Simon’s right on the money here: the extent to which oboe + bassoon double reeds can be shaded through embrochure to enhance timbre in a performance greatly exceeds that of pressure on any bellows pipe;
BUT the “exact-ness” of technique needed for said pipes far outweighs that of orchestral reed instruments.
(Many’s the Meistersinger overture Ive ‘shaded’ playing 2nd oboe )
One can cover a lot of fingering clams through articulation + dynamics:
(there’s TIME to shut off the air column, change fingering, and attack the next note)
but with bellows pipes each finger motion is naked, an dthi sis why (IMO)we tend to promote technique over tone.
For YEARS I studied clarinet with a French teacher who whopped me over the head with a pencil when he considered that I wasnt listening to my tone. It’s basic for other WW’s ; but the UP beginner is far more concerned with reed function and fingering than tone. How to teach it from the beginning?
I don’t think we are, at least I hope we are not. I agree entirely that it should be discussed more.
A while back, I heard someone say about Johnny Doran that he had no interest in being a piper, as he was too interested in making music (or something to that effect). I tried to figure out what this meant and think it means that he didn’t get overwhelmed with the technique of piping but was more concerned with whether what he played was musical or not. I think that the comment intimated that many pipers allow technique get in the way of musicality.
I’m not suggesting that piping technique isn’t important. It most certainly is, but it just isn’t everything. Unfortunately, it’s easier to teach and learn that the other stuff.
precisely: timbre, phrasing, expression, stylistic nuances come far later than cranns, mordents, rolls, triplets. The ‘music’ gets lost in there somewhere…
David Power played a tune for me to learn (which I recorded) and announced after that is was a simple version of the tune without much extra in it. True he didn’t put much in way of ornamants in, but there was a lot of subtle color and emphasis of the phrasing etc., to the extent that I could hear him doing something with nearly every note.
This is analogous to learning to ride a bike. At first, it’s all technique - left foot, right foot, wobble wobble wobble - then you get to understand that balance is important… you get the point. The difference here is that after a while you can just ride, and enjoy the art of if, but with piping (and I’m guessing all music) it’s easy to concentrate too much on the technique. It’s the difference between seeing the whole picture and concentrating on the details. Technique = details, whole picture = the musicality of the tune.
I’m still very much a beginner compared to those mentioned above but I’m learning now to listen to the music I’m playing and not ‘which finger moves next’ if you know what I mean. I have to pay a different kind of attention than I’d use in a conversation. I don’t know if that’s clear, but that’s what’s happening with me. I’ve also found that I"m learning (some) tunes more easily, partially because I’m listening to the tune overall, and partially because (and this is new for me) I don’t really have to think about which note is which, once I’ve got the first note I can figure out more or less on the fly where the tune sits on the chanter, kind of like recognizing patterns of motion, not just the proper sequence of notes.
Actually, having reread that, I realize that it’s a sensible step in progression toward musicality, to connect the muscle memories of both notes and patterns of notes with the music you’re hearing (both externally and internally). I know it’s become easier for me to play if I let the tune carry me along, or to put it another way, I try to get out of the way of the tune. I’ve found myself spontaneously adding ornaments without really realizing it. And that’s usually when I fall completely off the tune.
I’m not trying to use myself as the universal measure for piping or anything like that, god forbid. I have been trying to pay attention to what I have to learn, where my limits and fumblings are and push myself toward getting over them, and because of that I’ve been trying to listen to myself play as I’m playing, and that seems to have allowed more fluid playing.
One thing I’ve noticed from listening to great players (Powers, Ennis, etc, etc) is how much their personal interpretations of the rhythms in the music differs. I’ve been drumming for a while now, so rhythm is very important to me. One thing I really enjoy about David Powers, for example, is how strongly he emphasizes the rhythms and how (to my ear at least) there’s a lot of subtlety in the way he uses open vs. closed phrasing in a lot of passages to add to both the rhythm and the tune itself. I also have noted with the good Mr. Powers that he plays very much at the front of the beat, which adds a rolling feel to tunes. For me, at least, a lot of the differences (but by no means most or all) between pipers I listen to seem to come from how they use technique to emphasize or slur over the rhythmic pulses of the music.
Anyway I thought I’d test my nascent thoughts about tone, etc against the grinding stone of C&F. Please feel free to cheerfully ignore me or, if you feel it to be necessary send me nasty notes via PM.
It’s important to pay attention to all you’ve mentioned…even obsessively so. BUT, techniques are a MEANS to an end. They allow to you get the instrument “off the table,” so you can get to the heart of the matter and that is the music.
Technique gives you the ability to express the music you hear. The question is then; "what ARE you hearing? What are your reference points…or whom is a better way of putting it?
Some musicians don’t hear as much music as they hear technique, which is why their hands sound brilliant and their music sounds machine like. Others seem to get at something that is far more intangible. That only seems to happen when everything is in place, yet “forgotten” about by the musician at that particular moment when everything comes together.
