I finally got Joanie Madden’s “Song” v. 1 a couple months ago, and if it were possible to wear out a CD I probably would have by now. Her ornamentation and phrasing are brilliant of course, but I am particularly fascinated, at the moment, by how she ends notes. I think it’s a combination of breath control, lovely, wide-ish vibrato, and frequently a very small, natural sounding fall-off.
It is easy to pay more attention to the beginnings of notes, since that’s where most of the flashy stuff happens. Has anyone else been struck by the importance of how notes end?
Sure, you can practice shading the note down with the fingers - a sort of slide to nowhere - while coming off the breath. It’s a nice effect in slow tunes if it’s not overused.
Joanie & the rest of the Ladies came through town a while back, and I had the enormous pleasure of joining them onstage as part of an accompanying group.
Of all the things I noticed about her fabulous playing, the way she “dropped” the end of notes stuck out in my mind. It was just right - not too much, and not overdone. Over the past few months I have been utilizing this technique while playing airs, laments, lullabies, etc., and when done right, it adds a great nuance to the musical product.
Both of Joanie’s “Songs” albums are of course mostly on the slow side, so this technique works quite well in that context. I doubt you would ever hear her do that in a set of jigs, reels, etc.
Also, as stated above by other folks, knowing when to use it is paramount in making it effective (and not annoying). This Sunday, I will be playing my Low Eb Whistle with a church choir that is performing a piece called “King of the Wounds”. As it is classical in nature, with a piano accompaniment, I have decided not to “drop” the ends of notes, even though there are many passages where this could work. However, the choir isn’t doing this (thank God…), and of course the pianist isn’t either. However, next Sunday I am playing two solos (“Irish Tune from County Derry” and “Amazing Grace”) on my Low D Whistle with 12 string acoustic guitar, and I probably will “drop” the ends of certain notes.
FWIW - when I utilize this technique, I do it with breath alone. Sometimes I may add a bit finger vibrato, depending on the note and where I’m at in the range of the whistle, but 95% of the time I do it with air alone.
It depends on the whistle, the depth of effect you want, and the note being played. For example, in the second octave easing off the breath alone enough to fade the note also drops you across the “crack” into the first octave. So you really need to feather the note as well, or settle for a very short fade.
I should have been a bit more clear and said that as someone who only plays low whistles that I do it with breath alone 95% of the time, and I have probably never had the need - or the desire - to do it in the second octave. That said, our dear Guru is correct - doing it in the second octave with breath alone can be risky business.
I could be wrong, but from what I’ve listened to the older way, the tradtional way, was to end notes somewhat abruptly, without any attempt at polish or craft. It was the same with piping and traditional singing from what I’ve heard.
Many folk flute traditions have the opposite, a gracenote to end a sustained note. This can be heard on Native American flute and Bulgarian kaval playing.
Doing cool-sounding dropoffs at the end of notes strikes my ear as perhaps the result of outside influences, maybe from jazz or pop fluteplaying etc.
Nowadays uilleann pipers do this more and more, and on the uilleann pipes you have to work at it, by using the fingers to bend the note downward, as changing bagpressure doesn’t do it. I’ve heard uilleann pipers do it on bottom D which requires slowly covering the end of the chanter with the leg.
Paddy Keenan often does a downward glide from B to A, and many pipers do a downward glide from E in the second octave to Back D. But these are glides to sustained notes, not an imitation of a jazz flutist’s dropoff glide.
Whatever the origin, I do these dropoff glides quite a bit on low whistle when playing airs and on the uilleann pipes on commercial stuff. On low whistle I aslo do the Native American/Bulgarian gracenote to end long notes sometimes… it goes to show how what we listen to influences our playing.
Good point. It’s particularly obvious when a singer speaks the last half line of a ballad, and in a fairly off-hand voice, too. You can hear it in recordings of the likes of Joe Heaney or Packie Manus Byrne. I’ve always thought it was quintessentially irish - showing off by conspicuously not showing off.
