Just wondering about ScoilTrad..is there anyone there during the summer or is everyone on holidays?
I had spoke to Eoin and he had mentioned last year new lessons on pipes but I never heard back from him. I was curious if you fellows had planned on anything new for the fall of 2004 or new for 2005.
Any news would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. I am from Canada and purchased 8 lessons in total from ScoilTrad for pipes, and plan to submit them if I can figure out MP3 workshops.
Since this buried thread was resurrected, I find that I have more to say about glottal stops, about which I know very little. Anyway, here is my thesis: For a glottal stop it doesn’t matter whether the airway is stopped with any part of the tongue. The only thing that matters for the glottal stop is that the airway is stopped at the glottis, which is the furthest distance from the lips and blow hole of the flute, resulting in the delayed attack of the flute note typical of the glottal stop (more delayed than stopping with the tongue, but more sudden than simply diaphragmatic pulsing alone). Any intermediate stopping by the tongue is not relevant, since it has no effect on the production of the note.
Some people, indeed, my be able to close the airway at the glottis and not close the airway with the tongue. On the other hand, I believe that I am hard-wired to also close off the airway with my tongue whenever I close my glottis. Obviously, there are many differences in people and their abilities. For example, some people have independent movement of the little finger of the hand without also moving the ring finger. But much to the amusement of my guitar teacher, I was never able to do that. Thankfully, the little finger isn’t used for the open-hole Irish flute.
So, in my way of thinking, the glottal stop is not the ca-ca-ca that we use in quite speech in saying, “I want a piece of cake.” Rather it can be the KA-KA-KA of the crow sitting up in your walnut tree. Yes, I know that the explosive KA sound comes from closing the airway with the back of the tongue, but in my case I am also closing the glottis, for whenever I hold my hand on my throat and make this KA sound, I can tell that my glottis is also closed. So my conclusion is that the glottal stop is formed by diaphragmatic pulsing and simultaneously opening the glottis, whether or not there is also an intermediate stopping in the throat with the tongue, which as I said before, is not relevant.
Here is the unalterated gutteral stop, it seems to me. Open your mouth wide, now wider, now make the sound you made as a kid pertending to shoot a mechine gun. While you are doing it, close the mouth half way. Now you are reliving your youthful machine gun days. Now close your mouth the rest of the way and put the flute up and play a sustained note, like a mechain gun. Doug, can you do that? From what you were saying, maybe you cannot.
