Middle D fingering

Irish Flute
21

Just to let you know, most of the D’s were played with the closed fingerings. I thinks the first D of the A section 2nd time around was the vented D. My feeling about it is that with the closed fingering you tend to get the overtones as well as the root note, but I’m no expert on this. I might try and redo the tune using the vented fingering throughout the A section. Anyway, it’s a good tune to use to practice such an exercise.

Okay, here’s another take which better illustrates the vented D.
http://www.box.net/shared/kz4cdpsys4

Arbo

22

There’s a tune I play called The Coachman’s Whip where I’d love to vent the second octave D, but can only do it at very slow speed. Anyone else play this and able to vent the D. I’m speaking in the repeated section that goes: E2CE|dECE. Too many fingers going up and down at the same time for me.

Michael

23

i dont play the tune, but that’s not a problem. in classical music, you have to vent all d’s, and put Eb key down for all E naturals.

24

Michael, Coachman’s Whip wasn’t a tune familiar to me, but I’ve dug out the notation from the Fiddler’s Companion website and had a look at it. I don’t see any problem or difficulty whatever in venting the Ds in that pedal point passage (~E2 cE dEcE) you mention. I would finger it thus (ignoring the 1st beat E rolled crotchet):

c - oxo xxo,
E - xxx xxo,
d - oxx xxx
E - xxx xxo,
c - oxo xxo,
E - xxx xxo,

which doesn’t actually involve all that much finger movement at all, and no awkward alternations. If you leave the Eb key out of it it’s even simpler. On pedals and arpeggios involving Cnat to E I tend to use this slightly weaker C cross fingering (oxoxxo,) if the keyed fingering (x,oo ooo,) is not suitable as the best one on my flute (oxo xxx,) is rather awkward in context.

If you use oxx ooo(,) for C nat (noticeably flat and a little wolfy on my R&R) it is a little more finger-jumpy, but not massively so, and if you use the C nat key (if you have one) for all the Cs (which I wouldn’t, but tried just on principle) it is perfectly accessible with a little practice.

I have the vented D so thoroughly ingrained that it is perfectly natural and easy for me to vent it in (so far as I can tell, virtually) all contexts. I actually found it quite difficult (though it certainly involves still fewer finger changes) to leave L1 down for 2nd 8ve D in this passage, which I also tried on principle - in fact, I tended to hit a low D with it because my embouchure is so acclimatised to the vented fingering.

So, as usual, familiarity and practice have everything to do with such issues, plus some common sense about checking out what works best on your particular flute (N.B. I do not mean by that what you find easiest to finger as the player, but what produces the best sounds/the sounds you desire from the instrument, with due effort and practice).

25

when you play low d, and lift up the first finger, does it pop right away, or do you have to change your embouchure?

i find that it can be very difficult to line up the D harmonic series properly, as the flute really wants to stay where it is in that series. i find it very difficult to go between unvented d and a, as flutes tend to like to jump straight from d to d’.

26

I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of venting second octave d’s in the following tunes:

The New Copperplate and Coachman’s Whip

I think my difficulty is at what Jem refers to as pedal points?

Michael

27

“The New Copperplate” is one of the few reels I play with almost all vented d’s (on whistle, I haven’t tried it on flute). I learnt it that way, and I find more difficult not venting them if I want to =/

Nice playing BTW.

28

Bothrops,

Now, that’s interesting, huh? It’s just hard to change the way I play after learning one way. I keep working on venting that d though. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to do it both ways.

Thanks. I’d like to hear your version on flute or low d.

Michael

29

I was trying and with a bit of practice I can change at least those d’s from the beginning..
I actually prefer the way it sounds when they are not vented…

By the way, I can’t do much with this tune on the flute, but here it’s an attempt played with almost every middle d vented:

http://audio.xanga.com/Bothrops/d51942321467/audio.html

Cheers,
Martin

30

i dont have any recording equipment set up, but i just tried the copperplate on the whistle. i can switch between vented and not vented, cross fingered c and thumb c–on the fly.

it used to be difficult to do, but stick with it, i guarantee you it wont take longer than 6 months to be able to switch between both d’s without thinking.

31

Nice Martin. I’ll be practicing those vented d’s.

Michael

32

Just to point out something I take to be obvious:
if you’re passing quickly through middle D,
the non-vented D makes little tonal difference,
certainly not enough to trump the ease of the closed
fingering IF indeed it is easier in that
passage. I do try to vent the note
if I’m not moving quickly, however.

