I used to have this sort of Zen fantasy that I would learn the pipes note by note: studying and practicing all the ways to shape each note and how to ornament it. In actual practice I’m learning to play the same way I learned whistle and flute: developing technique within the context of tunes. But I still think it would be valuable to learn how people approach individual notes. More than most other instruments, it seems each note on the pipes requires its own special treatment, its own set of challenges and possibilities.
What I’d like to propose is this: let’s have a separate topic for each note in the scale, starting with the bottom D and working up from there. So for the bottom D you’d have instructions for how to produce the hard D, the soft D, all the ways people have to approach cranning, alternatives to cranning, other ornaments, and whatever else people do with the bottom D. Same thing for all the other notes: how to finger the note on the knee, off the knee, how to do a long roll and a short roll on that note, etc.
We could use the following tablature (x is closed hole, o is open hole, ← is chanter off the knee, → is chanter on the knee), so for example bottom D would be written:
x xxx xxxx ←
(the leftmost x here is the thumb hole)
So my question is: would other people find this worthwhile and want to share their knowledge? Or would this duplicate something that already exists? I know there are tutors and instructional sites out there, but the difference here is that you have a lot of people who could contribute their own ideas and experience…I’m thinking of things like Harry Bradley’s recent demonstration of how Johnny Doran did a roll on the back D, for example, which I’ve never seen described anywhere else. Seems to me that if there was a separate topic for each note, we could gather some very useful techniques and tips in an organized fashion.
i think it could be very time-consuming trying to even write soen a single piece of ornementation with the code. A D cran could for example would have about 50 xxxoo entries??
nice idea, but it could be difficult to write it down in practice.
Great idea Brad. I don’t think Big Time realizes what he is saying, because if everybody wrote down their way of playing a D cran, that would be about 30 secs for each poster. As an example:
x xxx xxxx ←
x xx0 xxxx ←
x xxx xxxx ←
x xxx 0xxx ←
x xxx xxxx ←
x xxx x0xx ←
x xx0 xxxx ←
x xxx xxxx ←
This is how I’d normally play it. Took me 30 secs to write it down.
Thanks…let’s let this sit for a day or so to see whether there’s likely to be enough interest, and then I’ll start a new topic called Note for Note: Bottom D. Once that’s up for a week or so I can post a new one called Note for Note: E, and so on up the scale. Who knows if it’ll work, but it’s worth a try.
People can also put up links to sound clips as additional illustration to complement the tablature, I think that would help a lot and make things more interesting.
Once the Bottom D topic is started, I’ll copy these crann illustrations over there.
I can’t contribute but I would certainly be interested. It seems like it would be good for the forum to have a topic that might be of interest to more advanced people–seeing different ways people do things—and to newer people as well.
You guys probably find it a contrary opinion but may I suggest that the mechanical approach suggested is the approach that has been hampering pipers for some time.
Wouldn’t the musical route be the better one. Not ‘how many triplets can we play on this or that note’ but ‘if we take this phrase what can we do to make it shine’. Not 'how many triplets did Patsy Touhey manage to squeeze into ‘Gusty’s Frolics’ but ‘why did he and what effect did he achieve with them’.
In my opinion that way will be more productive and satisfying in the long run.
Your iconic representation of the manual articulation of notes and their embellishments is quite interesting. However, it seems to me that, if you come up with a workable system, you will have completed only half the task, i.e., symbols denoting the spatial aspects of playing. How would you then account for the other aspect, i.e., time?
The conventional system does this quite nicely by placing notes at “agreed upon” positions on, above, and below the staff to convey where they lie with regard to space (both articulatory and acoustic), and the form of the note itself transmits its time value.
I’m not trying to discourage you, only trying to point out this one element that cannot be overlooked. Just as there are many different writing systems for the world’s languages, music can be transcribed in ways other than the conventional one we use (however, its widespread adoption throughout the world is strong evidence of its utility and durability).
True, and I do agree, Peter, however, I would say that if you don’t even have the mechanics of playing down (such as how to do a roll, a cran, or whatever) then I don’t see how you will be able to make a phrase musical.
Edited, because, as usual, Brad said it much better than I did.
The rest of what I had here is exactly what Brad put below. I guess, I was hasty in saying I wouldn’t learn a cran in a tune. What I meant is that I’d be looking at expanding the technical abilities I have so that I can use them in many tunes.
As a concrete example, I was shown a reverse cran by Pat Sky. He was using Sean Bui as the tune to demonstrate it, however in learning it, I would actually use it for Kid on the Mountain (around E instead of D), O’Farrell’s Welcome to Limerick, and probably more.
