I’ve been playing the whistle for over seven years now but one ornament I have never managed to get the grip of is cranns. I consider myself competent at playing long rolls, short rolls, cuts, taps etc and can play a wide variety of tunes with my own ornament interpretation. Every time I decide to learn how to do do cranns I find myself giving up, I just can’t get my fingers to do what I want them to. I am not used to lifting the two fingers above the note I’m playing in quick succession.
When I play rolls with the lower hand i.e. on the E or F#, I cut with T3 (G hole). When I play rolls with the upper hand i.e. roll on G cut with T2 (A hole), roll on A cut with T1 (B hole). That means that when I play rolls I always cut with my left hand never my right is that bad practice? I realize that there are many ways of playing a roll, for example some people only cut the roll with T1 and T3, and some cut the actual note they are playing a roll on. Is my way of playing rolls getting in the way of learning cranns because it seems every time I want to play a crann my fingers want to do a roll instead
I tend to avoid learning tunes with cranns or I simply change the crann to a different ornament, and that’s a shame I think. I have always wanted to learn this to my repertoire as I think they add a certain flurry to the tune when needed. I recently came across Phil Hardy’s tutorial site at Kerry whistles, tutorial number 12 is called double cuts (cranns?) he plays these double cuts (cranns) on every note apart from C. http://www.kerrywhistles.com/movie.php?groupID=48#
My question is can anyone help me in the way I should actually learn these cranns? It seems I have some sort of mental block to my fingers Some have you have surely been through the same and it would be nice to hear your version of how you eventually mastered playing them.
Nothing wrong with cutting only with the top hand and I can’t imagine why that should prove an obstacle to playing crans. If you really want to play crans I’d suggest that you practice them very slowly - not doing the cuts slowly, of course, but allowing the main note to sound for longer between each cut - so that you get used to making each movement separately, deliberately, at first. Rather than trying to produce a spasm of the hand! And then gradually speed things up.
What “whistletutor” calls a triple roll is indeed what is usually referred to as a “double-cut” roll.
When I started playing in the 1970s it seemed that none of the old flute and whistle players I listened to played “crans” in the strict piping sense of the word, instead playing what I might call the “fluteplayer’s cran” or something.
They would hit Bottom D with an A gracenote, then what might be called an F# E D triplet. Up to speed and executed correctly this sounds pretty much like a cran. The F# E are played with a gracenotelike snap, not a fat open legato triplet sound.
The first fluteplayer I heard play a piping style cran was Matt Molloy.
For the piping style cran, keep in mind that on the pipes there’s no “one correct way” to do them, but the “rules” more or less are that the F#, G, and A gracenotes are used and the same gracenote isn’t used twice in a row. (These are the fingers that you would call T3 B1 B2 yes?) So some pipers go F# G A, some G F# A, some A G F#, and some only use two fingers F# G F# or G F# G which leaves the A gracenote free to cut Bottom D at any time without impacting the cran (this style is used by Mick O Brien).
Whatever sequence of notes you do, the “secret” to getting them sounding good is practice, playing the sequence over and over hundreds of times with each gracenote clearly seperated from the others and played exactly evenly pop pop pop.
I play rolls just like you do, it seems, and it doesn’t interfere with cran playing in my case.
Looking at John Skelton’s playing closely, I’m almost certain he puts only 2 cuts on his crans, with R1 and R2. But he holds the first part of the D a bit longer and then fires off the rest in triplet time I think.
Molloy puts in all three cuts, which never fails to boggle my mind.
That’s pretty much what I’m usually doing, too. As pancelticpiper said, I think the main thing is not to use the same cut note twice consecutively. So this “downgraded” crann sounds quite good IMHO, without having to deal with three (or more) fingers coordinating a single rhythmic device. To be perfectly honest, I’ve always been too lazy to just practise “full” cranns down all the holes properly, as the two-finger-crann seems to work just as well.
Another thing I sometimes do to simplify cranns (especially when playing fast) is merging the first two quavers of a sequence of ds to one crotchet, although this gives the whole thing a slightly different rhythmical emphasis, of course. Is this legitimate in a traditional sense?
I have a whistle book that shows something called a “short crann.” This involves the use of two consecutive cuts. An example would be to play low D, then cut with left hand 3rd finger, then right hand 1st finger. I don’t know if this would be considered the proper or traditional way to play a crann but I think it sounds pretty good. Seems to work well on tunes like “Within a Mile of Dublin” and “The Girl That Broke My Heart”.
Some have you have surely been through the same and it would be nice to hear your version of how you eventually mastered playing them.