I am trying to find the elusive (at least to me) “pulse” in UP tunes, but I am having some difficulty. My playing seems flat. Any ideas on how to help develop the rythym and pulse in IRTRAD?
I was reading “Last Nights Fun,” and there is a quote “A good musician is able to create a pulse against the rythym of the music…”
How do I begin to develop this? Any insights would be helpful.
Regards,
James
First you must learn the grip…?
I thought it was;
“First you must learn the talk”
then
“You must learn the grip”
then
“You must learn the ‘trunkley howl’”
Jim
lmao
“and play by emotion. Don’t copy a players style for the sake of it, it sounds false.” Paddy Keenan 25/03/07
Cheers L42B 
Listening is the key. Especially to non-pipers; IMO many (most?) contemporary pipers flatten the rhythm out.
Try finding recordings of the old masters, particularly old Clare players (and maybe Kerry greats like Denis Murphy, Julia Clifford, and O’Keefe - those Kerry slides’ll cure that too). Some of the faster players (some old Sligo players for instance) have a very strong pulse but the speed can make it hard to emulate. Some of the stuff in Pat D’Arcy’s RTE archives include nice recordings of Bobby Casey and others, too, if you’re finding it hard to turn up commercial recordings still in print.
Among recent recordings, things that come to mind include “Within a Mile of Kilty” (various North Leitrim musicians/fiddle), Michael O’Raghallaigh’s “The Nervous Man”, and Breda Keville’s “The Hop Down”. (three quite different ‘pulses’ there).
Bill
I hear this also in many pipers and often tunes played very fast in a session.
With a strong pulse you don’t necessarily have to play so fast. ( I hope )
In a lesson with David Power he drummed into my head the concept of producing more accent on the first beat of the bar in a reel, especially by giving that note a little longer. In effect you get close a dotted quaver, semiquaver, quaver instead of three quavers. Sometimes the beat is accented with a triplet or a push on the bag to give the note more power.
In reels the pulse also has a swing more like a 12/8 feel rather than 4/4. You can sometimes hear it more obviously when you slow it down. Listen to David’s playing you’ll hear a lot of techniques that give the music a strong pulse and accentuate the phrasing of the tune.
Slow down and the lift will come. Playing too fast makes it hard to put all the “pretty stuff” into the tune.
I had Tim Britton walk by me once while I was playing my C set and he said “I love that lazy laid back southern style of piping”. The flat pipes to me seem to call for slower piping than concert sets do.
Then he immediately started a session playing the same tune I was so fast that he left out all of the “neat stuff” that was available in the tune.
At least on his recordings that I have, he plays at a reasonable speed and puts lots of stuff and lift in it.
Very few pipers can play fast and do a tune justice and I am not up to that level. I have to play slow…
Thanks for the replies…so, is the pulse the same as the rythym? Or is it more than that?
I have been listening to Mick O’Brien and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh A LOT. I like the feel of their music. I also listen to David Power a lot. To me, their styles seem very different. I like the laid back style, myself.
Being a beginning piper, I am trying to develop good habits from the get go. I do a lot of listening, but I’m not always entirely sure what it is I am listening for…is it just one of those “you’ll know it when you hear it” things? Even when I do hear the “pulse” of the music, I’m not sure how to go about making those sounds myself.
Gotta get myself to another Tionol!
Fancy piper - “Lift” - that is the word I was looking for. Is it the “neat stuff” that gives a tune it’s lift, or is it already in the basic rythym of the tune?
You want to make the downbeat and back beats stronger. Since we don’t have a choice of volume, the notes are lengthened slightly. If you start with a roll or crann on the down beat make it dah de de rather than de de de. Same with the back beat, but a little bit less, sort of dee de de if that makes sense.
Listening is the key, especially the older pipers mentioned before and I suggest Ennis. Clancy and Touhey as well.
Kinch O’kane has done some good explanations in the Pipers Review of how the written music can be misleading to classically trained musicians and showing the actual timings of triplets, rolls, etc. Classically trained musicians make rolls sound like turns.
It took a long time to get our fluter, Naomi, to stop the vibrato and making rolls into turns and to put the “edge” on the flute by blowing it nearly into the next octave.
