I think this post will generate a lot of controversy hehe .. I’ve been with the doubt since a lot of time, well here it goes:
Some days ago, I heard an interview done to Sylvain Barou (Breton Flute player of Comas and Guidewires) and he told that his flute playing style was based on the Uilleann Piping style and ornamentation.
I just can’t find the difference, ¿which flute player plays like a flute player, or which one does like a piper? Almost everyone uses Cuts, Crans and Triplets, it’s getting me very confused.
I kept my investigation on this exact term, and some great pipers told me that this “Flute playing style” or “Flute playing terminology” was first used with Matt Molloy when he played with Dónal Lunny in the Bothy’s.
I still really don’t find a clear explanation to this.
Any help will be very useful !!
Mike Rafferty, Jack Coen, Michael Hynes, Micho Russell…
First four names that come to mind when I think of flute players who don’t sound very pipey at all. The world is full of them. As you continue to listen to more and more music and different players, the differences between piping-style tunes, phrasing, and ornaments, and their flute-style equivalents, will come into sharper focus. When I was a kid, all cars looked the same. Cheers,
Well, I didn’t know Micho Russell played flute … I’ve just looked in Wiki, and that says he played simple system flute. I’ve only ever heard, or heard about, his whistle playing, though …
Actually, a few pipers I know point to Mike Rafferty as an example of a flute player whose playing has a lot of piping in it, mainly from his father’s influence. And Jack Coen often used the piper’s “rising C,” where the C natural rises in pitch toward the end, a classic piping technique.
I think when applied to Matt Molloy the term “piping style” refers mainly to specific techniques like his use of cranns and the hard bottom D. But more generally I think it refers to an overall approach to a tune: the pipes have their own specific limitations and constraints, and if you listen mostly to pipers you will unconsciously remain within those limits and constraints in your flute playing, even though your instrument doesn’t actually have all those same limitations. For example if you listen to Molloy playing The Humours of Ballyloughlin, it’s almost all exactly the way a piper would play it, with one exception: the high triplet he plays as one variation in the third part, going up to the third-octave d. A piper could do that but it would be tricky and it’s something a flute player would be more apt to do.
Mike Rafferty’s playing sounds influenced by piping to me not because of his ornamentation but because of his overall approach to settings and variations. Harry Bradley is one of the least piping-influenced flute players I can think of, which perhaps is ironic as he is also an excellent piper. But he makes the flute sound like a flute and brings out its best features, just as a good piper brings out the best features of the pipes in his or her settings of tunes. John McKenna also exemplifies this “pure flute” style for me. And all the “huff-and-puff” players and people like Michael Tubridy have a style that to me feels almost entirely flute-based, not influenced by the pipes. Breath-pulsing is just not something you can imitate very effectively on the pipes, nor can you achieve the same qualities of lightness and buoyancy that you can with a flute.
I would love to hear Harry Bradley play a tune on the flute and then the same tune on the pipes, because I suspect he’d play them completely differently. He uses the flute’s capabilities and best features to their full advantage, and does the same with the pipes. There are areas of overlap, but there are things the flute can do that the pipes just can’t, and vice-versa; likewise there are settings or variations that are better suited for the flute than the pipes.
Don’t know the context and possibly Sylvain Barou was saying that, in a rough and
ready way, more or less traditional flute playing of ITM and related music
is influenced by piping. I would suppose the Irish people who first took
up these flutes when they became available in the 19th century had played
the pipes and naturally their fluting was influenced by piping and helped
give it its distinctive sound. We certainly don’t sound like Jean Pierre Rampal.
Touche on Rafferty; that’s what I get for dashing off a flip response. I was thinking mostly of “tight” piping style, which of course isn’t all there is. I nearly mentioned Bradley as well, but the conundrum presented by his own piping was too much. How, though, could I have left off Cathal McConnell? I hear him as being pretty darn flutey. Cheers,
Traditionally, dynamics don’t play much of a role in Irish flute playing, regardless of whether your playing is influenced by pipers or not. I suppose if you were trying to imitate the pipes you might aim for that hard bottom D more, but I can’t think of any other dynamics-related feature of piping-style flute playing.
I never - or seldom - think of piping when I’m playing the flute. But I do think of other fluters and I always hear Martin Hayes somewhere in the background.
I also hear flute dynamics (loud and soft) in flute playing, especially solo playing - and this is very unlike pipes, which are on or off.
In my mind, I associate the lean-back-and-blast, overblowing technique that some players use at the upper end of the flute’s second octave with piping, since it turns “proper” flute technique on its head in favor of a piperesque squeeze of the metaphorical bag. It’s not exactly a dynamics issue, but damn the difference. Cheers,
Having just acquired the Paddy Carty/Conor Tully reissue CD for Xmas, I guess you could mention Paddy Carty as a not-particularly-obviously pipes influenced fluter? I’m sure pancelticpiper will chime in in due course with his thesis (I trust I don’t misrepresent him) that all the wind instruments in ITM traditional usage share a significant amount of technique de natura and because players have always often crossed over among them, and it is perhaps going a bit far to try to really separate them. Sure, each instrument has its own strengths and natural tendencies, or weaknesses and difficulties that have to be worked around, that lead to it having some distinctive features/techniques. I reckon the old arguments about regional style (to the extent that such may be accepted to exist ) are at least as significant in how any particular named player plays, as are his own teachers and other chosen influences.
I’ve always wondered how authoritative that statement that Matt Molloy “introduced” cranning to the flute is (no disrespect intended and I’m not saying he didn’t!). It sounds like one of those casual statements that an academic or a radio presenter just comes out with without having done any real checking up and that gets absorbed into the folklore… has anyone ever seriously surveyed pre 1970 recordings of Irish flute players to see if anyone ever hazarded a cran?
