Hi,
could you help me out with Matt Molloy’s playing in this record?
At the C-part of Limerick Lasses is a really tricky bar with the run of b-d-a-d / b-d-a-d
Does Matt Molloy play all of this notes? Do you think he plays the d as 0xxx xxx or xxx xxx in this phrase?
Or does he maybe even do global stops there?
Or how do you play such a phrase (Humours of Tulla has a really similar part at the beginning…)
It sounds so incredible crispy what Matt Molloy plays there. But it is really easy smear this phrase at b-d switch!
I have several different flutes, and each one presents its own difficulties here. Some flutes will allow a clear, unmuffled ´d´
with xxx xxx as a passing note, and yet another will balk. Your challenge is to make this choice and polish it!
I’d vent and I have seen Molloy do similar runs and vent them. As Bob says, it may vary a bit from one flute to the next, some flutes ‘honk’ a bit when you don’t vent the d’ but then again, some people like that.
Just sit down and play that particular run over and over slowly, eventually you’ll have it and you’ll never have to think about it again.
I don’t play flute, but on whistle I vent it. I tend to “cheat” by leaving my lower 3 fingers down for the B, since it doesn’t much affect the intonation of B.
Yes, practice will get you there. That bit is like a tongue twister, but for your fingers.
A classical technique I was taught for difficult passages is to play them slowly in a dotted eighth - sixteenth pattern, then sixteenth - dotted eighth. Over and over. It works.
I am not sure, how serious you are with that comment (I might make a complete fool out of myself with the following…)
I was also wondering if it is possible that the recording is a bit too fast?
Isn’t the pitch really high, even higher than eb? Isn’t that an indication that the recording might be corrupted somehow?
I don’t want to push this too far off track, but the recording was almost certainly “goosed” to add a bit of speed. You can see a discussion (which got quite heated for some reason) over on the mustard boards about this, with my post about pitches here:
The odd pitches plus the video of them playing the same tunes in Eb and slightly slower convinced me that there was some speeding up done to the recording after the fact. However, as I mention in the post, they could well have just been tuning up. The one thing that pushes it more towards “sped up” for me is that Molloy has an Eb flute that he loves and has played a lot on, but to my knowledge hasn’t played much on an E flute. His solo tracks would suggest an Eb flute that has been sped up such that it sounds in E. Also, a person commented that they had talked to Molloy himself and that he had mentioned it being speed up. Make of that what you will (it’s an anonymous comment board, after all).
That’s not to say, though, that Molloy wouldn’t be able to play it at the same speed as on the record, or indeed even faster. I wouldn’t doubt his capability to play anything at any speed, to be honest.
The album was released in 1978. If it was sped up in mastering, it would have been done by altering the tape machine playback speed when making the vinyl master. The re-release on CD and the YouTube clip would match the tempo and pitch of the original vinyl release, unless there was hanky panky in the mastering of the CD. Which is doubtful, because by the time CD releases were the norm, it was possible to alter the tempo without changing the pitch.
I’m thinking the tempo was altered in the original tape/vinyl production. Not based on Molloy’s playing because I’m sure he can play that fast and that cleanly, but based on the sound of the fiddle. The scratch triplets (or whatever you call them) sound unnaturally tight. I’ve heard very good fiddlers play tight bowed triplets, especially the Cape Breton crowd, but never quite like that.
The scratch triplets (or whatever you call them) sound unnaturally tight. I’ve heard very good fiddlers play tight bowed triplets, especially the Cape Breton crowd, but never quite like that.
I am not sure you’d say that if you had ever sat next to Peoples playing and heard him up close. Like Molloy, he wa well able to play that crisp at that speed if he wanted to. I thought it was well accepted the recording was spun a fair bit, it has been discussed time and again on thesession, for example.
The album pace isn’t outlandishly fast whatever may have gone on with the technology. I’d submit that one would struggle to play that figure cleanly without venting the D as unvented it would tend not to speak cleanly at that speed or even quite a lot slower. It’s pretty straightforward anyway, and as others have said, just a question of practice, making sure your fingering changes are quick, well coordinated and clean. For that you need to be confident of the pattern (slow practice) and relaxed, with no unhelpful tension, so good flute support matters.
That takes so much time and effort…
(I might make a complete fool out of myself with the following…)