So they are all wrang 
A short figure consisting of the note above the one indicated, the note itself, the note below the one indicated, and the note itself again. It is marked by a mirrored S-shape lying on its side above the staff.
The exact speed at which the notes of a turn are executed can vary, as can its rhythm. The question of how a turn is best executed is largely one of context, convention, and taste.
The lower added note may or may not be chromatically raised ( mordent).
How many of the untrained musicians play the turn which we call a roll, as written ?how many play a roll at all?What I hear is invariably a cut and a tap which is passed off as a roll 
Slán Agat
Uilliam
Yep, of course they’re wrong insofar as they aren’t versed in the context as you point out below. If you play a roll as it ‘should sound’ in one context, but in another, then you have most likely made an error rather than a conscious choice. If we read our definition of ‘roll’ from a classical text, then we’re wrong too, since we’re consulting the wrong authority.
…
The exact speed at which the notes of a turn are executed can vary, as can its rhythm. The question of how a turn is best executed is largely one of context, convention, and taste.
How many of the untrained musicians play the turn which we call a roll, as written ?how many play a roll at all?What I hear is invariably a cut and a tap which is passed off as a roll >
Slán Agat
Uilliam
Exactly Liam - a cut and a tap IS a roll as defined by convention in our context. i.e.
"in Irish traditional music, a 'roll' on a particular note consists of that note ornamented by a cut followed by a tap." (my definition)
I would defend that statement confidently. Of course much more could be added, to distinguish between open and closed rolls, long and short rolls, etc. Playing a roll, turn, mordent, or gruppetto this way in a classical piece would be just as wrong as inserting classical technique into a reel.
BTW, ‘Untrained musicians’? Surely you mean “non-classically-trained musicians” 
But this is in denger of getting off-topic, except insofar as the exact timing of things like rolls is a key aspect of the ‘pulse’ or ‘lift’ or whatever.
Bill
You shouldn’t actually hear the cut and pats. They are just interuptions to chop the note into pieces that fit the rhythm of the tune, whether long or short rolls.
BTW, a long roll/crann is essentially a dotted quarter note chopped into 3 pieces, a short roll is a quarter note chopped into 2 pieces (starting with a “chirp” or cut at the front end).
Hya Bill can’t disagree there with what ye say but I think it is very confusing to call something a roll when it is anything but one.So when a classical muso plays what they think to be a turn and then told “nah its not that in Irish music its something different but we call it a roll” then we begin to lose a bit o cred. 
especially when ye look at the tutors for ITM and without fail they go into very specific detail on how to play a Roll(classical) which is no different to the classical interpretation I gave earlier but conventionally is played as ye and I describe.There are some that will say …ah but its only traditional music so we shouldnae be too rigid on definition…but at the same time we shouldnae be contradictory either… 
Anyways coffee break over have a nice day ye all.
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam
ps I am not really bothered about this I just like to be pedantic,must be something to do wi ma age correction accepted classically untrained musos with long grey hair
pps If ye shouldnae really be able to hear the roll as is suggested then there is no point in playing it…it should be played quickly enough to minimise the interuption to the flow of the melody but still be heard, that is exactly what ye are doing by"chopping up the notes"
“In the first rushing, I thought it was Doran who was playing!”
Séamus Ennis’ sleeve notes for Keenan’s first album !!! Funny, innit ??
I reckon the ‘pulse’ is a key aspect of the ‘rhythm’, or if you prefer, a way of referring to the rhythm. Note that the implication is that there is something here beyond the mechanics and tempo.
Certainly there’s a great ‘pulse’ in Mick and Caoimhin’s playing; if you like that, you are probably on the way to identifying the ‘pulse’. I think you will know it when you hear it, to a large extent - in any case, no amount of analysis and explanation will convey it unless you have heard it and internalized it. There’s really no substitute for listening; and talking about it probably makes the most sense when one has specific examples to refer to.
I do think that one important aspect can be illustrated with reference to metronomes. If you look at Brendan Breathnacht’s Ceol Rince na hEireann I p ‘vii’ or ‘ix’ he gives suggested tempos for jigs, hornpipes, and reels, with reference to specific note lengths (crochets and dotted crochets). HOWEVER, when actually using a metronome it’s important to understand (from instruction or listening) the actual division of the given dance metre into primary downbeats, i.e. to know which beats in a metre are the strong ones.
