Are there any tutors (books, VIDEOS, YouTube tutorials, articles…) which talk or include “IN DEPTH” study of Cross fingerings, Half holing, Shading, Venting & Vibrato. I think Geoff Wooff wrote an article about Cross fingerings, but didn’t find it on NPU site. Some other publications ect. ?
I know I should sit & experiment everything possible, but I still miss some helping aids for easier understanding of above rarely mentioned topics.
Geoff wrote about cross fingerings to attain third octave notes. I suppose he’ll chime in here in due course. All I can say it’s more interesting from the pipemaker’s point of view to see what the chanter will do than being of very practical use to the player. Being able to get a third g out of the chanter/reed is one thing, throwing the same into tunes is maybe not really the most viable of options.
The problem with what you’re looking for is really that chanters (or better chanter/reed combinations) are not made equal. In other words they will not respond in the same manner to all things you throw at them. Some will be very sensitive to what you do and some will barely respond to any change in fingering at all. And some may be flexible in some notes but not in others.And then again they may require a different cross fingering to achieve the same effect. It’s really all in the voicing.
And that’s the reason really I suggested in reply to your earlier question you sit down with your chanter and see what it will (or will not) do. Because there are no hard and fast rules, well, not a lot of them anyway. There’s no detailed one size fits all plan. And by approaching your own chanter in this experimental (if you like) way you’ll find what your chanter will allow you (and what will suit you as a player) without you chasing things you find in a book that may not be there at all.
Just take any old note, say the A, and play it (against a drone) with any combination of fingers you can one fingered, two, three, one open one closed and then open ones again below that, any combination you can think of. See what happens, add vibrato, again use different combinations of fingering/open/closed hole (and speed of vibrato) to see what colours and blends with the drone you can get and which are useful to you. Do the same and lift the chanter off the knee and see what happens. That sort of thing. Do the same with other notes, see what you can find, which sounds you like, how much micro-tuning, tone colouring etc each combination will allow you. See what you can use in your playing.
I can’t really think of much specifically written on the subject, the Rowsome tutor has extensive fingering charts and some indications which fingers Leo thought you should play vibrato with. You can pick up the odd bit in the stylistic analyses in the Clancy, Touhey and Ennis books but usually they’re just little mentions of things dropped into the text (Clancy playing the C natural in Corney is Coming with an E fingering and the C hole open for example) and it’s always worrth to watch a piper’s fingers when (s)he is making interesting noises.
This is a good point about much of learning the pipes and learning what you can make them do: Don’t be afraid to just sit down and make a good deal of noises. Send the fam out to a movie, close up the house, and just go nuts with the noises. You will gain a deep knowledge of the chanter by doing this. It has been very instructive for me!
re: Half Holing, Shading, Vibrato,
a helpful hint here may be; that learning to move ones fingers slowly is equally as important as learning to move them rapidly. and sometimes much more difficult!
Cross fingering has been covered - it’s all about experimenting with what works best on your chanter.
As for vibrato…one thing I’ve noticed (and obviously this is a matter of personal taste) but there seems to be a habit of fingering vibrato way too fast, particularly in slow tunes and airs. I like a principle of ‘the slower the tune, the slower the vibrato’, particularly since playing airs is an exercise to a certain degree in mimicking the sean nos singer’s voice.
I think vibrato is pretty much subject to experiment too, as I suggested above. You can use the Rowsome (or Howard) charts that suggest fingers to use but it’s very much a matter of taste as well as the responsiveness of your chanter/reed that will determine the one you will want to use.
You’re right about speed of vibrato, and for that reason I also suggested earlier experimenting with that. I notice whenever the chanter is introduced in different settings, new agey, tv commecials or anything intended to sound Oirishy against an electronic instrument backdrop, the sound is covered in a thick and fast vibrato, subtlety is not de rigeur in those settings. In practice I find that my chanters can both respond very strongly to finger waving vibrato, on some notes in particular and even more so when the reed is stronger that it’s average in humid air. In those cases I find the type of vibrato Ennis used more effective. Again though, you need to play it by ear.
This is the tune that I love to reference good, well-paced vibrato of varying ‘intensities’; the recording where I first encountered the Uillean pipes about 25years ago and have used as a benchmark to emulate my own vibrato technique:
