Before I get to the main question, am I correct in my understanding that the traditional use of cuts, taps, rolls, and crans in place of tonguing in Irish whistle (and flute?) music is based on emulating the flow of pipe music?
If so, I can see that–and understand why cuts and taps really aren’t grace notes, but I still don’t get the logic of cuts being done with one, single finger for all the lower notes, and with another finger for all the higher notes. My tendency, probably due to the fact that I had previously only played Chinese music on flutes and whistles, is to want to use the finger for the note immediately above the one being played–which is similar to how I play some trills. After all, if you cut an F# or a B, that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? (Or have I fallen into some terrible misunderstanding?)
Using the next higher note in every case feels much more natural to me, but I’m wondering if the two-fingers approach might turn out to work better for fast tunes. Since I don’t play anything fast, I have no way of experimenting at the moment.
Of course, since I play alone, don’t perform in public on the whistle, and don’t plan to stick to Irish music, I don’t feel constrained to stick with ITM styles, either, but I do feel that I should put some effort into at least understanding them and trying to learn to use them where they are appropriate, even if I decide to abandon them eventually.
(If I were clever, I probably shouldn’t admit here, of all places, that the last thing I’m interested in emulating is the pipes.)
Well, that’s how the cuts are played in a roll. I think I’m right in saying that Grey Larsen opines in his book that cuts are more responsive when played like that (but I might be wrong…so many tutorials, so much theory, so many opinions!).
To be honest, I didn’t really grasp the fundamental mechanics of these ‘articulations’ until I ploughed into Grey Larsen’s mighty tome; up til now I’d been ‘fudging’ through the ornaments as best I could, but mostly steering clear of them altogether. Obviously I recommend Larsen’s book, purely on the grounds that it managed to enlighten me on this subject where all the others ‘failed’. I’ll let you know about the rest of its contents in about a year or two!
I’ve played for about 2.5 years now, and until this past summer I was doing cuts as you describe, using the finger above the note I wanted to cut. Worked fine, sounded fine, though I did have better success on some notes than others, probably just due to frequency of use.
This summer, though, I met a whistle instructor named Peter Pheelan in Dublin, who (after chewing me out for starting 2 years ago instead of 12 years ago!) advised me to use just two fingers: ring and index fingers of the left hand. He gave a few reasons for this, but the only one I can bring to mind at the moment is that by using this technique you will be training only two fingers to move at ornament speed instead of five or six. Sounds like a pretty silly reason to me, especially if you’ve already gotten used to doing the one-higher method.
But…after about 6 months of actively using this new technique, I’d have to say I recommend it. With the exception of some trouble on B and A, I’ve had a lot of success with it, and somehow it just sounds “more Irish.” I can’t tell if it’s faster or not, but I don’t play very fast yet anyway. I’d recommend it to anyone - give it a shot for six months, and if you prefer your original method, revert back.
I’ve never seen this topic adequately addressed. I’ll just talk about cuts as they occur in rolls to simplify things. Most older tutorials told you which note to cut with and talked as though you were meant to sound the note you used to cut and tap distinctly. The result was that students played turns not rolls. To counteract this, people started to point out, correctly, that the cut and tap are meant to sound like blips rather than properly articulated notes. If I’m not mistaken, Larsen still tells this story. But this can’t be right either. If it were right, pitch wouldn’t matter so long as you blip in the right place. In that case you might as well double cut, or play tap first, cut second, in a roll. But these are audibly different ornaments.
My conclusion is that the note-up-note-down-note contour of a roll is crucial to it so pitch does play a role. But the role it plays is as I just descrbed it, so the note you cut with doesn’t matter much just so long as it is audibly higher and comes out blipped rather than clearly articulated.
OK, now you can forget all that and go back to playing jazz.
In the end you’ll wind up doing whatever feels comfortable. Done properly, the cut is just a blip, and sound wise, it doesn’t matter what finger you use.
