Maybe you all can shed some light on the matter of cranning for me, because I’m confused. How do you do a cran properly?
I’ve gotten conflicting advice on this. On the one hand, I’ve been told that acran consists strictly of two finger movements, which makes sense sine this was originally a piping technique. In this case, I understand a cran to be crisp, separated movements of the 4th and 5th fingers (or, alternatively, the 3rd and 4th fingers) briefly opening their respective sound holes for rhthmic effect. The desired outcome sounds like “cha, cha, cha.”
At the same time, I’ve been told that, in addition to the finger movements described above, there is also supposed to be a breath pulse (via tonguing or a glottal) prior to or following the finger movements.
I’ve been doing crans for a while now without the breath component, so it always sounds awkward to me now when I do it the “new” way. To my ear, the duration of the cran with the breath pulse often just doesn’t fit rythmically (for example in measure #2 of the A part of the Tommy Peoples’ reel).
At the same time, I’m completely open to the possibility that I am simply doing my crans incorrectly. But I would like, at least, to feel confident that I’m practicing correctly. Any advice friends?
The short crann happens on a quarter note. It divides the note into two sixteenths and an eighth with two cuts:
D xxx xxx sixteenth note
cut xxx oxx
D xxx xxx sixteenth note
cut xxx xox
D xxx xxx eighth note
For a long crann (which ornaments a dotted quarter note), you’re adding another eighth note onto this formation by doing a third cut. My preferred fingering for this is:
D xxx xxx sixteenth note
cut xxx oxx
D xxx xxx sixteenth note
cut xxx xox
D xxx xxx eighth note
cut xxx oxx
D xxx xxx eighth note
It doesn’t matter which fingers you do the cuts with; the main thing is really nailing that rhythm. As often as not, I tongue in lieu of that third cut – which puts a nice emphasis on the backbeat, bappita-BA – and that may be what you mean by the “breath pulse.”
As a piper myself, I’ve got to break it to you that there really isn’t a “proper way” to cran - pretty much everybody piper (and flute player) does it differently, but this also means that it’s your prerogative to choose what you like.
One thing I would clear up: a cran can involve two fingers, but from a strict piping perspective, it absolutely involves three gracenotes - pretty much any combo of the F#, G, and A fingers is the standard. So, using lower case letters to represent gracenotes, you can play:
Df#DgDaD (probably the most common)
DaDgDf#D
Df#Dgf#D (only two fingers used to cut, but still three gracenotes)
All of this, as shown here, is in the space of a dotted quarter note (a one-two-three in a jig), split four ways. You can use pretty much any arrangement of three gracenotes to pull it off.
So, still using lower case letters for gracenotes, the first measures in Tommy People’s Reel (I assume as heard on "In Good Company?), goes a bit like this:
When Mike Rafferty was teaching me “Garrett Barry’s” I asked if I could cran on the low D at the end of the A part. (Matt Molloy does on his recording). Mike said that when he heard Molloy do that he thought that Molloy was trying to be a piper. So, as far as Mike is concerned, no crans allowed!
And, of course, Mike Rafferty and all the rest of the old fogies make the rules of flute playing. Oy.
Cran whenever ya freakin’ want to. Do four in a row. Do it with four gracenotes crammed into a dotted quarter note just to spite 'em. And syncopate. Lots. Takes breaths on the beat especially.
Just a little bitter over having my playing referred to as “city shite” one too many times…
The point, Jamie – not to go over our recent thread about old vs. young guns – is that in traditional flute playing, by which I mean the following of tradition, flute players didn’t cran. Malloy and a few other less famous players changed that, by incorporating piping to their style, crans in particular. Of course, if you want to do anything, you may, including tonguing (which isn’t done traditionally) and any other assortment of classical, jazz, etc. flute techniques, chromatic scales thrown in, etc. (piping-style at least keeps things traditional, if not for flute, then for the music). So, yes, you can do whatever your lil’ heart desires, but it starts to fall outside the realm of traditional playing, and often falls into the category of “city shite”. Or shite in general.
That said, some of the innovations are quite brilliant, so, yes, follow your heart. Just don’t call it traditional playing.
I must side with Jamie here. The method of performing a cran is exactly as he has set out and it is a traditional thing on all instruments to use the f#,g,a triplet. All you’re doing is using what pipers refer to as tight rather than open fingering. The f#,g,f# thing probably comes from fiddle players cranning their bottom D.
There is a big difference between borrowing from other instruments within the Irish tradition, and borrowing from other styles like jazz etc and I don’t think you can knock people who play within the tradition.
Seamus Ennis used to refer disparagingly to pipers who didn’t use much piping technique/ tricks as flute players, so what do you call a flute player who uses those tricks?
Well Gordon, the question is: What is really traditional? I would suggest that no one really knows.
