I need help from the experts!
I recently bought this CD at WalMart called Celtic Reveries for about six bucks (sometimes you can really luck out with these deals). This time I did! It was done by St. Clair Entertainment Group www.stclairent.com
It was almost entirely slow airs done on high and low whistles, performed by a group called The Irish McGees. They played very well, and I love the CD, but I have a question: They do a lot of trilling on many notes, short and long trills, sometimes even every third or fourth note. I like the effect, and can sometimes do it myself, but I haven’t heard of anyone else doing this. It this Irish? Does it pass the trad test?
Sometimes it seems fun to play so many trills, sometimes it seems like a pain. I can’t decide.
It is my belief based on things I’ve picked up here and elsewhere that trills are an acceptable ornament with very, very limited use in Irish Trad. Occurring more than once on a single CD indicates to me that the players may not be playing in traditional fashion. </trad snob>
Of course, trills are a much maligned and overlooked ornament, with a great capacity for spicing up a tune.
.. but then, I may be biased…
trill
p.s.
be a demon with the pepper
and a poet with the salt
if you use too many trills
you run the risk of sounding shrill…
Well, although I haven´t seen it in “modern” days on records, older players I met - they all did it. I´m fairly sure Paddy Moloney does it, as well as several other great players.
Yeah, funny stuff, isn’t it. Listening to clips from the album, I feel so … relaxed … and haunted. Especially with birds twittering and ocean waves crashing on top of the music. 
Actually, there’s so much sliding and trilling and vibrato in the whistling, I’m feeling a bit seasick. 
The trills here are mostly really mordents or short trills. They’re not necessarily out of character in slow playing, but here they’re both overdone and done … oddly. They’re too languid for finger articulations, and the timing seems wrong. They’re too “wobbly”. Like a recorder player guessing at what they think is supposed to sound “Celtic”.
I’ve heard Ennis and Paddy Moloney use actual long trills effectively … and sparingly … in a particular style. I’m sure others can explain it better. I pulled a few trills myself at our last session, which raised a few eyebrows … and smiles. A novelty is one thing, but imitating the whistling on “Celtic Reveries” as a model seems pretty dubious.
OK, part of me likes the clips. The selection is nice, the arrangements are pleasant, and the recording quality is good. I’ve heard much, much worse. For 6 bucks I might buy it too, just for the tunes.
On the Chieftains ‘long black veil’ album the track ‘Changing your demeanor’ has a lovely trill at the part where 'And listen to the lark’s lovely warbbling" is sung. That is about as much trilling you would want to do on any tune IMHO. MT’s right, used sparingly and in the right spot in a tune is probably ok.
I think I figured out the timing problem that makes things wobbly.
In ITM slow playing, I sometimes hear this sort of figure used effectively:
|G3A/G/ F3G/F/|E3F/E/ D4|
Here the “grace notes” are back-loaded at the end of the sustained note, and form a kind of suspended transition to the next, lower note.
On Celtic Reveries, I hear this sort of thing all the time:
|G/A/G3 F/G/F3|E/F/E3 D4|
This front-loading sounds wrong to me, like just flapping the note for no particular reason. And it’s used on downward movement, upward movement, leaps, anywhere at all, and played slow and very legato. Overdone, it gives the the music an unstable, random, wobbly quality that’s distracting to my ear.
As people have pointed out, trills are an uilleann thing and Paddy Moloney expecially uses them quite a bit, both in airs and in jigs and reels. (He gets pretty excessive at times, trilling through an entire bar of a reel for example.)
He, and many other pipers, only trill with one finger, the lower-hand index finger, which is used to trill both E and F#.
Seamus Ennis and other pipers would also trill A.
Matt Molloy adopted many uilleann stylistic devices including trills. Note that he only trills F#, just as many pipers do.
In all these cases the trills can be a short “pralltriller” or a full length trill.
It’s a flute thing, too. Why does it have to be one or the other? Cathal McConnell uses them, and he’s in no way a “pipey” fluther. Michael Hynes does as well, and don’t ever get him started on pipe ornaments on the flute…
Rob
For somebody who posts as much as you do about “rules” to playing irish music and references old players like Tom Morrison, you really should listen more:
http://www.archive.org/details/MichaelColemanandTomMorrisonHeightsofAlmaAlltheWaytoSligo
Lovely trills in there. Listen to the second tune, the second part in the high parts. He does both a vibrato trill (where he’s playing what seems to be a hole below an open one, giving a sort of half trill thing) and a true trill after, albeit a short one.
There are better examples given already, but I think you’d do well to revisit these old recordings!
Wait a minute, I never said trills were exclusively an uilleann thing. You’re reading something I didn’t intend into it.
I just meant that trills are popular amongst pipers.
Obviously anyone can do them.
I’ve recently added a bit of trilling to various pieces. Pleasant.
Wonder if “trill” comes from the same linguistic place as “thrill.” Seems likely.
Thanks, guys! So, if I’m reading this right, trills are rather overdone in the “Reveries” albumn, and are all right done sparingly, but when descending into a note instead of ascending into it?
(you have to keep these things simple for people like me…)