33

Jim,
I get a cleaner, clearer middle D when it’s vented, and what I was hoping to accomplish by venting in the passage E2cE dEcE is to have that “c d c” rise above the rest of the tune is a very clear distinct way. It’s difficult to describe. But I was listening to another flute player and a fiddler play the tune a while back and that’s what I heard. It was almost as if they were playing E2c2 d2c2. Maybe they were. Or maybe the flute player was able to play a clean, clear middle D, unvented. Every time that passage would come around, that middle D stood out clear and crisp. It was quite a nice effect. I asked the flute player recently, and he said he would never vent the middle D in the phrase E2cE dEcE. The more I think about it, the more I think they were probably playing E2c2 d2c2.
I search for other tunes that had that phrase ..cE dEcE … in them and found several:
Jenny and the Weazel
Sporting Molly
Silver Tip
Repeal of the Union
Tempest
Paddy Taylor’s
Jenny’s Welcome Home to Charlie
Maude Miller
College Groves
The Dawn
The Hen and her Brood
Blackwater

Jem, do you know any of these, and if so, do you play them with that same passage, cE dEcE?

Thanks,

Michael[/i]

34

I just want to note that, despite the way The Coachman’s Whip is written out in Vincent Broderick’s tune book, The Turoe Stone, he in fact plays that passage with Bs instead of Cs.

So it goes like this:

E2BE|dEBE

I have two recordings of him playing this tune, one with other people (on the Turoe Stone cassette) and another private recording of him playing solo. He plays a B instead of a C in every case, in both parts of the tune. Since he’s the composer, I’d defer to him!

It’s a bit easier to play that way as well. You can even leave your index and middle fingers down on the bottom hand when you play the B if that makes it easier; it flattens the B a little but not enough to notice when played at speed.

35

Yes, I saw that at Sessions.org. They actually have it with the B’s instead of C’s. I guess I should learn it both ways. I learned it from John Skelton several years back, and he taught it using the C’s.

Michael[/i]

36

When I looked it up on Fiddler’s Companion, it gave three settings, one of which had the Bs and the others the Cs. Sight reading them through without at that point having listened to Michael’s clip and not knowing the tune at all from any context, I felt the version with the Bs sounded rather odd - it may be what VB plays himself, but for me it works less well than the Cs from a musical point of view. I don’t think either way is easier or harder to play fingering-wise… the Bs version actually involves more finger jumping than the Cs as I would play it shown above.

Michael, only 3-4 of your tune list even look familiar to me as titles, and I don’t think I play any of 'em, though I know so much stuff I don’t know the title of, wouldn’t count in my personal repertory but which I hear two notes of at a sesh and can join in, rarely knowing what it is but perfectly able to play it if someone else starts it… so I might know some of them to play but not knowingly, if you see what I mean. If your Silver Tip is The Silver Spear, I can play that one.

37

I’ve been playing it with the B’s and I now believe the version I heard the flute and fiddler playing was probably with the B’s. It changes the feel of that repeated part of the tune and sounds more like what I was hearing, regardless of the vented or unvented D.

Cheers,

Michael

38

And here it is played both ways. Perhaps it’s my technique. Perhaps my flute. But I think using the C makes the part of tune in question weaker to me.

Coachman’s Whip (first with B, then with C)

Thanks Brad,

Michael

39

Michael, in your recording with the C’s, you actually play 4 different and nice variations of that figure:

|E2 {c}BE {d}eE {c}BE|
|E2 cE {d}eE cE|
|E2 cE {e}dE {e}cE|
|E2 cE {e}dE (3BAG|

They all sound good! And the C’s are indistinct enough in the figure at that speed that, honestly, it’s hard to hear the difference from playing B’s. As long as the strong up-down-up-down-up-down pattern emerges, I think you’re golden.

FWIW, I learned Coachman’s Whip with B’s from a local session. And the two recordings I have both use B’s - Frankie Gavin on Frankie Goes to Town, and Tom Doorley on Danú, When All Is Said And Done.

40

You’ve got a helluvan ear, there, MtGuru. Just kidding, as I’m sure you used some software. What you’re saying is I’m all over the place, but it sounds good. But, I think I’ll be switching to the B’s, anyway. But who knows…

Thanks,

Michael