Fingering tricks on wide bore D chanters

Uilleann Pipes
1

I was playing tunes with another piper, he’s somewhat new to piping, and he pointed out to me that I was fingering differently than he had been told. It dawned on me there may be others pipers who are unaware of some of these subtle fingering tricks.

I only know a few tricks, so perhaps other pipers could share theirs. I should mention that at least this works for me on any wide bore D chanters I’ve ever played. This is the first one that he pointed out:

  1. Upper “g”: Sometimes I don’t lift the index finger to get upper “g” because the hole may have simply been left open. He thought you HAD to stop the action of the reed (close all holes and squeeze harder) before it would go into the upper octave. If the reed is adjusted right, and by squeezing the bag normally, it should be nearly impossible to keep the lower G with this fingering - x XXX OXXX]X, ie, by simply closing the F# hole (middle finger).

I use this trick esp. on The Boys of Portaferry and the Clogging Reel. coming up from B,Cnat,D running triplet to an upper “g”

  1. Bending upper “a”: you can bend the “a” note downward by lifting the chanter with this fingering - x XXO OXXX]O. One of the tunes he heard me use this on was the Star of Munster, beginning of second part.

You can bend the note upward to a#, by doing the same thing, ie, lifting the chanter and keeping the index finger down. x XXO XXXX

  1. Rolling effect on upper F#: You can’t really do an “in tune” long roll on upper F# like you can on a whistle or flute because you get a rather sour sounding Fnat through the roll since the lower two fingers will likely be off. So, tapping the upper g note finger (actually an open “g” triplet with F# hole left open) is the trick. I hear this done by O’Flynn and Ennis.

The Beauties of Ireland is a jig where this works nicely. But any tune where an upper F# roll is desired.

2

You can do a roll on high F# with the chanter on the knee and use a silence as the “lower” grace note.

3

Ahhh Zen and The Art Of Uilleann Piping :wink: [/quote]

4

Thanks for starting this thread. I really appreciate it. Now if the other “seasoned” pipers will just chime in, we might have one of the most useful threads yet.

5

There’s pipers way more qualified than me to talk about these things but here’s some of the other well known basic ornaments that you’ll definitely want to add to your bag of tricks. I hope I’m using the right terms. Someone correct if not. These are pretty common ones which work on most any chanter: (they may vary from expert to expert)

Rolling effect for bottom D and E: same fingering for both…alternating the index and middle fingers (G&F#) back and forth, sort of a flutter in cadence with a normal long roll in the music. Bottom D involves lifting the chanter, of course. Lower E, you keep the chanter down, for both octaves. I use these all the time in many tunes and learned them from Todd Denman and Denis Brooks. They also transfer nicely to/from whistle and flute. I hear them in many pro recordings.

One of the more “worn out” familiar tunes would be the slip jig Kid on the Mountain (starting note on E like with many Em tunes) and Scotsman Over the Border (starting note D)-a nice pipe tune -a jig. Dinny Delaney’s is another one where this bottom D flutter comes in handy.

Triplets: there’s several different types of these.

The easier ones would be a 1-2-3 effect (quick as you can tap 3 fingers in a row across the desk), running up the scale, closed holes (stopping the reed quickly between notes) such as A,B,C to d, or B,Cnat,d to upper e. You can practice these over and over, in place, till the notes sound separated (closed hole–staccato) rather than bleeding the notes together (open hole–legato). B,Cnat,d to upper g works nicely in The Flogging Reel and The Boys of Portaferry too.

If the reed is adjusted right, the lower octave (closed hole) E,F#,G can be obtained. If you find that difficult to keep in the lower octave, there’s a tricky way to fake a closed hole E,F#,G…which is done by quickly gracing each of those notes with the A note (3rd finger LH). I hear John McSherry use this one. This gives an open legato flutter effect to a tune in that spot. The upper octave works easier for these. At times you can ascend from B all the way to the upper g (closed hole) moving in rapid succession. One common tune you might hear some players do this on is The Swallow’s Tail Reel in the 2nd measure, kind of a double running set of triplets.

