Something’s been bugging me lately… I’ve no musical education classes, so all I do know, is from books, asking people questions and trial and error. Basically, not as much as I’d like to know…
Best way I can think of to ask the question I’m trying to, is to give an example. For instance, when taking about “cutting” on say the whistle, or the uilleann pipes, I would describe the method for cutting lets say, bottom D, with the ‘G’ finger. Na Píobairí Uilleann in their DVD uilleann pipe tutor volume 1 suggests to use the ‘A’ finger for bottom D… In my head… Those two things, are the same finger. And I know I’m getting it mixed up somewhere some how…
To me, the ‘G’ finger, (or actually I guess the ‘A’ finger) is using the finger that creates the note of G, or on the whistle, the top 3 holes covered. Going back to the example above, I said to cut bottom D, using the G finger, or T3, or top hand ring finger whichever term you like; and this is the same fingering, for the description of the example above when saying to cut bottom D with the ‘A’ finger… I’m confusing the hell of myself just trying to describe my problem with this terminology deal…
So on and so forth.
For some annoying reason I can’t figure this simple thing out…
If this is making any sense to anyone as to what I’m doing here.. Please chime in and correct my ways.
The ‘A’ finger is the one you lift to sound ‘A’ on the pipes. Whistle/Flute players do seem to use a shift in names due no doubt to the very essential basicdifference how their instruments are played.
Well another thing I would do is call the B2 hole on the whistle the ‘E’ hole, because in my head, I think of it as that hole when being covered while the tone hole below B2 left opened, sounds the note of ‘E’. I guess another way to look at it is, that same hole, B2, could be called the F# hole, because B2 is left opened when playing the note of F#… Kind of like D#, and Eb type deal… I guess… To me.
That makes perfect sense. Closed fingering being possible on the pipes and all.
As a lifelong wind player (many instruments, but not pipes), it never occurred to me to think of the A finger as anything but T2, and the G as T3, the E as B2, etc. In other words, the finger that is lowered, not lifted, to produce the note. In my world, as for Key_of_D, the piping terminology seems the odd one out.
But a few threads back, one wise poster suggested thinking in terms of vent holes – the highest hole that needs to be vented or opened for a given note. In those terms, for example, the T3 hole is clearly the A vent. So if a piper wants to also call the T3 finger the A finger, I find the vent concept helpful to mentally bridge the two different terminology conventions.
I think this is what is throwing me off… As this is how I’ve always done it while talking about the whistle. Then I started taking up the pipes about 3 months ago, and what I call the G finger is actually called the A finger, (which makes sense now as to why it’s called the A finger) and what I called the F finger is actually called the G finger… Learn something new everyday.
MTGuru, you wouldn’t happen to remember the name of that thread you were talking about above so I could go look it up myself do you? If not, no worries. Thanks again,
