crans or cranns

Trad Irish Music
1

I have a question regarding the ornment from the Irish piping tradition known as the cran (or crann).

I’ve been taught several different ways of performing this ornament on flute or whistle from several different sources.

I was wondering what the thoughts of the list are as to whether there is a “correct” way, or whether there is one way common in reels and another in jigs, or whether this is one of those “it’s right if it works” things.

In the following diagrams I’m dividing the beat into either 2 or 3 parts with the | character. I know this’ll probably be about as clear as Red River mud; apologies in advance.

The first way I learned to do a D crann:

(graced A)D | (graced G)D (graced F#)D

where there is a graced 8th-note on the first half of the beat and two graced 16th-notes on the second half, unless you are performing it at the end of a phrase, when you would omit the first gracing and just do

D | (graced G)D (graced F#)D

I believe this is the method introduced in the Clarke tinwhistle tutor (by Bill Ochs?).

The next method is less “structured” and it involves just starting on low D and then adding as many different graces as you can fit into a beat, so you’d have something like

D (graced A)D (graced G)D | (graced A)D (graced F#) D

or even more if you could fit it in. To the ear, played at speed, this has an almost waterfall kind of effect.

Then I encountered the idea of subdividing each beat into pulses, so that you get a “double-cut roll” kind of effect:

D | (graced A) D (graced G) D | (graced F#) D

This is similar to the first way but more rhythmical, giving in effect a triplet: an eighth, then two graced 16-th notes, and the a single strong graced-8th note on the last third of the beat.

Lastly, I have seen on a few web sites a cran described in an entirely different way:

D (graced A)(graced G)(graced F#)(graced E) D

which again is a kind of “waterfall” effect but is basically just a rapid scalewise descent through the beat.

I hope this makes sense and I do apologize for the length of this post.

I would value any insight into the performance (and history, if it’s known) of this ornament.

Thanks and best wishes,

–James
http://www.flutesite.com


[ This Message was edited by: peeplj on 2002-09-04 13:39 ]

2

The cran is essentially a piper’s ornament, they have not been used on flute and whistle all that long and have rise to Myth that Matt Molloy plays the pipes on the flute. Well, I for one don’t think he does. But that aside, your basic cranning is OK, your 'less structured’is in fact known as a double cran, a cran performed on D or E if the note cranned is preceded by the same note, e.g. the start [but not the repeat] of the first parts of the Kid on the Mountain.
Crammiong as many notes in as you can is one way of describing it, it is actually a highly structured crann that includes a triplet of cuts and a distinct ‘stop’ seaparating the triplet from the final cut the overall rhythm being da-da-dum-dum

Steve and myself have gone through the crans o nthe whistle board in the past, a search wouldn’t harm so we won’t have to repeat things too often.

3

Thanks for the reply–that does make sense, and it gives me a place to start from on “cleaning up” my crans.

I did search, by the way, but your answer here was a lot easier for me to follow. I like things like this to be stated very simply and in a very easy to follow way.

Thanks again, and if anyone else would like to add anything else to this, be welcome to.

Best to all,

–James
http://www.flutesite.com