The second octave f#,g,a triplet (closed hole), running up the scale, comes pretty easy and is useful at times.

Triplets running down the scale usually come a little harder, but these sound much cooler, I think. The upper octave g,f#,e, to d is a basic one you might hear a lot, like with O’Flynn and McNamara. This one can be done so fast you may not hear the notes, it’ll sound like back-stitching. The old worn out tune Banish Mishfortune can start out with this ornament, I’ll typically run this one in two different places in the first strain, ie, the first eight measures of this tune. If you play the tune, you’ll know where to put it. A nice effect. It can also be used in Queen of the Rushes, 2nd section, key of D. C#,B,A run is another that may take some time to work out.

The tap triplet, (3-3-3) using the same finger, is one you might hear often too. O’Flynn uses this one in Queen of the Rushes, 1st and 3rd sections (key of D), and alternates it with the A,B,A (or A,Cnat,A) triplet. Keenan uses this one on the back d, but this is frowned on by more traditional players. I believe it’s a GHP technique, not sure. It involves simply sliding the thumb back and forth over the hole, or else actually tapping the hole.

The bottom D sometimes needs 2 quick Ds in a row, This is done a couple different ways. If you’re really good you might just bounce the chanter on/off the knee. I often cran, grace, interrupt (whatever you want to call it) the bottom D with the A note, some use the F#. The Hag at the Churn is an example of where this might be done, within the first couple measures. In fact, the entire tune can use many of these ornaments mentioned here.

The B,Cnat,B triplet (or B,d,B) can be more difficult to master, also the A,B,A triplet (or A,C#,A), esp. for RH people. You’ll hear Keenan doing these in Miss McCleods Reel, 2nd section of the tune. It almost sounds flagrant, but like Kevin R. said, it was probably Patsy Touhey that started that one. These really loosen up the left hand. :wink:

Rolls: Rolls on the pipes are not esp. always done like whistle and flute players might do them, although, the better sounding rolls probably came from the piping style. For example, the A roll might be done as A,C#,A,G,A, keeping the LH middle finger down through the entire roll, both octaves. The F# roll might be straight up and down…F#,G,F#,E,F# (except in the upper octave as noted in earlier post). Also the G roll might also be straight up and down…G,A,G,F#,G. Some whistle player will lift two fingers up and two fingers down for this roll. When I heard Joe McKenna play The Gold Ring at the Vancouver Folk Fest years ago, I noted that he rolled the upper g and F# the same way in the 3rd section, letting the F# roll sound a little flat through the roll–extra pressure might bring it up.

The B roll can be done straight up and down, or B,D,B,A,B, both octaves.

Upper f# slide: Lifting the chanter on the upper f# note and 1/2 holing (kind of) can be used to slide in to an fnat and on down to eflat and e. You can immitate fiddler Tommy Peoples sliding on The Rambling Pitchfork first part, with this one. I recently heard a wild, wild version of P. Keenan playing this one in concert in London. I hardly recognized the tune. He must not have been very sober. :smiley: The g,f#,e to d tight triplet running down sounds much cleaner in this spot.

These are just some of the intermediate basics to add to your collection that can make your tunes sound more interesting. Listen to Brian McNamara on some of his jigs (A Piper’s Dream album) and you might hear some of these. Esp. listen for the triplets running down (second octave), they don’t really have tones, they’re just kind of fluttering sounds.

6

Fiddlers have to play rolls on open strings which have cuts only; a pat is impossible, for obvious reasons.
Joe Shannon plays a kind of loose cran of this sort on “The Boy in the Boat,” on the Green Linnett record “The Noonday Feast.” He emulates Rowsome here, although I’d imagine he was playing crans like that before hearing Leo’s records.
Fiddlers either play rolls melodically - a “turn” - or as the more familiar (to us) cut and pat. This is explained well by Dale Russ in an online interview http://www.irishfiddle.com/russinterview.html. Kevin Burke is a modern fiddler who uses these older type “turn” rolls more than the cut-and-pat roll. You can use the “turn” on the chanter of course. They are nice in jigs as a variation, for instance.
Various rolls can be given a nice swell by lifting the chanter off the knee and using close fingering, so that at the end of the roll a bit of the bottom D “sneaks in,” and the tone is swelled up a bit by the chanter going skyward. Play a roll with tight fingering, say on the low B, so that its lower grace is a silence - the lower two fingers of the top hand closing the chanter; as they are headed down, lift the chanter up. A very nice sound.

