Trying to learn Lilting Banshee the ITRAD way and looking at youtube for examples of lilt and articulation. I’ve notice a lot of whistle versions and what’s bothering me is the amount of tonguing of the double and triple notes. I would have expected to see more cuts on the doubles and long rolls on the triples.
Can someone enlighten me?
It’s youtube.
Are you far from Ypsilanti? Go, now, and take lessons from Colleen Gavin.
thinking about it, i would advise against tounging or cuts/taps. The way i play it is just using stops in the throat. I do tend to roll on the triples in the B section but only as a variation, most times i do that by stops aswell.
maby im not doing it right but theres my 2 pence.
Looked her up on the web but can’t find her. Any contact info?
just play through the phrases without breathing, and with breathing, and you’ll soon find different ways of doing it.
Personally, I cut the double As (with my first finger), tongue the next A, slide into the B, right hand roll the high Es (cut/tap) and end up tapping (or short rolling) the last A of the phrase (for emphasis). In the second part, I left hand roll the high A, and run straight down to the low G without much else. Slide up to the B and roll the Es going up again, then cut the high G on the run up (just for emphasis). Repeat… and short roll the final A.
But it’s just my way, experiment with your way own way (but think about where the emphases should be to keep it jiggy - not too much “123, 123” and more like “1234-and-a-1234”).
I hope this may help - it was done rather hastily on my mobile phone, so it is an AMR file which won’t preview on Boxnet - you’ll have to download it and it’ll only play in Quicktime unless you convert it - I didn’t have time to do that, sorry - let me know if this is a stumbling block and I’ll try to change it in due course.
As for the tune, I normally tongue the second (repeated) As in the A mucsic and very little else. 2nd time through I tried first cutting those As, then tapping them, then (which I do use) fast-rolling them. Caveat - I have never “learnt” or worked deliberately on this tune - just acquired it at sessions (pace another thread on the Whistle Forum!) Also, FWIW, I don’t use the upwards phrase many put in the A music (cf 1st version given on The Session) - I have always felt it is a confusion, a phrase brought in from the somewhat similar The Tenpenny Bit which doesn’t belong in this tune.
(Edited mostly for typos)
Thanks. That’s helpful hearing the different methods. When you say tongue, you mean glottal or “k” instead of “t”?
P.S. Didn’t want to place the question in whistle forum since they are more likely to tongue than we are.
Jem really means tongue. He uses a ‘t’, not a ‘k’. Yet still I let him be in my gang.
Yup. I mean tongue and “t” (not “k”), though I use a fairly soft, very fast and light tongue stroke (linguistically, a voiceless alveolar plosive where the tip/just behind the tip of the tongue flicks against the alveolar ridge around the roof of the mouth, well behind the top teeth - so not like French tonguing with actual tongue-well-forward contact with the back of the teeth). I do these days make some limited use of “glottals” too, but I actually can’t hear any significant difference between these two types of articulation unless one is also making a breath push to coincide with the stop (in Harry Bradley-esque fashion), for which the laryngeal stop is more effective as it actually stores/controlledly releases the pressure, which the tongue can’t do so well - and which isn’t IMO appropriate in this context - you just want a break, not a strong rhythmic emphasis. Oh, and I do exactly the same on both flute and whistle.
a voiceless alveolar plosive
I wouldn’t know one if I tripped over it but 10/10 for effort 
The thing itself is effortless - and a quick Wiki did the rest…
“tongue flicks against the alveolar ridge” sounds like dirty talk :-p
Try it. See if you like it. Let us know…
There are a lot of repeated A’s and B’s in that tune. This is just my observation, … but besides being kind of a “clamp” or support for the instrument, the left hand is weaker for a lot of people. So they tend to avoid cuts on A and B, and their rolls are sometimes dodgy too. After all, it’s hard to hold a flute and let go at the same time. Pipers, however, do it all the time, which is partially why it’s a walk in the park for people like Nico.
