I’m a beginning piper, just starting to get comfortable with the chanter after about two years of some great teaching in Dublin. Now I’m in the piping wilderness of New South Wales, without a teacher at the moment, so I’m going to try to put a technique question into words… forgive me if I do it clumsily!
Some people I play with are working on The Glass Of Beer. The beginning of the A part goes like this (copied from the Session):
fB (3BBB fBaB|fB (3BBB edce …
The fBaB there is freaking me out. I can’t see how that’s going to be easy to do quickly no matter how much I practice it. I can’t find a version of a piper doing it that I can listen to to hear if they skate around the issue, or what. I’m wondering if there’s a trick to rapid changes from the notes above G in the upper octave down to the lower octave that I don’t know about, or if pipers play this tune differently to get around that phrase, or if I need to just quit crying and practice BaBaBaBaBaB until I get it right.
Is it at all clear what’s on my mind? I hope so. Any advice will be much appreciated.
You’ll need a good reed to do it well and vent your f before hitting the a but failing that it’s no big deal dropping the A an octave or occasionally go fB (3BBB fB (3BBB|fB (3BBB
I don’t actually play that tune but in other tunes that use a lower octave note as a pedal note and jump up to the upper octave A (or B) I either accept dropping the octave or play it on the whistle. Depends on the tune. For instance I don’t play The Musical Priest on the pipes because getting to the upper octave B in the third part on my chanter is dubious at best. Maybe with a different chanter or different reed (or more skill…hah) but as things stand right now, no. I will play McFadden’s Handsome Daughter on pipes; although the third part jumps from Csharp to the high A, it doesn’t destroy the tune if the A misses the octave.
Alistair gives me a hard time about my tendency to at least attempt squeezing almost anything on the pipes, but even I admit there are some tunes that just don’t work. Sometimes you have to know when to fold. The bar in the second part that looks like: (3BBB bBaB| is quite off putting. Maybe someone more experienced than I has worked out a way around that.
i think, lifting chanter off knee on the “a” and playing it staccato is the way. But of corse- it depends on chanter and reed. In such melodies i prefer do all i can and let the chanter choose- to jump or not=))
And of course- the better way- is to play such tunes on whistle, agree with TheSilverSpear
As others have noted, it can depend on how capable your reed is, but really, you should take your time to practise playing each note in the 2nd 8ve singly, over and over. You should be able to play up to b, repeating each note three or four times in a row.
e.g. .e.e.e .f.f.f .g.g.g .a.a.a .b.b.b .a.a.a .g.g.g .f.f.f .e.e.e
Keep practising this until you can do it fairly cleanly, then try your tune again, and you should see marked improvement.
Mark’s problem, djm, is that this particular tune has lots of jumps from lower octave B to upper octave b and a. Being able to get around the upper octave is well and good (and I have seen Mark play so I know he can) but the trouble is making concert pitch chanters jump from B to b without venting something like an f in between those notes. Most really don’t like it. Apparently it’s easier on a flat set.
The drop is usually not the problem - the difficulty is Ba, not aB. As Peter says, venting with the F# finger should get the a on most chanters. It does depend on the chanter - on my personal concert pitch chanter, perhaps oddly, Emily’s BbB jump is actually easier than BaB. Closing the chanter before B should ensure the drop - if the B doesn’t drop then probably you didn’t seal the chanter totally on the closure.
When playing in more of a solo context you might try fB (3BBB f.Bg.B with a one-finger g, for a slightly sinister turn to the tune. If your top hand is fast enough (mine isn’t!), fB. (3B.c.B. etc. sounds even better. Peter’s eAce is a nice dodge, as is fB (3e.g.e.
Not usually a tune I’d recommend to a learning piper, but in your situation (learning alongside other instruments) it makes sense to put a bit of time in and seeing what you can make of it.
Bill is right – going down is pretty straightforward. Going up is not. I find the Bb or Ab (for example) problematic. As I said earlier, depends on the tune. If the shape of the tune gives you time to pay an f or g between whatever and the b, then that is ideal.
Here is my other cheat. If I really really want to play a tune with other people that has these issues, I will consciously drop an octave on a whole problematic bar (also useful for tunes that go out of your range). If someone else is leading the set and you are an octave down (or up even) from the fiddles, it usually sounds fine (it can even sound pretty cool). In some styles of playing – Donegal comes to mind – it’s a legit variation to play bits of a tune up or down an octave anyway. Flute players do it frequently. It may or may not work on this particular tune but is something to keep in mind.
edit: For more pain and suffering look at tunes which use the upper octave as the pedal note, i.e. this monster: http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/7335, especially in the second and fourth parts.