While I’m a huge Paddy Carty fan, there’s one habit of his that drives me crazy and harkens more to highland piping than to uilleann piping, which is to use a grace note to articulate between repeats of the same note like G-G. He didn’t do it all the time, thank goodness, but he did do it more often than I’d like. On the uilleann pipes and the flute you can put a stop in between repeated notes, which always sounds better to my ear; on the highland and other “unstoppable” chanters you have to use a grace note. That sounds fine on the highland chanter, or on the bottom D of the uilleann pipes, but I find it jarring when I hear it in Carty’s playing, it always sounds a little awkward. Sorry for the diatribe, it’s probably something that doesn’t bother anyone else. I guess I associate it with newcomers to the music who think you have to play the whistle or flute that way, with only finger articulation, so I am probably prejudiced against it.
Funny you should make that point, Brad! I can’t say I’d noticed it specifically in Carty’s playing - I’ll have to go listen a-purpose for it… However, as someone who does exactly what you’re protesting about most of the time… not because I think one “should” or “has to” but because generally I prefer it whereas I am not a fan of so called glottal stopping… I’m not saying I never use the latter technique - I do, chiefly accidentally as a consequence of pushed-breath attack on a note: I use a small amount of tonguing too, but mostly I use finger-articulation: to me it mostly sounds better/preferable. I think all these techniques and the balance of them in one’s own or any particular player’s style are just part of the broad tapestry. We have choices to make and we learn to prefer particular things over others. We can certainly find all kinds of precedent in the tradition!
Just to throw a similarly contentious opinion in here: I’ve read much here on C&F in praise of Mike Rafferty; he’s clearly influential on the American side of the pond, but I’d never heard mention of him before joining C&F (OK, that doesn’t mean much - there are loads of influential players I’ve never heard of!!!). I’ve checked out several of the videos of him on YouTube, and I just don’t get it. Sure, I can see that he’s an important repository of the tradition and he may be a great teacher from whom much can be learnt both about flute technique and about approaches to the music as well as settings of tunes… I also recognise that it isn’t entirely fair to judge him solely on clips made in great old age… but I sure don’t like listening to him on those clips and wouldn’t want to sound like him, however “authentic” (there, I’ve used the A word ) they/he may be. If I’d come across the clips by chance, I would have passed on from them pretty quickly. In the past I have reviewed recordings by the likes of Seamus Tansey, Seamus Ennis and Micho Russell about which I had similar feelings - good documentary/archival/source material stuff, but not very listenable as pure performance due to technical lapses. (And no, that doesn’t mean I only rate/respect slick modern professional performances!)
Being a green-as-grass piper I can’t speak with even a pinch of the experience that Brad can, but I agree with him in thinking it’s lots to do with phrasing and setting. Also finger articulation; that’s a biggie.
And this is merely a weird philosophical observation … When I play the flute I tend to think of putting my fingers down to close off a tonehole and sound a note, but on the pipes, I think of picking my fingers up to release the air and sound the note.
I have no idea why this is – I’m assuming the constant flow of air into a closed-end tube has something to do with it – but the result is quite different (when I can do it right, anyway). So maybe guys whose flute playing sounds like they’re playing the pipes sound that way because … they play flutes like the pipes.
We should probably add that Mike Rafferty has spent a little time on the pipes himself and demonstrated no small amount of skill there. “Speed 78” has the story.
Wonderful, wonderful (and most listenable!) stuff, and I’d highly recommend investing in a recording – I haven’t seen the YouTube clips, but I suspect they don’t do him justice.
Edit: “The Dangerous Reel” is a terrific recording, too (their take on The Caucus Reel is my all-time favorite) and Mike plays the pipes on at least one track (“The Shaskeen” set) there.
Duly noted - I did note that I realised the YouTube clips probably weren’t a fair representation - at least of him in his prime. I still don’t think he’s much known this side of the pond, at least not in Britain (can’t speak for Ireland) as I honestly hadn’t heard mention of him in my pre-internet days. Mind you, I’d barely heard of Grey Larsen or Chris Norman either, amongst others. Wonderful thing, this web business!
The Caucus was actually composed for Mike himself by Jean Duval, a great flute player and composer of lots of excellent tunes who lives here in Montreal.
I can understand why Jem may not be able to appreciate Mike’s playing…not everyone “gets” it and some people never do. That’s not a disparaging remark, just an observation that some people are drawn to the older traditional players and others prefer something more polished. It took me nearly 20 years before I started to truly appreciate and understand the depth, richness, and beauty in the music of people like Mike Rafferty or Seamus Ennis; before that it felt kind of like taking my medicine: I knew it was something I supposed to listen to, and I did so dutifully but with little enjoyment. Now it’s pretty much all I listen to when I listen to Irish traditional music. Not everyone goes through an evolution in their appreciation: I know a few people in their 20s who went straight to the older recordings and never listened to bands or today’s “star” professional players, and I know other people in their 50s who’ve been listening to Irish music since they were kids and only listen to bands; they have no interest in the older players.
FYI, Mike is very well known in Ireland and a legend among flute players there. Kevin Crawford recorded a few tunes he learned from Mike on his “In Good Company” album.
) are at least as significant in how any particular named player plays, as are his own teachers and other chosen influences.
) they/he may be. If I’d come across the clips by chance, I would have passed on from them pretty quickly. In the past I have reviewed recordings by the likes of Seamus Tansey, Seamus Ennis and Micho Russell about which I had similar feelings - good documentary/archival/source material stuff, but not very listenable as pure performance due to technical lapses. (And no, that doesn’t mean I only rate/respect slick modern professional performances!)