Some thoughts on Piping and ornaments.

Uilleann Pipes
1

Fellow pipers,

Last weekend I had the chance to hear accordion player Paddy O’Brien at a house concert in Asheville, NC. His playing reminds me of Miko Russell, simple, sparse and virtually free of triplets, rolls, cuts etc. Listening to great player like Paddy, two facts describe his style…hard rock rhythm and sticking very close to the melody, not filling it with ornaments. With those two simple techniques the tune comes through strong and beautiful with lots of emotion. When Paddy does put in and occasional ornament it really means something and grabs our attention.

It seems to me that we piper could learn from that approach. While I have great admiration for many of the great pipers who have the genius fingers, I believe there is also room at the top for pipers who stick to the tune.

It is easy for pipers starting out to fall into the technique trap. Instead of simply playing the tune with accuracy and good rhythm many insist on trying to insert ornaments, that they haven’t mastered, into the tune causing a loss of rhythm and place, and many times turning the tune into a complete mess.

This brings up another point. The problem with the pipes is there is no volume control. I have always admired the fiddle because one can come to a session and very quietly noodle around and learn tunes by ear, during the session, done correctly no one notices. But the pipes, having only one volume, punch right through with all the mistakes and inabilities, many times just destroying everyone’s good time.

Yes…piping is a lonely business. In order to learn the pipes on must have a good barn or basement handy. Learn the tunes and rhythm accurately and you can’t go wrong.

All the best,
Pat Sky

2

I do think that sometimes less is more. Mick O’Brien in a workshop focused on finding the heart of the tune. There are some recordings I’ve heard where the tune was lost due to over oramentation. Being able to execute a wide variety of oraments in a tune can be impressive but should be done to enhance the tune and not to see how much stuff you can jam in. Some tunes on the other hand beg for some flare. It’s a pretty subjective area, but that’s my opinion anyway.

3

I agree with this. I’ve always suggested that people should ‘play within their means’, ie, I would far rather hear them play a tune with good pace and expression, tasteful ornamentation and variations and in a way that lets the true nature of the tune come through, than hear them cramming it full of badly executed triplets, backstitches, crans all at the expense of rhythm and taste etc etc.

4

Wow…it’s funny Steve Turner would post. When I read the Patrick’s post the first thing I thought of was the tasteful version of An Phis Fluich on Steve Turner’s website. Every version I’ve heard since now sounds cluttered to me. It’s like pipers have a contest to see how many ornaments they can fill the tune with, where Steve’s version puts the melody at center stage with a few ornaments that nicely accent parts of the melody.

5

Couldn’t agree more. Its a valuable lesson to listen to other instruments and the different possible approaches and incorperate what you like within your own style…

6

Thanks Jeff :slight_smile:

7

Playing the skeleton of a tune at sessions is much better, because they play too fast. :boggle:
For a newish player it seems almost impossible to fit in any expression though ornamentation at a session.
When I play alone, I play at a good tempo, and can play the bipp bop boobity stuff. If I go too fast then even if I can put in all the double cut rolls back stitching crans and stuff it does not sound good to me. In highland piping the faster you go the less grace notes doublings and stuff. When a doubling is so fast that it becomes hard to tell from a single cut then why play that fast. There is good fast and bad fast. It takes awhile to tell the difference for many musicians. I think beginer sessions can be a bad learning experience if there is not anyone in control who can keep reasonable tempos. :heart:
I’am glad to have good people on the forum to learn from :party: If only other people would take advice about listening to other players and practice too. :thumbsup:

8

Personally I feel its a good idea to play without all the ornaments as a practice method and focus on phrasing in various different lyrical ways, as though you were singing the tune. Concentrate on making it sound good ,slow and relatively unornamented. Then slowly bring the ornaments back in. Obviously some cuts etc are essential for the rhythm. also take a particular part of a tune and experiment with different types of ornaments as well as just the plain notes.

9

The same thing struck me when I listened to Paddy Keenan play solo and compared it to when he’s playing with a group: solo, no one alive perhaps is capable of more ornaments, more variation, than Paddy, but when he plays with others his playing is extremely clean and straightforward. Flawless timing and tuning. Being a ‘team player’ rather than a ‘look at me!’ approach.
Ditto hearing Jerry O Sullivan play with others.

10

It’'s best to think of the use of rolls, cuts, staccato triplets, crans, etc as articulations, not as superfluous extras, but musically necessay parts of the tune. The real trick is knowing when to use them, and the best way to learn how to do that is through countless hours of listening to trad (and not just pipers, either!).

