Regulators, Rhythm and Piles of Pulled Hair

Uilleann Pipes
1

Hi all,

I am trying to master these horrible/wonderful things called “regulators”. OK, maybe not master but at least not sound like I’m killing a flock of geese with a very slow moving car. I currently just have my baritone reg reeded up as I don’t have a working tenor reed. So that makes things easier. I can hold notes just fine while playing tunes just fine. I’m comfortable moving up and down the keys while holding chanter notes as well. Well, except for that damn A note is always hard to hit on my set. Anyway, once I attempt any sort of rhythmic accompaniment things go to hell. Doesn’t matter if it’s a reel or a jig, I just can’t get on-beat or off-beat taps to save my life. I’ll start hitting the beats and then realize I’m not actually playing a tune anymore but just randomly moving my fingers. I won’t even bring up the lack of chanter seal while this is all occurring.

I know it’s just a matter of lots and lots of practice. I have the NPU Vol. 4 and have been going over it and slowly getting through tunes, but what I’d like from you, dear comrades, are some tips or exercises that helped you out when you started truly wrestling the octopus. Or maybe just some pity.

So what got you going down the regulator path to glory? Secret foot-tap combination, nice reels that don’t involve bottom D, liquor?

Thanks!

-Patrick

2

Hmmm…your question made me remember that I used to just tap my right wrist down when practicing the whistle. No pipes to wrestle with! Just the getting used to moving the wrist rhythmically while playing.

Hope that helps.

3

What helped me was playing along with a recording of Mick O’Brien playing the Rambling Pitchfork. I had to change the pitch as he was in B and I was in D and slow it by about 20%.

First you have to really know the tune well so that you can play it without thinking.

Then you have to know when to add the reg accompaniment. It’s difficult to do this on the fly which is why I found it easier to do it when MOB was doing it. I put the recording on a loop and just kept at it for an hour or so for a few day. By the end I was able to play the reg accompaniment without the recording.

4

You might be stuck in The Piper’s Knot (body all curled up trying too hard to get whatever technique you are after). Straighten up while you play, look at the ceiling, watch TV, whatever. For me, the harder I try to bend my iron will on things, the more difficult it gets. Like the target just keeps scuttling ahead of my intent.

t

5

That’s what I’ve found, too. The harder I try to vamp on the regs the higher the probability of a crash and burn incident. It’s best not to try to think too hard about it, but to really feel the rhythm in the tune in a bodily way and just kind of learn to flick your wrist in time with that rhythm while playing the tune. Slowing down and being really careful to develop a feel for the “lift” in a tune is essential.

6

Thanks for the great tips guys!

Do you find your feet manage to keep time while vamping? My biggest problem is all semblance of rhythm seems to go south as soon as I start in on the regs. I’ll take a listen to the MOB version and see what he’s doing. I’ve been doing the same with the NPU videos and have made some progress but I think it’s just a matter of lost of practice. I’ll also work on not curling up into a tiny ball of fury. I end of struggling to get chanter closure on the bottom of the chanter. Well, I struggle with a lot of things, but I’ve been noticing that.

If only there was some sort of event coming up in my area where lots of great players were going to be in attendance and could give me tips in person. If only…

:wink: http://www.gnipc.org/tionol-main :wink:

7

I have trouble keeping my foot taps from going all 5 + 4 over 12 on me when I play :frowning:

T

8

Best way to stop toe tapping is to take your foot out of your shoe, nail your shoe to the floor, then put the shoe back on, but lace it up tight!!

9

You’ve definitely got my pity! Just had a regulator class with Sean Ryan in St Louis a couple of weeks ago, and he recommended the ‘loop’ exercise described above: record yourself playing a jig at a moderate pace and then tap the regs along with it. I found this exercise easier to do when holding one note open on the chanter at the same time. He also recommended practicing tapping motions as you drive. I don’t have a long enough commute for that, alas. Or, thank goodness.

Cheers,
KAD

10

Great idea! Gonna go do that as soon as I check the rest of the topics. I, too, just got some regs and am trying figure out how they work; how much air, when to tap and what keys, and learn the tune.

11

I rooted out a note I wrote here on the topic of learning to play regulators from years back;

(Unless your pipes are set up like Paddy Keenan’s, ie., bass drone trumpet section reversed, and the stock tied in very low in the bag)

Sit forward in your chair, with just your butt on the chair, ie., ‘none of your leg on the chair’. It will feel at first like you will fall off, but you will get used to it.
Have your non-chanter thigh parallel with the floor, with your foot flat on the ground. Your chanter thigh should be quite a bit lower, achieved by moving your foot back underneath you, heel up and only ball of foot on the ground.
This will give your chanter space to fit comfortably where your hands are supposed to be.
If everything is right, your reg-playing hand should rest over the A of the bass, Fsharp of the baritone and A of the tenor line of reg notes.
Twist your stock in the cup so that the three regs can or could be touched by the ‘karate-chop’ portion of your hand.

Play an ‘A’ on your chanter, continuously. Even though you are playing only an ‘A’ and you don’t need your lower hand, keep it on the chanter. Work out a percussive pattern which you want to try to develop, such as two taps or three taps of the regs mentioned above, in jig-time.

Try to achieve the popping open of the regulators in proper timing, which will give you a ‘bop bop-bop’ effect.
This will not be easy in the beginning, and you will now notice that when and where you need to pump the bellows will affect how well you can achieve this popping effect.
As you get better at it, you will naturally select to pump the bellows in between successive ‘bop bop-bops’ , a sort of division of labour.
This is to be encouraged, and eventually as you gain more facility on the regs, your bellows action will return to pumping as and when needed.

When you are happy that you can do the above, progress to playing ‘A B A B A B A B’ on the chanter, while continuing with your chosen percussive pattern. This is the really difficult part. It becomes clear at this very fundamental level, playing two notes on the chanter, pumping the bellows and tapping the regulators, all at the same time is THE rubicon that needs to be crossed - Achieve this, and in time, everything else will be possible.

12

thanks David for the article. Will try that when I get home

13

Good advice! Sometimes a point is reached where “Just play the feckin’ things” doesn’t cover it :thumbsup:

Patrick.

14

Thanks for the great advice David. I will put into practice. Rhythmic playing and simply holding notes are truly two different beasts.

15

No kidding! I was just listening to a CD by Finbar Furey…YIKES!!! :boggle:

On some tracks he really likes to do that “old style” very rhythmic reg playing.
Simply put - Not there yet! But it does inspire me to try to do more when I’m playing.

16

Take a simple tune that you know really well, so well you don’t even have to think about it. The Lark in the Morning is a good one, just the first part. The chord structure is just D and G. With this you can practice holding, vamping, syncopation ect. It’s just like patting your head and rubbing your stomach :slight_smile:

17

It’s playing the bottom hand notes that always fazes me. It’s tricky to play an F and hold down a chord, then hit bottom D. Takes getting used to. Of course your pipes need to be working properly, and all the time you have to make sure you’re powering things with the arm not the bellows - given that the regulators will drain the bag that much faster you really can’t rely on the bellows to save your bacon.

Simple jigs in G are the easiest to get started on, I think - Donnybrook Jig, Butcher’s March. Or Wexford hornpipe. Only passing use of the bottom hand, or none at all. You can chord away without being hit with anything too challenging. Later you can work on tunes that are trickier to regulate, those that linger on F like the Mountain Road or Rambling Pitchfork; or E, like Whelan’s or the Pigeon on the Gate. Airs and marches would be even better, natch. Dave’s advice about just mastering a note or two on the chanter is great - would that we all showed such restraint. You have to start at the bottom.

Part of that is of course deciding what you want to do with the pipes - have fun, or diligently develop your skill to become a good musician. I think of a guy I met up with years ago who had just gotten a full Williams set from Lark in the Morning in Mendocino - took 5 years of waiting. He’d only been playing a month but was merrily bashing away at the regs, not being that interested in studious practice. Not so hot playing of course. Maybe he’s gotten better in the intervening 12 years, who knows. Then you have your Leo Rowsome students who were ordered to stick to practice sets for the first 5 years - Paddy Moloney, Liam O’Flynn, Joe McKenna. They only played airs and marches at first, too.

How to tune regulators: tune each note to the corresponding note on the chanter. :boggle: Play some tunes, then make sure the top note on the small regulators is in tune. Then play some tunes again, have fun. Then the next pair of notes. Do that and pretty soon you’ll be in tune. Until the reed craps out, of course. :really: