b- c sharp -a :tight triplet ( used by clancy in the middle part of the dublin reel)
c sharp-b-a : tight triplet (used by keenan in o’rourkes i think)
trilling with the left hand the way o’flynn does and ennis could do ( i asked robbie hannan about this and even he with his technical mastery couldn’t do it properly)
are there other techniques that people out there struggle with?
Those tight top-hand triplets are fiendish. It’s important to relax when practicing them, i think, as your muscles can tense up making it even more difficult. Also make sure your fingers are placed in the best way to facilitate them. You might find it easier to keep all your fingers on the top-hand straight, rather than curling the first finger slightly. This is just from my experience of trying to perfect them, and i’m no way near getting there!
For right-handed players, the left is obviously the weaker hand and movements that are easy for the right hand to perform are often very difficult for the left, or much slower. I don’t think i’ve ever heard anyone trilling top hand notes successfully, for example.
There’s a saying about the learning curve of musicians:
“The impossible must become easy, the easy become habit, the habit become art.”
Any technique can eventually become habitual if practiced enough and practiced correctly.
“Practice doesn’t make perfect…PERFECT practice makes perfect.”
With those “tight” triplets I practice them a million times slowly. A crucial thing to me is to always keep my hands completely relaxed when practicing. My hands remember the amount of tension present when a movement was being learnt and I’ve found that if I focus on complete relaxation of the hands when practising something, that relaxation returns whenever I perform it.
Still trying to get my fingers (and brain) around the technique involved with ‘backstitching’… sigh…
The BCA triplet is a recent ornament for me. It help me to have a tune where I could use it over and over (you probably would not want to be so repetitious in the real world). Gregory Greene’s or The Cape Breton Reel provides this opportunity in the second part. It is a fun way to integrate the movement into a tune, as opposed to isolation.
And, as mentioned earlier, I have to be really relaxed in the upper hand to pull off this and other upper hand triplets.
I too have not figure out the backstitch. Probably because I have not found a need for it in my playing. Someday maybe.
T
PTE World Tour 2009
Joe “Tobacco” Smith,
Smoking causes memory and gross motor skill problems.
Besides you are way to young to be smoking.
TT
Make sure you’re powering the chanter with the bag, not the bellows, otherwise left-hand anything will be affected. Martin Nolan actually advises to squeeze a bit extra for left hand ornaments, I find that helps my “playing.” Like anything this seems very unnatural at first and then after a while it becomes second nature. Fill the bag up and try and play a few bars of a tune chock full of left hand business sans any bellows input, rolls on B in the Woman of the House for instance.
The bag will deflate but that’s good - it’ll force you to use the elbow to power the pipes, which is crucial if you want to really play the chanter, let alone play the regulators.
Make sure the reed isn’t too hard to blow either, of course, or you won’t get anywhere. “Play the reed, don’t let the reed play you” as Tom Busby advised (reprinted in last Piper’s Review).
Lately I’m being killed by a variation to the forth part of Spike Island Lasses. Let’s see if I can render it in ABC.
e fgf a e. So, high e, followed by a fgf triplet up to the high ‘a’ then down to the ‘e’ again. It’s not the notes but the second octave combination of the ‘e’ and the ‘a’ which on my chanter(s) only sounds with the ‘g’ finger up. Making the whole mess sounds rhythmic is also challenging.
Fun stuff. Fun, frustrating stuff.
This is such a relief to hear, especially for a beginner. I feel like such a neuron; I’m still flummoxed by anything resembling a tight BCd triplet! Hell, I’m flummoxed by anything tighter than legato with cuts, period!
However … since Saint Wenham’s recent blessing (blissing?) of me with a brilliant chanter & reed combo, I’ve been working octave jumps like a madwoman to try to get over my fear of heights. I’ve found in some cases (I can’t remember which tune, though, sorry) that I can “pop” from f to a by basically feathering my g fingers down and up – so fast and so light I don’t even want to call it closing them – but it seems to close the chanter just enough to let me make the jump to a fairly easily.
I don’t know if that helps or if it’ll get me shot for heresy (a risk of life in the provinces) OR if it’ll work on your chanter, MisterP, but it’s been working for me.
rolling a C# ain’t too easy either!
Yes, I know, I know…
I have given a great deal of thought to ‘breaking’ the habit, but then somebody told me: “nobody likes a quitter.”
But it’s fun to use…just to make flute players envious. Worth having just for that.
T