To take an example, Breathnacht suggests 224 crochets per minute for reels. In reels, only every other crochet is a downbeat. These downbeats are the primary beats in the rhythm of the reel, and so crochets falling on these beats are treated somewhat differently from the other crochets in the tune which may fall on the upbeats. Specifically, they are somewhat longer. So, if you set your metronome to play 224 beats per minute, and play a reel along with it, you will have a problem; your upbeats will be as long as your downbeats, producing a flat, incorrect rhythm. This is probably one reason why using metronomes in traditional music is often criticised. On the other hand, if you set the metronome for 112 beats per minute, so that it clicks only on the strong downbeats, you will be in much better shape.
Some people would go further and suggest that the second downbeat in a reel can be slightly shorter than the first; I am not sure about that, but certainly the second downbeat may be a bit less strong than the first. Similar issues arise with hornpipes, and in a subtly different way, jigs (where the dotted crochets all correspond to downbeats, but the ‘quavers’ within the crochet are of slightly unequal length). This is one way of emphasizing the ‘pulse’, but not the only one; ornamentation of downbeats in one way or another can also be important,
But as I said, talking about it is pointless without being familiar through attentive listening…
Bill
Ok…this is starting to make sense to me. BillH and Fancypiper, your explanation is just what I am looking for. I need a practical “this is what you do to make this noise” approach, so that my brain knows what to tell my fingers to do. I need the language of the music, so I can internalize the sound of it. That is how I generally learn music…if I can explain what I am doing in words, then I remember how to do it physically, and something just clicks. Poof, I can do it. Learning short rolls is an example. Long rolls I could do, but for some reason short rolls escaped me. Until I read an explanation of short rolls in L.E. McCullough’s tin whistle book, and then it clicked. I knew what to do in my head, picked up my chanter, and out they came. Short rolls. Well, at least my beginners version. But they certainly were not long rolls. I can often hear what I want music to sound like when I am not playing, but as soon as I start playing, its gone. At this point in my learning, I need to know what to think about when I am playing, so that it comes out of my fingers.
I do not read music well. I know what the notes are, but unless I hear a bit of music, I cannot play it correctly. If you tell me a tune is in 12/8 time, I know what that means as far as the note value of a bar, but I have no idea what a 12/8 tune sounds like. However, when you say, “hold that first note a little longer” that makes sense to me. Then when I do it, I hear what it sounds like, and then it clicks. I am working on my basic music theory, but it is slow going. So far, most of my basic IRTRAD music theory can be summed up as “if you can say ‘strawberry strawberry strawberry’ to it it is a jig, and if you can say ‘watermelon watermelon watermelon’ it is a reel.” I do not know what fruit goes with hornpipes 
So, your input is helping. I appreciate it.
Which of course leads to another question. Which ones are the down beats, and which ones are the back beats? (As he hangs his head in shame at such an elementary question…
Hi Ayrforce pyper
With my bodhran player hat on, then 12/8 is usually a slide, my favourite ones being Calliope House (though this is sometimes played as a 6/8 single jig) and Dingle Regatta.
Hornpipes are difficult to put a general rhythm to, it depends on the hornpipe (I have played 2/4, 4/4, 6/8 and 12/8 rhythm patterns in hornpipes). In many cases you play multiple patterns within the tune - a good way is to play the simplest rhythm on the first time round and the complex one the second time round.
Down and back beats - the Wa in Watermelon is a down beat. the ter and on in Watermelon are back beats.
David
I think Bill has this right. I think it’s erroneous to notate a reel in 4/4. It’s in 2/2 - two minim beats to a bar. You get the same issue with jazz. There are attempts to describe swing which can be analogous to a 12/8 feel, but it is a mixture of rhythm (note length and position), emphasis, attack and phrasing. I think the same factors are at work in ITM but the desired result is somewhat different. We also have more limited control of some of the expressive elements on the pipes.
I found this hard to start with because it’s not easy to practice it slowly, the tune has to have some velocity before it comes together.