Howdy,
I am trying to find ways of making C natural sound more interesting, particularly when playing crotchets or dotted crotchets. I have tried playing normal rolls but they don’t sound especially great. ‘Rakish Paddy’ and ‘Pipe on the Hob’ are 2 tunes which would benefit from some spicing up on ‘C’. I particularly like what Johnny Doran used to do on ‘Rakish’ but I can’t quite get the same effect!
‘Cheers’ in advance for any suggestions.
What do you consider “interesting”? You can get different vibrato using the A or G. You can break the note up by tapping with the back D. You can vary the note by playing something else like a triplet or back stitching.
djm
You can also “push” through the back D. Debbie Quigley does this quite often – pop the back D quickly and almost instantly remove the index finger off the C - gives you a b-dah kind of sound. It might be easier to do with a C#, but it’s fun to practise!
Cheers,
Off the top of my head, the things I use to vary the C:
- Play it on the leg
- Play it off the leg modulating the pitch with the left index in a partial closed state
- Vibrato with the second or third finger of the right hand
- Cut into from D
- Try every fingering you can think of, both on and off the leg. Its been my experience that each chanter has its optimum C fingering, depending on whether you want good intonation, lots of “nyahh” ease of integration into a moving passage, etc.
- If you have a C key, see what that buys you in the first octave, even though its really there primarily for the second octave C
- Toss in a triplet that includes the C
- Try a C#
Cheers,
Michael
A roll on C natural is actually quite easy and effective but there’s loads of other things you can try as welll, some of them mentioned above.
Lately I’ve been trying to bend the Cnat up by sliding off the back D a little. It takes lots of control to do, but what else is new? I can never go anywhere with a “piper’s C” - bending up from a B - coming from A, for instance, say in the reel the Yellow Tinker - I can never get the note bent upwards much when starting with just the cross fingering. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this, do any real pipers bend the C like that?
How does Ronan Browne bend the C in that reel, or any other tune? His C is the most disturbing I’ve ever heard, sounds like the reed’s being tortured.
I get a nice clean doublet or triplet on the Cnat by quickly “pipping” the A then F fingers (AFA for the triplet). It is a nice legatto way of cutting the Cnat.
You can also fake a slur down from back D by going from D to C# and slowly roll the F finger off. Takes practice, but after about 500 tries, it works well.
Virgil
I’m surprised you think C natural is uninteresting. That being said, I think Paul Reid and I must have been in the same room when Debbie Quigley suggested spicing up the C natural in “Pipe on the Hob” in the manner described by Paul. I spoke to Robbie Hannan about his use of C natural in the same tune when he was in Toronto in '02. I didn’t understand what he meant because there was a lot of talking going on in the bar, but I suspect it was something only slightly more complex than what Debbie Quigley recommended be done with the note in “Pipe on the Hob”.
I’m glad you remembered the name of that tune Greg, I was thinking it was Corn on the Cob 
This has been rattling around in my brain since I first read this post, so I thought I’d chime in.
In my early days of piping, I noticed that there was something Liam O’Flynn quite often did on the C, especially in recordings from the early seventies. It can be heard repeatedly on An Phis Fhliuch and, I believe, Humours of Ballyloughlin, Queen of the Rushes, among other recordings (particularly of jigs). It turns out this was merely ‘splitting’ a crotchet C with the D, followed by the A quaver (“die yah dum” or |c {d} c A| )
This remarkably simple bit provides a way to prevent C natural from being lifeless or from getting too much attention. I would recommend following Mr. O’Flynn’s lead and using this as the bread-n-butter dotted crotchet C in jigs, and save the Willie Clancy ‘nyahs’ for special emphasis
Speaking of which, as Pat Mitchel describes in DMWC, WC’s C slide starts with a ‘d’ gracenote. To emulate the effect of Mr. Clancy’s world-renowned C slide, I stiffen and straighten the C and F fingers, and continue to curl them up, keeping contact with the sides of the fingerholes, and at the same time, raising the chanter off the leg slightly for the swell. The overall result is a sharp bite, followed by an steady shift into pitch as the chanter is replaced on the knee. Note also that while you are half-holing the C and F notes, it is a muffled, flat tone that opens up into a clear, emancipated C natural.
Eric
You could “bend” the c nat by holding your top index finger against the C# hole, sliding it away, then sliding off the bottom index finger.