I simply don’t believe that the first and seoncd generations of recorded Irish musicians(Coleman, Morrison, Clancy, Ennis, Micho Russell etc.) were doing everything the exact same way it was done before. In fact, I’m reasonably confident that the opposite is true. So were they untraditional?
So, if we take this certain music from one particuliar generation, and say, “That’s it, that’s the pure stuff, that’s how it’s meant to be played,” isn’t that rather pretentious?To say that that generations changes to the music are the last changes that can be made without going outside the tradition seems to me to be ridiculous. That one generation is just one part of long line of generations, they are just a snap shot of part of the music. Why should their music be any more valid than any other generations?
I do not believe that tradition means unchanging, as you seemed to imply in your post.
Sounds to me like another case of people calling sub par playing “traditional” in an attempt to pad their ego. I don’t think there’s anything non-trad about flute players cranning. No more than sean-nos singing follows after the drone-ish sound of piping.
If you ask me, crisp ornamentation, especially crisp cranning, is one of the many marks of a good player.
Sorry to interrupt an interesting discussion on the meaning of “tradition,” but I’d like to go back to the original question for a moment–and to Ro3b’s comment on “Tommy People’s” reel in particular.
Here’s my problem. When I play a long cran in measure two of “Tommy Peoples”, I don’t hear “cha, cha, cha” at all; I hear “one-ee-and-a-two.” Five notes, not three. Perhaps it sounds different to a listener, but this drives me nuts! Again, I’m perfectly willing to admit that I may be just doing this completely wrong, but I am following Ro3b’s method (described above). But with the nice harmonics you get from cranning, there are five notes in there. I may not be a great player, but I do have a half decent ear! The question then is, should I be hearing five notes, or is this just symptomatic of sloppy technique?
Firstly, I don’t want to get into a “what is tradition” thread. No, tradition, to me, does not mean unchanging. That’d be silly, particularly in a music tradition that honors appropriate innovation. But tradition does means what we all know it to mean – things passed down, or on, within a culture, or in this case, within a musical style. So, to deviate too widely, it becomes something else – not necessarily bad or good, just something else.
Secondly, poor playing is just that. However, to base your opinion on “good” playing by how “crisply” one crans, when that is a) a recent innovation to flute playing (which was my point re Rafferty (a wonderful, non-cranning player) and Malloy (a wonderful cranning one) and b) a non-sequitor to something musical, is a ridiculous way to judge music, musicianship and Irish music in particular.
Jamie and I have been around this one before, and I think his concise answer was just fine: if he doesn’t call non-trad playing traditional, that’s fine. He will just have to get used to the “old fogeys” not liking the stuff (or liking it for musical reasons, not because the tune was played in the old way. Which is fine with me, as well.
I just lose it a bit when technique overshadows musicality – they should be equal partners. For every bad musician calling their bad playing “simple”, there are many technically proficient players (crisp on the rolls and crans) who simply don’t get music at all.
Thanks for corroborating my story! That is exactly what I’m hearing–on Kevin Crawford’s album and elsewhere.
Gordon:
I agree wholeheartedly with you on the meaning of tradition. While I am pretty new to Irish music, I have played jazz for many years and one thing that has always made me reach for my six-shooter has been people like Kenny G calling themselves jazz musicians. I have no problem with people taking music in their own direction, but at some point the soup gets so watered down that there’s nothing nutritious left in it, so to speak. It’s when musicians (or their greedy agents) start passing that bland stuff off as the real deal that I start to get upset.
Yeah, I come from a rock background myself, mostly progressive and overly technical and was drawn to Irish music by the sound and feel of it – very earthy and old, and loved it’s simplicity.
On the cran thread, I did learn to cran and have nothing against it’s use. I just find that, stylistically, I often prefer a good blast on the low D without a cran, and often feel I’m forcing it onto a tune (with certain tune exceptions, of course, particularly those tunes that are piper-tunes to begin with). But then, I mostly listen to Galway and Sligo players, simpler in their approach, and don’t care much for Crawford and some of the technical wizards. I like a flute to sound like a flute, not pipes, otherwise that’d be my instrument of choice. I also play mandolin, and it’s use on a tune is very different as well. I might borrow an idea or two, but I like to keep the musical identities of the two instruments separate.
Incidentally, Mike Rafferty’s a fair piper as well, so I don’t think his not cranning on flute has much to do with ability.
Learn to cran. Learn as many of the “fancy” ornaments as appeal to you, and get proficient in their use.
At the same time, listen to the best players to learn when and where the ornamentation is appropriate.
Then realize that just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it.
There may well be tunes you don’t want to ornament much at all, others you may want to ornanment more elaborately, depending on what you are playing, who you are playing for, and why.
The more tools you have at your disposal, the better a musician you can be, whether you are playing in the ultra-traditional “Old Geezer” style, or taking the tunes someplace they haven’t been before.
