I picked up a book recently that has lots of good tunes for the D whistle, and I’ve been trying to pick up some pieces, but I’ve run into something that has me mystified. Quite a few of the tunes feature long rolls on the low d. I know it’s possible to “fake” a roll on C or C# and I suspect something like that is being done, but I’ve listened to the accompanying cd and I still can’t figure out what the player is doing. I looked in the Grey Larsen book that is my final authority, and can find nothing on this topic, unless I’m just missing it? Can anyone clue me in?
Look for the word “cran.”
Grey should talk about the Cran at some point. I know this is in my copy of “The Essential Guide…” but it might not be in the “Toolbox.”
You can play a low C# by half covering the end of the tube with your bottom hand pinky.
So, can anybody do this fast enough to perform a roll? Larry Nugent probably. 
Choose ornamentation that suits your instrument and the position you are in on it. Crans would be clearly preferable to rolls on low D, even if you could perform rolls. Note, though, that some people think that crans don’t sound terribly good on whistles.
Grief. I work with teens and thought someone was talking about the mother of all doobies. … 
Rolling a low d = cran
it can done several ways…here’s a popular method
xxx xxx
xxx oxx
xxx xxx
xxx xox
xxx xxx
xxo xxx
xxx xxx
Also works on e
Hmm… if I feel the need to do a roll-like ornament on low D, I usually do something that’s a sort of cross between a roll and a cran – roll rhythm, but with two cuts (on different notes) rather than a cut and a strike. It has pretty much the exact same musical effect as a roll.
Aha! Thank you all. Crans I understand, even if I can’t play them well yet. I’m a little embarrassed at not figuring that out myself. 
I’ll go back to the Larsen book and read about crans again. Thanks again.
Yep. That’s what I do. They’re not real crans.
But you have the right emphasis here. Driving the rhythm is what’s really important. The pitch of the blip is pretty much incidental. Not wholly incidental though, since a roll would sound better on G, where you would expect it, than a cran-like double cut.
I do the same and think it sounds better a full cran on a whistle.
Wouldn’t that be called a double cut? I do something like that as well when I play The Home Ruler on those low D’s. As well as the “middle” D. I’m still “teaching” my fingers to do cranns. It’s a going process.
A double cut would be cutting with the same note. To simulate the effect of a roll, you want the hint of a difference in pitch. Of course, properly played, the note you’re cutting with sounds as the briefest blip so exact pitch doesn’t play a significant role in making it work, but there should still be an audible difference between the two notes.
Go for a real cran. You’ll probably find best explanations on the uilleann pipes forum, as the cran is primarily a piping figure. But, for use on the whistle, look for the simpler crans, forget about the 47-note ones.
In my rare forays into printed music I look for tunes with lots of bottom Ds as this is generally a reliable indicator that they are piping tunes. They are thus also suitable for the whistle - unlike fiddle tunes whose comparative advantage is high notes on the E string, their centre of gravity is in the lower octave so they don’t sound too screechy on a soprano whistle and don’t require too much lung power on a low one.
Well on the Recorder…
Hmmm… my first thought on “double cut” would be what L.E. McCullough calls a “double grace”, with back-to-back grace notes instead of the distinctive eighth-grace-eighth-grace-eighth pattern of a long roll.
However, looking in Larsen, I see he uses the phrase “double-cut roll” to mean a roll with two cuts and a strike. I never had a name for that before! I just thought of them as “Loretto rolls”, because I learned it as a standard roll from Loretto Reid.
To simulate the effect of a roll, you want the hint of a difference in pitch.
Actually, I use different note cuts simply so it is easier on my fingers. I don’t believe that anyone cares if it sounds the same, in the unlikely event they can even tell at speed.
Another option is to just hang on the bottom D longer or use a D-E-D or D-A-D triplet in place of a roll. I used to cran on the bottom D on the whistle and flute, but over time it started sounding too “busy” to me and I went back to simpler approaches. These days I mainly reserve my cranning for the pipes. I do cran on the whistle on a few piping tunes or as an occasional variation (and a simple cran on the second-octave D is par for the course in flute and whistle playing, I use that frequently), but I think it’s an ornament best used sparingly on the bottom D.
It’s been a while since I listened to Mary Bergin, but if memory serves me correctly you won’t hear her doing any cranning on the bottom D (or if you do you won’t hear much). And I don’t think it’s because she can’t, it’s because she chooses not to.
I just checked, and if I don’t do what I described earlier in the thread on the first low D of “Trip to Durrow”, I play a quarter note D, then cut into an eighth note D.
I think the first trick with ornaments is to learn how to play them, and the second trick is to learn not to play them. Somehow I got the impression when I was starting out that playing anything longer than an eighth note was frowned on in whistle playing. I’m so much happier with my playing now that I play quarter notes… 
Well, I’m just getting into cranns, and I haven’t a lot of knowledge on them just yet. I haven’t had the time to sit down and really endulge myself yet. But, as I said with the little.. I guess “crann type” ornament I do on The Home Ruler on the D’s, I just do two cuts real fast. Not at the same time, but right next to eachother. And I also do them with one finger on each hand. My first cut is with the G finger on the top hand, then the second cut with the E finger on the bottom. Sure, if you play those exact two cuts slowly, you can detect a Slight pitch difference. But as fast as I play the tune, you can’t notice it. And I think it sounds good on most of the whistles I have. Especially my Burke. I also do this on the middle D in this very tune. I’m not calling this a crann, but it’s definitely not a roll. I guess my point is, you don’t always have to cut twice with the same finger.