But it can be done, and you should definitely talk to Colleen. She’s great. If you don’t have her contact info yet, let me know and I’ll track her down for you.
P.S. Billy Clifford plays it very nicely. The recording is here http://ceolalainn.blogspot.com/2010/03/billy-clifford-irish-traditonal-flute.html
Wow. Billy Clifford seems to be “ha-ha” or "ha-ha-ha"ing the double and triples a lot in there. And I agree the left cuts of A are not easy…that’s why I brought this up. I was doing what I thought was correct and it seemed to sound…crappy. So I wondered if maybe in that case there was some other technique.
I’ll still work on my A cuts and rolls but in the meantime I’ve got to get this thing up to speed sounding somewhat acceptable.
Besides the fact that cuts on A’s and B’s are weird ergonomically, a cut that’s not on the beat can get rhythmically awkward if you do it wrong. That’s when you ask yourself if placement of certain cuts or rolls might emphasize the between-beat notes too much and throw off the rhythm of the tune. Billy is a good example of someone who took an alternate route to nice effect. Me, I do a sort of finger bounce with LH2 between the A’s once in a while, but not all the time because then things seem to get too “cutty” and muck up the phrasing. Discretion is the better part of valor in that case, I think. Also, whistlers like Donncha O’Brien and Mary Bergin tongue notes on a fairly regular basis, even repeated notes in double jigs, but they do it in keeping with what’s most important to the phrase, and they do it well, not all staccato and double-tonguey.
At the end of the day, there are lots of ways to go about it – just make sure your ornaments support the music rather than call attention to themselves.
…although Billy Clifford would be playing a Radcliffe (or wooden Boehm?) system flute, which would lend to different challenges from simple system anyway I guess
I agree pretty much with everything else in Cathy’s second post above, but I don’t really buy this “L hand cuts/rolls are harder” stuff. OK, I accept that many people report that they find them so - I’m not arguing there isn’t an issue for some, but from my personal playing experience I don’t get why. I have never, even when I was first exploring this genre and its techniques, found the L hand ones on either whistle or flute more awkward than the R hand ones or the ones between two hands. Knowing I wanted to be able to do cuts, taps and rolls wherever, I set out to be able to do so, mostly in the context of tunes which demanded them - and I don’t remember any major hurdles - nothing that a moderate amount of specific, in context practice couldn’t overcome quite swiftly, and then that would be that - the specific ornament in question would be available in my “kit”. If the way one holds the flute is making them more awkward, then that is a problem to address, but beyond that, if one’s hold is secure and the fingers are not stressed inappropriately, one ought to be able to move them as necessary for cuts, taps and rolls just fine right through the scale.
In the clip I did my one shot at cutting the repeated As (with L2, not L1) in the A music may sound a bit less crisp/effective than I’d wish, but I plead the fact that I wouldn’t normally use cuts there and was having to think about artificially putting them in to an unfamiliar context. I do quite often use the tap or the fast roll there and did those cleanly enough, I hope. I say “fast roll” because it is the full “long roll” set of notes but in the time of the two quaver As - it isn’t what I understand a “short roll” to be - and I wouldn’t use a short roll there.
but I don’t really buy this "L hand cuts/rolls are harder
Good for you - I do buy it, G and A rolls no problem but I find the a B roll really awkward
Then you’re probably blessed with less asymmetrical dexterity than some of us! I am quite lopsided, and I have far better fine motor control in my right hand than in my left, even for everyday tasks. I’ve been playing winds for umpteen years, and even now occasionally my left (but never right) hand will seize up and stop responding until I will it into submission. Shouting, “Move, damn you!” at my hand does seem to help. 
Seriously, I agree that it’s a matter of training away the asymmetry. Heavens, look at all the right-handed string players, myself included. But when I first tackled the left hand wind ornaments it was far harder for me than the experience you describe.