Somewhere I read a piece in which Seamus Heaney discussed writing Follower, one of the poems in his first collection, Death of a Naturalist. His initial draught of the first line had ‘wrought’ in place of ‘worked’. He says that wrought was a part of his father’s everday speech. Heaney (reluctantly) changed it to ‘worked’ in the poem after concluding that while this was a word his father could (and did) use unselfconsciously, that wasn’t the case for his father’s educated son. In the poem it would have jarred; its diction would have seemed affected. Heaney’s point is that education had changed him. He was no longer wholly a part of his father’s world.
My point with this anecdote is that regarding the above technique we aren’t Joe. We’re Seamus. If Joe Heaney ends a song that way it’s exactly right. He belongs. If I do it, I’m a pretentious git. It sounds as affected as singing in a fake Irish accent. I’d sound as phony as all those ‘irish’ bar bands singing self-penned hymns to whisky and fancying that they’re Shane MacGowan.
Follower
My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck
Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.
I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.
I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.
I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.
Interesting point. It is always the struggle with we who have adopted the tradition rather than being born into it. Our playing is always our craft, not our native tongue. People who are born with it sound…different. But I suppose we’ve had that conversation before.
I think “The Pretentious Gits” would be a great name for a band, by the way.
Trouble is, it’s already been so over-used that I can’t hear it now without turning away in disgust. It just sounds so dreadfully “Celtic” to me. You wouldn’t catch Micho Russell doing that sort of thing …
There’s a lot of things you wouldn’t catch Micho Russell doing with a whistle. His style was all his own - the most singular of all the big name tin whistle source musicians.
not all we listen to and hear but of those things that move us we “choose” those that increase our expression within the material we are already immersed in.
I am sure Micho would have agreed with this but what does it matter if he wouldna?
I mean, why should I compare myself with him?
I’m not sure I fully agree with you, Simon. Bear with me, I’m thinking this through as I go. I think there is an element to art that transcends the performer. The performer doesn’t have to be from a certain background or place or family to play a certain style of music or paint a picture a certain way. Certain ways of playing a tune or painting a picture, when well executed, are beautiful in their own right, regardless of who is behind the instrument or the brush. We humans have a tendency to pull the artist’s personality or background, rather than his performance, into our calculations of what is “good” but I’m don’t think we are always right when we do so. I would agree that faking an accent to “sound Irish” and help a bar sell green beer is not a particularly artistic endeavor. But using a particular technique or brushstroke because it adds to the beauty of the piece seems to me an appropriate thing to do even if you are a purple whistle player, or painter, from Mars. I agree with your thoughts that we are different people than our fathers but I’m uncomfortable with the idea that certain musical techiques are off-limits because of where I was born.
Thanks for posting the poem, that is a beautiful piece of writing.
In the old recordings (and maybe when heard live) I wonder if that could sometimes be a premature return to self-conciousness (or embarrassment, or shyness) in the presence of a microphone or unfamiliar ‘audience’ in someone not used to ‘performing’. Sometimes in archive field recordings we hear a singer finish a song and then the last note goes straight into a spoken “that’s it” or similar words.
Yeah, Micho was individual right enough. And he wasn’t the be-all and end-all of whistlers. Great, but there are other, different greats.
However, back to the point - I still hate that dreadful “Celtic”, soppy, over-smooth, wishy-washy, sentimental, saggy sort of thing that people do at the end of notes because record company executives and directors of Titanic expect it.
There’s another good’un on the same theme, also from Death of a Naturalist:
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Comparing a “modern” (or any) whistler to Micho Russell would be something like comparing Stevie Ray Vaughn to Robert Johnson. It’s a red herring. No one I’ve heard is trying to sound just like Micho. He’s somewhat of an outlier.
- while coming off the breath. It’s a nice effect in slow tunes if it’s not overused.