I’ve read lots of posts where Highland pipers are taking up Uilleann pipes and looking for direction. I am heading in the other direction in this case, having played Uilleann pipes for over 15 years, of now learning Scottish piping.
I have a set of bellows blown Border Pipes being shipped to me next week but have very little experience with any sort of Scottish piping. I do have a practice chanter and have been working away at basic fingering and simple melodies, however I am a complete newb at ornamentation for the “other” chanter.
Well, good luck first off!
As you now know, they’re completely different animals in construction technique & approach.
At this point, just starting off as you are; my sugestion would be not to devote any atention to tunes at all. The fingering technique is so precise, exacting and well researched, that one could easily spend a year or more simply learning the language & placing of GHB gracenotes.
But good news is there’s a number of fine learning methods out there, McGillivray’s Rhythmic Fingering seems to be the current fave. Generally, most of these methods avoid ‘pure’ tech exercises (as I was once upon a time taught) and incoprporate tunes to learn at each appropriate level.
They produce an equivelant of the Heather Clarke book for lowland/border pipes called More Power to Your Elbow. You will find it and other publications here.
Note, you can play border pipes as if they were bellows blown GHB, but there are other styles of play possible on them. eg Matt Seattle’s Thomas the Rhymer suite.
I agree with this;
<<my sugestion would be not to devote any atention to tunes at all. The fingering technique is so precise, exacting and well researched, that one could easily spend a year or more simply learning the language & placing of GHB gracenotes.>>
but this i disagree with;
<<As you now know, they’re completely different animals in construction technique & approach.>>
As A GHB player moving to UP I find they are closely related. There are many designs of UP chanter, some can be played half open, off the knee while more modern designs suit all closed /on knee fingering. Yes there are many differences, yet IMO the similarities are striking. Im awaiting pastoral chanters which live between these two ends of the continuum, though there are 2 basic PP chanter designs[that i know of] one with more closed fingering, one with more open fingering.
Playing style; well yes but thats more to do with the constraints of ‘tradition’ and style. Ossified into ‘opposing’ camps where ‘loose’ GHB piping is disdained and on on side and regimented UP styles disdained from the opposing camp. Within the UP world there is a continuum between closed ‘tight’ styles and open looser styles.
Personally I have little interest in conforming to anyone’s rigid ideas of style and I feel that the field is far more open and flex able than is generally assumed . Just my opinion!
good points about loose & rigid.
Also to consider; Borderspipes playing ‘style’ differs from that of Ghb,
even though there’s plently of overlap.
But all that after d throws, birls, leumluaths, etc
There are several “heavy borderpipe hitters” on C&F.
(Borders’ Pipe makers, too.)
cheers CHasR, Id be interested in hearing a bit more border piping, my listening is between GHB and UP with a little NSP. Got any good recommendations? you tube links?
This is a very interesting topic, taking up the Scottish pipes after years of uilleann piping.
I myself learned the GHB first and over the last 35 years I’ve helped a large number of GHB players with their first steps into uilleann piping. This is the first time I can recall somebody going the other direction!
The question boils down to “what sort of Scottish piping?”
Because any sax player can pick up the GHB and transfer his sax fingerings and style to the chanter, and likewise any uilleann piper can pick up the GHB and transfer his uilleann fingerings and ornamentation and style to the the Scottish Highland chanter.
If what you mean, though, is to learn the Great Highland Bagpipe in that instrument’s own native traditional style, it’s an entirely different matter.
The little speech I’ve made over the years to so many GHB players attempting to learn the uilleann pipes holds true: Nearly everything is different. The finger posture, the way the fingers are lifted, the approach to bag pressure, the fingerings, the ornaments, the style of music, the repertoire, the attitude towards written music, the style of learning, and so forth.
The best way, by far, to learn all of this is to get together with a good GHB teacher. The GHB is taught more or less the same way the world over with a fairly uniform pedagogy. Unlike the uilleann pipes, with the Highland Pipes there’s a single “right” way to do nearly everything.
If you aren’t after competition-style GHB playing, you can get by with mostly cuts and taps a.k.a. gracenotes and strikes. The aforementioned “More Power to Your Elbow” gives a goes over the essential Scottish embellishments. If you want to master them, cross-reference those embellishments to the exercises in Rhythmic Fingerwork that Chas mentioned. The birl is most idiomatic thing that you’ll want to master and it takes lots of repetition but it sounds great.
I’ve only tried uilleann pipes a few times so can’t say how forgiving they are to mis-fingering but border pipes are very sensitive to it, especially crossing noises. To use uilleann slang, you have the closed fingering kind and the open fingering kind. The closed fingering kind just sound sloppy and cluttered since you can’t close the chanter on the knee. The open fingering kind will give you squeals and bad intonation. To get that staccato, closed fingering sound, you’ll want to learn grips and throws.
For pressure, border pipes are likely to be a little higher than uilleann pipes-- like you are always playing second octave B.
hope that works! Search youtube for Border pipes, Matt Seattle, Fred Morrison, Ross Ainslie, Chris Ormston, Jon Swayne, Fin Moore, al these platyers. “Nate Prentice” has a playlist.
o you are a sly one panceltic good observation there
Thanks. Im familiar with Fred Morrison, Jon Swayne and Fin Moore but the other names you mention I will check out. Im not too keen on wading through you tube beginners so your recommendations are appreciated!