That should “torture” the C nat pretty good.
Mine sounds so good, I tend not to “decorate” it in any way.
BTW I have always wondered, what is a hob, and why would I want t put my pipe on it?
Timmy
a hob is like a shelf on a fireplace.
the pipe refers to a cricket or some such thing.
When I was wee the hob was down by the fire and was used for cooking..today the term is used for a cooking ring on a gas fire for eg.
The pipe in my experience was my grandads main pleasure ie.filling the kitchen with tobacco smoke..My gran used to place the pipe down by the hob whenever he was finished work to warm up.I asked her why she did this."Och it makes the damn thing easier to choke us all"was her reply…presumably a warm pipe is easier to light ,don’t know ..any pipe smokers out there?anyways both she and I used to wish for the thing to catch alight and vanish in a pile of ash,but of course it never did.
Uilliam
a hob is like a shelf on a fireplace.
the pipe refers to a cricket or some such thing
Piobaire is Irish for piper and also cricket. Apparently in days gone by, crickets would rest in the ashes of a fire place in winter.
Thus the pipe on the hob.
Tommy
Somewhere or other, Seamus Ennis describes a cricket as being the “piper of the embers”. I might’ve chalked this up to one of his weird tales, but apparently when it gets cold, crickets seek heat inside.
http://pao.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/educ/science/2000/10-14-99.htm
Charles Dickens wrote a story called “The Cricket on the Hearth” which I believe is a singing contest between the cricket and the kettle.
There is also a traditional American tune called the The Cricket on the Hearth, but I don’t know if it’s related.
From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary:
Main Entry: 2hob
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
1 : a projection at the back or side of a fireplace on which something may be kept warm
2 : a cutting tool used for cutting the teeth of worm wheels or gears
Séamus Ennis noted that “Pipe” was incorrect, that the actual word translated from the Irish name for this tune should be “Piper”. He said the “Piper on the Hob” was actually a cricket, and noted that the Irish, like other cultures, marked a cricket in the home as a symbol of good luck. Ennis said a more accurate translation of the tune name from the Irish would be “The Piper of the Embers”. The tune is noted as such on the “Forty Years of Irish Piping” album.
djm
P.S. Oops! Looks like we all responded at once.
O’Flynn cutting the C with the back D sounds really great, I actually think he outdid Clancy in An Phis Fhiluch by throwing that in. I don’t think Willie was cutting the C like that.
I never understood how the C was bent until about a year ago, hence my above description of bending the note up by lifting the back D. The way most pipers seem to bend up the C is to start on B and lay down the ring and middle fingers while sliding the index finger up and off its hole, all in one smooth motion. Or to have all three fingers down and then slide the index up, this sounds even more…portamento I suppose. It feels as if you’re sliding up into C from G. Ronan Browne bends into C in this manner a lot, I think. These techniques give the most effective sound to the bend into the C, and none are explained adequately in the current print tutorials I’ve read - I don’t have Kannamacher’s book though. Or the NPU videos. Merely fingering a B and then bending the C finger up with the middle and ring fingers off won’t work, the finger doesn’t have the leverage behind it to control the glide upwards. Also the lower fingers keep the pitch of the C down as you glide up. It’s good exercise to practice these slurs into the C on eighth notes in fast tunes - listen to Ennis play the Monk’s Jig (his name for the Gander in the Pratie Hole), he will snap out slurred Cs very quickly without lapsing the rhythm at all.
Some pipers apply extra bag pressure to this note as well, I think. On a long note you can give it some vibrato as well - and play off the knee, I think Johnny Doran was using all three of these in Rakish Paddy.
And the absence of the cricket might mean that the hob has not been lit in awhile, which is bad luck indeed in winter…
My recollection of the Pat Mitchell Cnat lesson is a triple motion:
- left index rolls up slowly, but not fully
- chanter lifts off the knee slightly
- first two fingers of the right hand uncurl
If the timing is right it sounds great, if the timing is bad (say, you lift the chanter or the right hand fingers too soon), it can sound pretty squawky. I tend to “vent” the left index first, then begin the lift off the knee at almost the same time as the right-hand fingers uncurl. You get the subsequent vibrato by waving either the right index or right middle finger (depending on your chanter’s preference).
Hard to do “at speed”, I usually save it for a Cnat held for more than a quaver.
- Bill