I totally agree, and in fact that’s why I’m not using this approach to learning the pipes myself. I don’t see it as a useful way to learn how to play the pipes, but rather more as a way to discover some of the options available and how to achieve them. And I do think these things have to be discussed within the context of tunes, which is why I proposed including sound clips (and this also speaks to Khan Krum’s comment about time). I know not everyone can post sound clips, but it would be useful wherever possible to illustrate what’s being described.
Khan Krum, I want to steer away from standard musical notation because I suspect that some of the fingerings used for cuts and taps in ornamentation on the pipes may not correspond to standard fingerings of those notes as they would be played on their own. This is certainly true for the flute, and I bet it’s true to some extent for the pipes as well.
I know many musicians who have very simple styles who manage to sound very musical and I know many too who have all the triplets who sound like mechanical music boxes. I know which I prefer listening to. You are probably better off starting where it matters, by playing music in a musical way and then add more on as you go along and your abilities increase. Just a thought but by the end of the day to learn a bunch of triplets is easy, anyone with a bit a dedication can do that, placing them in a way that gives expression to your music is where the art lies.
Khan Krum, I want to steer away from standard musical notation because I suspect that some of the fingerings used for cuts and taps in ornamentation on the pipes may not correspond to standard fingerings of those notes as they would be played on their own.
Good point. This is like positional variants of sounds as in, say, English, where /t/ is aspirated in ‘top’, unaspirated in ‘stop’, a glottal stop in ‘bottle’, and so forth. This is context driven and varies according to dialect, etc. (e.g., the latter example is particularly true for Cockney English).
So you’re aiming for a one-to-one correspondence, a kind of “spelling reform”, so to speak?
Well, I just want people to be able to show the sequence of actual fingerings they use. On the flute, for example, one could do a long roll on E like this:
xxx xxo
xoo xxo
xxx xxo
xxx xxx
xxx xxo
The cut (the second “note” in that sequence) is not something that could be conveyed using standard musical notation. It’s not a standard note on the flute…I guess it’s a Bb, but that’s not the point…the point is what you do with your fingers. By leaving those two fingers down, the roll is easier to accomplish.
I don’t think this type of thread would be helpful, Brad, IMO, because of the differences between chanters. I could write a page on exactly how I play each note on my chanter, saying things like, back off the pressure on the low D and C natural, etc. etc. but this would only apply to my chanter and my reed. And it would be different depending on the humidity.
I think chanters and reeds are just too different, and everyone needs to work out what sounds best on their own.
Hrmm, Dave Power was telling me one day that the most interesting thing in the Patsy Touhey book wasn’t the transcriptions or tables of graces and triplets and all that - the very blatent flashy stuff - but the description of “chanter closure” between notes - the most un-obvious part of Touhey’s playing but often the most important. I had a similiar epiphany when I tried to play the Cook in the Kitchen like Tommy Reck - tight piping. “Articulation.” Open piping I’d say has less articlulation than tight but it’s there just the same.
I’d say that’s a much more important subject but describing it in words is a bit tricky. Grey Larsen had some similiar comments in his flute tutor about emphasising with breathing.
I learned to play crans FGA and then tried to switch to Touhey’s cran - AGF - couldn’t do it! Anyway how much more “musical” is one cran from another?
Yes, the more I think about things like this, plus the things that Peter and others have said, the more I think this is not a good idea.
And it’s also true that a lot of this stuff is difficult or tedious to describe. I’m actually doing pretty well learning on my own through simple experimentation with the tunes I’m working on, along with things I’ve picked up from several piping workshops I’ve taken over the years.
I’m not interested in the “flashy bits,” it’s more the basic stuff like how people approach rolls on certain notes that have stumped me so far, but I’m starting to figure a lot of things out by accident or through experimentation. I’m going to have some lessons in the spring once the weather is more conducive to traveling with my pipes, but I’m pretty much on my own this winter. I actually think a period of experimentation and exploration is good: it lets you get to know your pipes better and if one is to believe Seamus Ennis he developed a lot of his technique that way himself.
I think I have referred before to doing a number of transcriptions of Tommy’s music for An Piobaire soon after he died. Selecting the tunes I started writing ‘The King of the Clans’, not one of his usual tunes but so typically full of the Reck sound. Written down the notes looked like an uninteresting pedestrian version. The music you heard was all in what went on in between the notes.
Reck’s music was generally understated, there is no large amount of triplets and ornamentation but it is ever so subtle in it’s rhythmic approaches, colours , little things and personality that make it overall thoroughly enjoyable music.
Get at that, go under the skin of tunes.
Truth be known… I forgot. 