That said, I’m with Beth and her teacher. A properly executed cut does require a lot of practice, and teaching two fingers is a lot easier than teaching six. Another thing that I discovered is that rolls on E and F are much easier if you’re cutting with a different hand than you’re tapping with. That leaves just A and B as one-handed maneuvers, and they’re even difficult for a lot of seasoned players.
But surely the “two fingers instead of six” logic only applies to cuts, and then only if you never intend to use other ornaments? You still have to teach the other fingers “to move at ornament speed” for taps/strikes, rolls and crans?
Ah well…I guess if it were too easy it wouldn’t be worth the learning!
I’m currently working on adding ornamentation to my playing, so this is something I work with (struggle with?) every day.
I started out trying to do cuts using the next-note-up approach and had the same issues others have reported - some faster than others, and a problem remembering which finger to use when playing at speed.
The Bill Ochs tutor recommended the two-fingered approach so I tried it - and, for me, it’s a lot easier to deal with. Those fingers are faster, for me anyway, and there’s much less to remember - cuts on D though F# use the G finger, cuts on B, A, G us the B finger. Simple muscle memory soon takes over, and if I play the cuts at proper speed the pitch doesn’t seem to matter, really. The only fly in the ointment I’ve found is that d’ (second octave D) on many of my whistles will break if I cut with the G finger - so, for second octave D only, I cut using R1 (F# finger).
I’m having more issues with taps, currently - although for some reason I don’t have any memory problems (except that the d’-C-d’ “tap” is counterintuitive: 0xx xxx - 0xx 0xx - 0xx xxx is what I use), most of my taps are a lot slower than my cuts; if I’m not careful they sound as distinct notes rather than blips. And it does seem to be, mostly, that I need to train all my fingers up to ornament speed; however, since I can do a crann much more rapidly than taps using the same fingers I think there must be something else going on - for me, at least, the basic mechanics of the tap seem slower.
I just keep practicing; it wasn’t too long ago that my cuts sounded as bad as my taps do now, so I figure that with practice they’ll improve. And at least my R1 (F#) has improved enough that my G rolls actually sound like rolls, most of the time.
You are not correct. The use of cuts, taps, rolls and even crans in Irish music is based on the desire to enhance the beauty and expressiveness of the music. Nor are such techniques necessarily in place of tonguing.
On the other hand…every tutor other than Bloomie tends to make the point that finger articulations on the whistle are, in fact, derived from the style of piping, where such cuts were/are needed to divide a series of notes.
Cathal McConnell recommends a helpful exercise to bring them up to speed. Start by trilling between the note you want to tap (say G) and the note you’re tapping with (in this case F#). Don’t worry taht they both sound as notes. Once you can do a steady trill just make it faster and faster until you’re blipping. You’re strengthening your finger independence and working up to, then getting used to, the speed required at the same time with this exercise.
The important thing IMVHO is to lift the finger as little as possible, or make the finger movements as short as possible.
For a tap, sometimes it helps to just tap the edge of the hole (as if you were half-holing) instead of trying to close/open the entire hole. See if this gives you the sound you’re looking for.
There is a lot of ornamentation going on in piping that is not needed to separate the notes. And the point is this: the only relevant question for cuts and taps and rolls and whatnots is: do they enhance the music? Strangely that is the relevant question in piping, too.
Not needed I think. I’m not a piper, I narrowly escaped a few years ago when I was unable to order a half set, but my understanding is that tight (staccato) piping is achieved by bouncing the end of the chanter on the knee. Pipers employing an open style still use ornaments.
Of course if you did every note like that you’d end up sounding like a machine gun (much unlike the traditional piper, who sounds like a tortured cat with amplification).
But i digress. The ornamentation is, of course, a part of the style, and it’s done not only to separate the notes, but to introduce variation and bounce.
True. And I am the farthest thing from an authority one could hope to find, but I felt it was fair to acknowledge that there is a strong school of thought which traces stylistic elements of whistling to piping.
you have got your head screwed on the right way already, Whistles are fer more than ITM
