” but rather the context of the tune?
For example, if I come across a dotted quarter note in a slow air, instead of automatically thinking, “It’s a dotted quarter note, so I should put a roll here,” I should be thinking more along the lines of, “This tune would sound better with a more lyrical and plaintive character, so perhaps vibrato would be more appropriate here.”
Is that basically the right way to think about it?
In my opinion, you should be aiming to make the tunes you play sound nice to the listener and to yourself. Ornamentation, when done right, will help you. But don’t get obsessed with ornamentation for its own sake. It has to serve the tune in the sense that it has to sound nice. And don’t forget the basics. No ornamentation will help, if your timing is off or your pipes are not properly tuned.
I think ornamentation is often about adding variation.
In a standard AABB tune, you might be playing that A part 6 (or more!) times before moving on to the next tune. Rather than playing the same thing over and over, you find places in the tune where you can add variation to keep things interesting.