What is the difference? any mp3 to display the difference?
I don’t think you should set tight playing off against ‘traveller style’ [whatever that is]. The most wellknown traveller-players like Johnny and Felix Doran incorporate a lot of tight fingering in their music.
Having said that, tight fingering only takes off a minimum of fingers to play a note and will stop[by closing all the holes] the chanter in between notes. Open playing only leaves on the minimum of fingers required to play a note and may not stop the chanter between notes. There are hardly any pure examples of either style of playing, it’s always a mix of the two.
[edited to make good a ridiculous number of typos]
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-09-02 07:08 ]
Peter articulated the situation perfectly. I think that some of the terms used to describe piping style have become confused. Open, legato and travelling have merged and I also think the terms tight and closed have been confused. People often use the term open to describe fast flowing piping, despite the fact that the piper might be using a majority of closed fingering. Closed being where you lift the minimum number of fingers off the chanter. Closed fingering only becomes tight fingering when all the holes are momentarily stopped between notes. Regarding the travelling style, as Peter said ,the two best known exponents were Johny and Felix Doran. They both had completely different styles, the former being the more influential in terms of piping today. Every travelling piper I have heard has played very differently. I think the term travelling style is slightly misleading in that it is a style largely based on johny Doran who was just one traveler playing in a certain way. There weren’t enough recordings made of travelling pipers for us to reach a true consensus. Perhaps the term travelling style should be replaced by the Johny Doran style?
Brendan is right there, I personally feel that, like all great music, Johnny Doran’s style was essentially a personal thing. He must have been an extremely musical individual. Him being a traveller is only relevant because he made his living for a large part with his music [and a good living too, by al laccounts he was a well dressed man, someone recently told me he always wore a suit and tie, and that in a time NOBODY wore a tie], his lifestyle enabling to play and play so he could develop his talent in a way maybe not possible if he had been from the settled community.
As for Felix, his playign is different. During the weekend I was lucky to get hold of a series of recordings by him and I am at the moment listening to himself and Bobby Casey playing The Quarrelsome Piper. Felix uses a long string of very tight triplets that normally would have no place there in the popular perception of the traveller style.
I also think Felix’ influence shouldn’t be underestimated, he was around a lot longer than Johnny and through Willie Clancy and Martin Rochford a lot of his piping has come seeped through into later generations of players. Johnny is now the more wellknown man allthough listening to some old interviews with Willie Clancy and other players of that generation recently, I noticed that they all refereed to Johnny as ‘Felix’ brother’ implying that to them [or their generation] Felix was by far the more wellknown of the two.
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-09-02 07:16 ]
I also agree with Peter here. Listen also to recordings by Mickey Dunne, Paddy Keenan, Finbar Furey or the RTE recordings from the Johnny Doran gathering at Wicklow where John Rooney, Johnny Purcell can be heard piping. These RTE recordings can be listened to via the “Uilleann obsession” site. The piper’s mentioned above have different manners of piping to my mind. Just as settled pipers have. Paddy Keenan & Finbar Furey were taught by John Keenan, yet don’t sound the same. John Rooney was mad to learn the pipes from Felix Doran, whereas Michael Doran was not so enthusiastic by all accounts. Listen to Mickey Doran’s (Michael’s son)piping on the web site, not at all bad for a 12 year old.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/entertainment/music/world_on_your_street/
Sorry, wrong address. Mickey Doran can be heard at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/entertainment/music/world_on_your_street/launch_artists/mikey_doran_ullian_pipe.shtml
Now it makes sense! Thought I’d bring this back up to go with the present.