7

I believe this has come up before - trying to verbally describe the difference between a roll and a turn. The descriptions given above, where you go down to the note below the main note, is a turn, and uncommon in ITM. The note below the main note is silent in a roll in ITM, so that on UPs it is not fingered at all, and is replaced by simply doing a pat on the main note.

It gets tricky when discussing these ornaments on fiddle. In the turn for classical violin, the note below the main note is sounded. The written symbol is an S lying on its side. In a roll for fiddling, the lower note is fingered, but the main note above it is cut or tapped so fast that the lower note is not really sounded.

Isn’t this fun?

djm

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The most useful way to figure out the “tricks” is to practice every day. Your chanter will teach you how to play it if you get to know it well.

9

Sorry to divert the conversation but I think that is not a good example at all. Burke’s rolls are mainly highly compressed, delayed affairs, giving a “kick in the tail of the note”.

I see rolls played by fiddlers as lying anywhere on a spectrum from:

  • 5 even notes (as in some of Michael Coleman’s rolls) at one end
  • through 3 even eighth notes in the middle (e.g. Casey)
  • with the delayed, compressed thingies at the other end (e.g. Burke).

If I’m not totally out to lunch I also hear the last kind in e.g. Ennis’ piping…

10

Thanks for the tips Lorenzo. I especially found the trick of moving to the second octave G very useful (why I didn’t stumble onto that one before I don’t know, it seems so obvious now). In a very short time I had overcome problems I was having in several tunes; and it dramatically helped my staccato triplets (G,F#,E) which were always spotty at best.

If I might be so bold as to add to the thread..
Roll on F#: I was shown by another piper the trick of first cutting the F# with A and tapping (or patting? or is it petting, or maybe even tickling :boggle: ) the bottom D wilst lifting the chanter momentarily (like when popping in the upper octave). This is especially nice if you get the hard D effect. It also works for the bottom E, although this one is hit or miss for me on my chanter at this point in the learning curve. When I can get it I use it to vary the bottom E,s in the first part of “Kid on the mountain” and likewise the first bar of “Doherty’s Reel”
John~[/quote]

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I don’t know of many online sources to link to, but Grey Larson’s new book is online and describes all these ornamentations as well as any I’ve seen so far. He clears up the myths and confusion over all these terms pretty well.

Larson’s web site: http://www.greylarsen.com/ Click on Irish Tune Bank, then on the vault, then on A Guide to Grey Larsen’s Notation System for Irish Ornamentation.

This is a MUST READ for anyone serious about all the terms such as cut, tap, strike, grace, chip, tip, slap, upper and lower grace note, long roll, short roll, 5 notes, 3 tones, cran, double cran, slide, long cran, short cran, uilleann piper’s triple cuts, etc. Maybe there are other places specifically online for pipers ornaments.

I’ve had the priviledge of sitting down with Kevin Burke, Dale Russ, Skip Parente, and others, to learn the fiddle fingering tricks. In fact, once I traded Dale a whole set of golf clubs, including bag, for a day’s lessons while he was over visiting. :smiley:

For fiddle, here’s the three basic rolls:

  1. “A” string with 1st finger postion: B-D-B-A-B (1-3-1-0-1)

  2. “A” string with 2nd finger postion: C#-D-C#-A-C# (2-3-2-0-2) or w/o the
    open string C-D-C-B-C (2-3-2-1-2). Or substitute Cnat for C#.

  3. “A” string with 3rd finger postion: D-E-D-C#-D (3-4-3-2-3)

Burke also does an open-string roll. On the A string, it’s A-C-B-A with kind of a delayed flutter, or open string-2nd finger-1st finger-open string again. As StevieJ says, this delayed action in rolls is also called “compressed.” Burke, Glackin, Russ, Parente, and others all do this on fiddle. James Kelly, and Michael Coleman tend to do a more stretched-out “melodic” roll.