My new (to me) MacHarg border pipes just arrived!!!
The set was sold “as is” so the reeds do need work. Luckily I make many of my own UP reeds so getting the drone reeds working is something I’m confident with doing…although I am inclined to check out some Ezee drone reeds at first opportunity.
Some of the chanter reeds are serviceable, so at least I can familiarize myself with this style chanter. So far so good with trying to play really, and I’m thinking I will enjoy learning Scottish style piping.
Give me a few days to get the basic reed needs met and I will get around to addressing the many good suggestions made so far.
Yay! congrats, I play a macharg with my 7/8th GHB , Yours in A440? Bet you will have a great time. There some cracking new tunes you can add to your repertoire, like Tullochurum , the reel of Tuloch, Tail Toddle, Miss Maclouds obviously…
And lots of trad Irish tunes can well be played on that chanter, like Langsterns pony. Clare Jig, Matt Molloys reel I do a setting of Farewell to Erin, The high reel, I could go on! …
Go for the Birl and the grip and the GDE as your go to ornaments IMO Your gonna love them!
O.K…never mind a few days for getting the reeds, more like a several months…
I finally got my chanters back with new reeds and only now am I getting around to playing around with them. I’m also discovering the joys of taped holes to bring things in tune as I’m not yet ready to go tweaking reeds as I am able to do for Uilleann pipes.
Working the bellows is no problem but I do find that working the bag takes a different approach with respect to pressure, as AaronMalcomb implied. Any tips on this our there on how to deal with this? Just get used to it? I am planning on making my own drone reeds asap which might help in this regard.
I picked up “Partner’s in Crime” by Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson. (A brilliant CD if you don’t have it yet!!) The interplay of UP and BP is great, but it also gives me a basis of comparison between the two pipes that I find helpful.
Or you can tread where very few have
and follow the path of a pipe band from Kerry
earlier in the last century. Give Sean Folsom
a shout for the particulars as he first told me the story.
He’ll have more details than I can remember.
One more thing. Congraulations to Sean on the birth of
his 1st Grandchild! Yipee!
Oh, I see, you’re going from uilleann pipes to Border pipes, not to the Highland pipes. That’s a completely different matter, and you can ignore everything I said about learing the Highland pipes.
But it’s true that many leading Border pipers were top-level competitive Highland pipers first, and only after being well-established in the Highland competition circuit switched to Border pipes.
You’re not going to sound like those guys unless you steep yourself in the style that they grew up with, the Highland style.
Thanks Leo (Oleo-Resonator) for the Con-Grats on the Birth of my Grand-Daughter on May 12th !
She is so cute, as all babies are…I am in Love !
This should actually be in the concurrent “GHB in Ireland” thread, but here goes:
Back in 1973, I told Dennis Brooks that I wasn’t interested in Marching Bands, having been in these organizations
at 2 different High Schools, in wool Uniforms, playing Clarinet, Tenor Sax, and even a Baritone Sax a few times
(Gosssshhh what a Weight !).
I will remember all my life, Marking Time… squishing “Tennesee Road Apples” behind the Mounted Sheriffs Posse…
I was also un-interested in the pseudo-militaristic mental postures of SOME Pipe Bands.
Dennis suggested that I avoid the problem by opting-out of the proper Scots style of playing, by using
Irish (Uilleann) Pipe gracing and playing Irish tunes. Some of these being within the nine-note range and others
adapted from Irish Tunes using two octaves.
Of course, some of these adaptations can be very Musical, but others less so.
A few months after this conversation, I was in the presence of Patrick Brosnan of Scartaglen, Co. Kerry.
By way of introduction, I played my various Pipes for him, NSP, GHB, etc. Pat then took up my GHB and
proceeded to give me a rendition of his Scartaglen Pipe Band tune medleys, that featured “Uilleann” gracing and
an altogether more streamline contour to the Tunes, notably without Grips and Throws.
When I asked him about this, later, he said that these movements were great when played with Scots Tunes,
but interfered with the “Flow” of Irish Music.
Pat did play Birls frequently in his Irish Tunes, and when he played Scots Tunes,
they were as “Pointed” as any Scots Piper could wish for…Taccums, Doublings, Throws, Grips, Echo Beats, etc.
Nowadays, we can look to the “Kitchen Pipers” in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia playing their “Fiddle Tunes”,
for some examples of a kind of “Streamlined Piping” which had it’s own Tradition.
A casual look at the Tunes in the 19th Century Ross Collection gives me the idea of a simpler arrangement
of Grace Notes in “Victorian” Scotland.
More Later, I’m sure !
Sean Folsom
It’s odd how in the oldest written examples of GHB music it goes both ways.
Many have setting more streamlined, perhaps more fiddle-like or uilleann-like, than standard modern GHB settings, such as the pipe tunes in the Simon Fraser collection.
But then there’s Joseph MacDonald in the 18th century, explaining how pipers would play a full palette of piobaireachd movements including crunluaths etc etc in reels, playing reels with far more elaborate ornamentation than would be done nowadays.
Back in the 1980s Rab Wallace recorded a reel in that way, going through a variation built around birls, then crunluaths, then crunluath-a-machs.
…having just returned from saturn, this completely slipped my mind. My apologies!
good observation there