11

The real trick is knowing when to use them

Yeah, when I first started, I turned almost every 3 note combination (like GAG or GFG) into a roll because, well, rolls/ornaments were so unique and attractive. I was desperately noodling, figuring out how to get them in. Of course, I didn’t understand the subtleties of the 3 notes I just bulldozed over. As time went on, and I got a better feel, the rhetorical question became: What am I trying to accomplish?

rolls, cuts, staccato triplets, crans, etc as articulations

Yes, ornaments become the music. I agree you need to understand what you’re trying to do in the music, and use an ornament to accomplish what you want… rhythm, lift, melody, texture… If we can get beyond the ornament for the sake of the ornament, we create a balance from which we can push and meld in different directions for musical effect… using/choosing ornaments and technique to create ebb and flow.

12

I almost think this thread should be a sticky and it’s because I wish more people would adhere to a lot of the things that have been said here. Something that bothers me most I think, is people getting ahead of themselves with their music/instrument. It makes no sense to rush one’s learning by unplanned playing, (for lack of better words) that is, if you really care about how your music sounds. Trying to do something that you haven’t taken the time to really learn and understand, I think, will inevitably show within your playing. I believe it was in a tutor that Sean Potts Jr said it best, something along the lines of, if you play a tune, even slowly, without alot of technique, and it’s in time, (and in tune for that matter) it sounds good, and I truely believe this. I don’t mean to suggest that everybody play just the barebones of the tune all the time, but rather that progess will come in time, afterall you can’t learn the pipes in one night.

My neutral thoughts on filling the tune as much you can (however monotonous it may be, but again I feel that’s up to the player) with technique are that as long as you are executing them cleanly and smartly, then at the least, it’s better then throwing in a bunch of un mastered ornaments which usually make things like rhythm suffer. But I feel that this particular topic is that of a subjective nature, so I will comment no further.

Cheers,

13

Another thing, Its often said that ideally a musician sings through their instrument . IMO playing the tunes barebones allows one to connect with the melody and the voice, then the ornaments grow from this in a natural progression. Missing out this stage and adding ornaments befor the individuals voice is found can, I feel, lead to spiritless music, it can be all there physically, yet there is no real connection between the voice of the player and the voice of the instrument. Its just rote learning and mechanical repetition. copying other advanced players etc ..
IMO an essential stage in the growth of any good musician is to be truly connected with what is being said/played.
As in poetry recital, acting, singing, theater there are many who can master the external technique yet miss out on the fundamental depth of expression. the spirit and soul of the music is not there, its just physical technique.

By playing the pure melody and really getting inside the tune we can find that the ornaments spontaneously manifest from within the player and out through the instrument.
The fine and subtle control of each note develops into the fine and subtle control of phrase and then tune. Emotional content. True expression . This is where the soul of the music lies IMO, not in technical trickery and fast fingerwork.

14

Huh??

15

:smiley:

16

I’ve been fortunate to meet Paddy O’Brien a few times, talk with him about music, and listen to him play. Coming from the Scottish piping world, I went through a long period (which I still occasionally lapse into) where I was obsessed with trying to fit in ornaments, tight triplets, etc. wherever I thought they could possibly go. This may be alright to do if one is practicing ornaments, but it rarely results in good music that others would want to listen to. I think this is one reason why albums like “Kitty Lie Over” work so well because the tunes are taken at a relatively relaxed tempo, and you don’t really notice the ornamentation at all–all that you do notice are the great tunes.

There’s a great diagram in Roddy Cannon’s book “The Highland Bagpipe” where he shows the (d)evolution of grace noting in a reel, starting with its first printing in the early 19th century up to an arrangement in a contemporary music collection. It starts out with no doublings, heavy grips, or birls; just a few single grace notes and strikes. By the final arrangement, the tune appears to have maybe three or four times as many grace notes as it started with. While there has been some reaction to this lately, often times when I look at new Highland piping tunes, it seems like the composer/arranger didn’t put much thought as to why a certain ornament was put in a tune, rather he was just trying to fill a certain grace note quota. The result is more often than not music that is technically very, very impressive and almost instantly forgettable.

While I certainly recognize the dangers of turning a tune into a slobbery mess of ornaments, I think ultimately it can be helpful to try playing a tune at opposite extremes with little ornamentation at all and with a considerable amount in order to find what feels like a reasonable medium between the two.

When I was first learning pipes, I never took them to sessions. Rather, I’d sit and watch pipers and look what they were doing very carefully. I’d ask them questions about how they did a certain technique; then, I’d take my pipes out the next day, pick one of the techniques I had noticed and focus on it. I don’t think I played pipes at all in a session until I had been playing for about a year or so, and in retrospect, I probably should have waited longer. To this day, if someone plays a tune that I don’t feel like I know all that well, I generally switch to the flute because if I screw up, I can duck out and play quietly until I figure it out. For the sake of maintaining civilized relations with other musicians, I feel it would behoove all novice pipers (and even some not-so-novice pipers) to do the same and not play tunes that they don’t really know. As the fiddle-playing-ex-priest Feargal Mac Amhlaoibh once put it to me, “Fiddle and flute players have it easy because they can just kind of blend in, and that’s how you learn. But if you’re going to play the pipes or the box, you really have to know what you’re doing, because if you make a mistake, God can hear it.”