Some fiddlers break up the roll by switching directions of the bow somewhere in the middle. Bowed triplets is another ornament by lifting the tip of the bow slightly while quickly changing directions. That’s the bowed flutter you hear with Tommy Peoples alot. Burke said that Peoples can get this effect by simply flicking the end of his bow with his little finger!

12

Actually, Tommy Peoples has his own very distinctive way of doing these. You have to sit up very close to him while he is playing to catch it. He actually weighs down on the bow (i.e. stretches the string by pulling down on the bow) and then flicks his index finger to let it go. This is what makes his rolls POP out at you. Sneaky, but effective.

djm

13

As already mentioned you can simply play a roll to a stopped chanter on high F# and if you don’t close the hole tightly in the roll you actually get a roll pretty much, and not a silence.

(You can also roll a C nat by cutting C with back D and then rolling F# very very lightly and not entirely closed and you get a good roll. If you try to close that hole tightly you get a whiffy thing, not a roll.)

But mostly, I’m going to challenge the notion that you can’t get and in-tune sounding roll on high F# even with the right hand wide open whistle style and both E and ghost D fingers in the air. In fact, on both my current chanters, high F# sounds “in tune” in an equally tempered sense, or a hair sharpish from what it really should be, when low F# is dead-on what it should be. Opening the E and ghost D definitely makes it too flat, but you just blow a little harder and if you can’t get into tune (adding a cool slide of course) by blowing up and rolling E, you aren’t in control anyway. You can also leave ghost D closed and roll to E, or close E and leave Ghost D open and roll to that, depending on your chanter and inclination.

Royce

14

The “shiver” is what Ennis called this, a trill on F# and E, if I follow you here. Not really a roll substitute if you ask me, it’s a different sound entirely.
I think Seamus was a bit more inclined to use substitutes for a roll on the high F, though; although most of these weren’t exactly more “in tune” than a roll would have been - little microtonal bends of notes and the like. He doesn’t talk in his tutor about how to avoid these hideously out of tune F# rolls, though. And there’s his wild high Fnat, obtained simply by playing a close fingered F# off the knee. Quite in your face!
The fiddle roll business…whatever it is, it ain’t a note being attacked by two sharp graces, is the point I’m getting at.

15

Yes! That’s it Kevin…a shiver, or trill. I just didn’t know what to call it. I hear both Ennis and O’Flynn doing it and I caught myself sounding the same effect when I was playing The Beauties of Ireland. All I knew was that I was woodpeckering on the G tonehole with the F# hole left open.

The only reason I can think of to do it there is because a long roll (as opposed to short) on the F# sounds flat on a wide bore, Rowsome style chanter…at least any I’ve ever played, although it’s quite possible other style D chanter bores do not sound flat doing the roll, so in that sense this shiver substitues for a better sounding ornament, the long roll.

Yes, and quite right, the fiddle can’t attact the lower grace note of a long roll. The style of rolls I’m acquainted with are such a delayed flutter, the whole thing is one emphatic attack, not an evenly spaced turn.

16

A close fingered roll won’t be out of tune on F#, if the note’s in tune in the first place. The graces are A and silence, nothing scurrilous about those. Of course, what could be more piperly than scurrilousness?
Everybody scurry!

17

I was taught to lift the chanter briefly off the knee when the F# hole is tipped [thereby keeping the chanter open throughout] in both upper and lower octaves.

Boyd

18

Hey Boyd, that works. Lifting the chanter swells the volume a little but brings the pitch back up where it should be (F#). Thanks! I should have tried that!

19

This is the Seamus Ennis roll with bottom D gracenote, right? It’s described in the Willie Clancy book. Funny, it makes my F#s flatter…

20

Kevin, with the chanter still on the knee, lift the lower three fingers for a flat sounding F#, then lift the chanter and listen for the pitch to rise also…if you have a wide bore D chanter.