This is one of those instances where the above octave jumping cheat doesn’t really work because the tune’s “personality” (for lack of a better word) depends on those jumps. In the case the above reel, I changed the key to G, which solved the problem.
Understood, but my point is to practise closed, stacatto notes in the 2nd 8ve. Everything above g needs to be vented somehow, and if you practise venting fast enough to get clean stacatto notes up there, then going back to the BaB jump is not as difficult.
Thanks, people, this is exactly what I was hoping for… confirmation that 1) it’s hard, 2) it can be done, or 3) it can be avoided, with examples. Here’s a Glass of Beer for you, the piper who responded to my question.
I remember you double-fisting those pints. LOL. That was a good night.
djm (or anybody),
Is it possible for some chanters (i.e. not mine) to even play staccato on notes above a high G? If you’re venting you are not technically playing staccato, insofar as I understand it, as you are playing one note and going to another without closing the chanter off between the notes.
Aye, this confused me a bit. The upper second octave is still shaky territory for me, and if i do wander up there it’s usually just for open passages and rolls; I avoid closing the chanter for fear of losing the octave. I thought venting helped to stabilise upper 2nd 8ve notes, but can it be used, as djm says, to play staccato notes up there, or am i misinterpreting him?
Technically, no, they are not stacatto notes because they need to be vented by lower notes first, but they are played quickly, and in as clean, if not closed, a manner as you can manage. This takes soft hands and practise. A good reed doesn’t hurt.
Try to think of venting as one, continuous movement instead of separate openings of one finger at a time. The fingering may be different on your chanter, but to play b I open first the g, then the a, and then finally the b, in one rolling or sweeping movement, trying to voice just the b. That is how quick the movement needs to be for the b to be … er …
A good example is listening to Liam O’Flynn playing Tabhair Dom Do Lámh. Those three high b’s in the second part are a good example of how clean you can make the upper octave notes.
| .b.b.b b2 a/2g/2 | .a agab a2 g/2f/2 |
Actually, listening to anything he plays is a good example.
Aye, sure you can play them clean but just to clarify, “staccato” has a technical definition and it’s generally not something that can be done on notes above a high G on most concert pitch chanters.
I thought staccato meant silence between notes. So if you’re practicing 3 high a’s or b’s in succession for the sake of practice, and if you’re playing them in such a manner: a, silence, a, silence, a silence, then wouldn’t it still be considered staccato? Venting or not. As I understand it, the vented note shouldn’t even be all that noticeable, you should hear a, a, a. Not: Vented F, a, silence. Vented F, a silence. Vented F, a, silence. Perhaps a nice swooping effect at most is what I understand. Nice quick swooping effects aside, as long as there’s silence between the notes, isn’t it still staccato? I don’t know, these are just my thoughts on the matter. When I play the Bucks of Oranmore in the C part (going from B2 or Bd to a2) I try for the vented F to go un-noticed as much as I can, focusing my attention on coloring that a2 note. Another sort of similar example I know of is in the B part of the hornpipe The Plains of Boyle, going from A to a, via second octave vented f#.
The 3 (of the 4 that are played in succesion) high b’s in the B part of Give Me Your Hand as played by Liam O’Flynn on Christy Moore’s “Prosperous” I would consider to be staccato:
X:1
T:give me your hand
Z:ERIC
L:1/8
M:3/4
R:Waltz
K:Gmajor
| .b2.b2.b2 | b4 ag | aaa gab | a4 gf | e2 e2 ge | d2 d2 gd |
B2 B2 dB | A4 GE | G2 G2 Bd | =f4 ed | e2 e2 g2 | e4 dB |
d2 d2 gd | B2 B2 dB | A2 AcBA | G4 D2 |]
And in that recording you can hear what sounds like I believe djm stated as a rolling or sweeping (I like swooping personally haha) effect.
I think I get what TheSilverSpear is saying, (mise thinks) but then again I don’t… :-?
“In musical notation, the Italian word staccato (literally detached, plural staccatos or staccati) indicates that notes are separated in a detached and distinctly separate manner, with silence making up the latter part of the time allocated to each note.[1] The rhythm is not affected. Notes identified as staccato are often played or sung abruptly and short. They are usually denoted by a dot over the head of the note when the stem is downward, or by a dot below the head of the note when the stem is upward..”
(I tell undergraduates never to use Wikipedia as a source… oh well)
I don’t consider any note where you are venting any other note staccato, as there isn’t a separation between the vented note and the main note. A good player on a good chanter can vent almost unnoticed, but the note is still vented and the next note isn’t detached.