17

‘‘There’s a great diagram in Roddy Cannon’s book “The Highland Bagpipe” where he shows the (d)evolution of grace noting in a reel, starting with its first printing in the early 19th century up to an arrangement in a contemporary music collection. It starts out with no doublings, heavy grips, or birls; just a few single grace notes and strikes. By the final arrangement, the tune appears to have maybe three or four times as many grace notes as it started with’’

Excellent point, and often newbies therefor assume that the modern arrangement is ‘the way’ and struggle to achieve everything written down, which of course is going to be a struggle and result in poor music and poor piping. IMO as a piper, the first and most important necessity is stable blowing and good tuning and good rhythm.[and a good tune!]
Simple things are generally stronger than complex things IMO, a simple tune, played well with drones locked in, chanter sweet, little in the way of ornaments is much preferable as a listener and for me as a player and to play along with as a fiddler.
I feel that the subtle control of intonation and rhythm often are skipped over in favor of fiddly finger work. Thats why we have pipers who even if they get all the notes, ornaments etc in the right place, still leave the music empty inside.

A lot of modern playing and music is often filled up too much IMO. Folk assume that as their role models play all these ornaments and shtuff that so should they, little realizing that they are skipping over an essential stage in development. Superficially they might achieve what they attempt, but the music is still hollow.

18

I have had the great and rare pleasure of travelling and performing with Paddy for a few wonderful years (in the early 90’s) as a duo called Glensheen. What Pat says here is the truth about Paddy’s playing… the melody or “tune” is best left uncompromised and pure. Each note has it’s value in time and tone and must be heard. Nothing wrong with fancy playing but it can “hide” the true tune, thereby not conveying the true emotion of the tune.

Paddy is an accordian master, the pipes have a different voice. It seems to me that the “space” between the notes (in piping), is the way with which to allow each note it’s due… and rolls, crans… etc… is how these spaces are created.

Having said this, I will also state that an “economy” of “spaces” is preferable to my way of thinking, playing and listening.

19

quotes from “The Sporting Pitchfork” in boldface:

Coming from the Scottish piping world, I went through a long period where I was obsessed with trying to fit in ornaments, tight triplets, etc. wherever I thought they could possibly go…it rarely results in good music that others would want to listen to. I think this is one reason why albums like “Kitty Lie Over” work so well because the tunes are taken at a relatively relaxed tempo, and you don’t really notice the ornamentation at all–all that you do notice are the great tunes.

Hear, hear!! I too came from the GHB world and went through that exact thing. The longer I played Irish music the more I came to realise that it’s not about the ornaments, it’s about playing at the right tempo with the right “feel”.

There’s a great diagram in Roddy Cannon’s book “The Highland Bagpipe” where he shows the (d)evolution of grace noting in a reel, starting with its first printing in the early 19th century up to an arrangement in a contemporary music collection. It starts out with no doublings, heavy grips, or birls; just a few single grace notes and strikes. By the final arrangement, the tune appears to have maybe three or four times as many grace notes as it started with. While there has been some reaction to this lately, often times when I look at new Highland piping tunes, it seems like the composer/arranger didn’t put much thought as to why a certain ornament was put in a tune, rather he was just trying to fill a certain grace note quota. The result is more often than not music that is technically very, very impressive and almost instantly forgettable.

Yes indeed. So many GHB players take the heavily ornamented version of a tune they find in a book somewhere and treat it like it’s written in stone. They don’t have the perspective to realise that those old tunes, once used for dancing, were retrofitted with lots of ornaments so as to be used as “show-off” or competition tunes. That’s changing quite a bit nowadays: current Grade One pipe bands’ versions of tunes often have very few ornaments, sometimes an entire bar of a jig or a “hornpipe” (reel) having but a single G gracenote etc.

20

There is always a strange delineation, in print and otherwise, when discussing “technique.” A common example is one describing playing a melody with a good sense of time (rhythm) as separate from technique.

To play a tune with literally no grace notes, convincingly, in time, and with some sort of feeling requires a great amount of technique! One uses “technique” (I.e. the facilitation of the intention, to the actual audible sound) to get the music from in one’s head, or dare I say ..off a sheet of music, to the fingers, and ultimately to listeners ears.

If we look at the (old) regional styles for example, a listener/musician might feel that musicians who play in the style associated with southern Donegal may put too much into the tune, play too fast, and or are too “busy.” Somebody else might feel that style of music is the juice of life! A different listener/musician might feel that the music of Micho Russell is too simplistic and boring, when in fact both the Donegal musician and Micho used extensive amounts of technique to achieve the end result.

The melody of the tune is important and cannot be played/heard without the technique it took to play it, be it simple and sparse, or complex and full. Emotion, groove, time, intention, and a whole list of other descriptors may serve to elevate the music if they are present, or leave it purely as a technical endeavor if they are absent.