If you actually had regular lessons with a piping instructor who whopped you on the head with a pencil when he or she thought you were ignoring your tone, do you think it would make a difference? IMHO, a lot of UP beginners are more worried about technique because they don’t have this sort of feedback. (It also doesn’t help that the instrument is physically daunting at first.) My memory of the NPU video vol 1 is hazy; does anyone remember whether it discusses tone at all? How about Heather Clarke’s tutor? It would also be interesting to hear from those folks on the forum who do (or did) have regular lessons. Did anybody’s teacher stress tone from the beginning? Teachers, do you ever discuss it?
In the absence of such regular feedback, I’d guess that most of us evolve as listeners eventually to the point where we start to notice tone on our own. But I agree that process could be sped up by having a tionol instructor discuss listening to tone. Sounds like material for a masterclass.
I personally became obsessed with tone about a year into piping, when I discovered a piper whose tone leapt up and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and sent shivers down my spine. I spent months and months listening to recordings and sitting down and experimenting, trying to figure out what bag pressure, what venting and vibrato, what attack and finish produced those effects. I’m still obsessing over that stuff five years later, and I expect to be obsessing over it for the rest of my piping career. Eventually I discovered how much difference a good/personally suited reed and chanter can make, but I agree that’s not the whole story. Everybody’s tone is unique, I think, because everybody has a slightly different combination of reed, chanter, bag arm, habits, finger size, dexterity, technique, and inner music. Of all of those, only finger size strikes me as not subject to potential improvement…
One thing that I think messes up tone, especially for beginners, is leaky fingers. Some concert chanters have very big holes and it requires a lot of precision to cover them 100%.
I can hear it my playing (and others) if my fingering isn’t perfect. The tone gets muffled, attack is sloppy and basically is crap. If there’s any trace fo death grip I have this problem some days.
Certainly all of the technique must be mastered before one can move on to what you call the intangible (and what I’d call finding the voice), but even when learning piping technique, it’s important to know where you’re going with it. It’s one thing to be able to play a roll or a tight triplet: it’s quite another thing to know when to use it to best effect.
I would not go mad trying to suss someones tone that you fell in love with on a recording. As soon as the sound goes into the mic and through whatever gear came after it, the tone changed (for better or worse).
I know guys who are professional session musicians. they are constantly blowing big $$ on gear going after tone. they sink mega amounts of time and money and yet, it’s always elusive.
Listen to how your pipe heros are making their music. If you keep focusing on that, bag pressure, venting and all that other stuff will fall perfectly into place.
This debate about the individual player’s impact on timbre (to use the technical, narrow, and clear word) goes around in the Highland bagpipe scene as well.
The Highland pipes are even more mechanistic than the uilleann pipes, in that
all good players use exactly the same fingerings, and
the goal it to play at one exactly even and unchanging pressure.
It’s my contention that an air compressor, if set to the correct pressure, will produce exactly the same timbre as the Best Piper On Earth, on a given set of pipes.
The uilleann pipes are much more complex in that varying pressures and fingerings are used to get a variety of timbres out of each note.
But it is still nowhere near the variety of, say, the trumpet, where the player’s very lips are the reed as it were.
On the uilleann pipes, IF two players are using the same pressure and IF they are using the same fingering for a given note (on the same set of pipes), they will get the identical timbre.
On a brass instrument, two players playing a note at the same pressure and using the same fingering will get quite different timbres due to the configuration of their lips and oral cavity etc.
This is my point (made more concisely). Of course, as soon as the player starts to inject his voice, then everything changes.
To the OP’s original point, it would interesting to know what characteristics of reed and chanter - fundamental timbre, response of certain notes - best allow payers to achieve the sound they are aiming for.
I would say the tone expressed by the great pipers: Ennis, O’Flynn, Clancy, etc. is 90% the pipes and 10% the piper.
The tone of the pipes comes from the bore dimensions; type of material; tone hole size, etc.
The expression of tone by the piper comes from manipulating the fingering of the chanter. Every note on the chanter has 2-3 tones depending on the fingering. I always like to point out that my old Kenna chanter has four A notes and three F# notes, depending on the fingering, add to this the chanter on or off the knee and the tone changes quite a bit.
I know that I can recognize many sets of pipes immediately when they are turned on even before the first note is played. The buzz of the drones on that Ennis set is clear as can be.
I think that you are only scratching the surface of the tonal possibilities: think of how many ways A can be fingered (the four digits below A can be lifted in any combination), add in on or off the leg, and add in all the possible vibrato fingerings, and you have dozens (if not hundreds) of possible timbres for A.
Another example is back D- seven different individual fingers can be used to put vibrato on it, and they can be used in various combinations as well.
I think we’re getting away from the original point of the thread which is the mix of tone, technique and other elements to give the unique “voice” of an instrument in the hands of a particular piper. We should be learning to listen for that voice in other pipers’ music and to hear that voice in our own playing.
You can look at the Organ as a realy big set of Pipes with a compressor.
hmm, when my Cat jumps on my Pipe-Organ, it has the same timbre
than me. O.K.
But even on an elektrik Organ, you will know who is playing after
only a few Notes. (after a while, you will even know if my cat is
playin or me) The Voice is not only the pressure ore the timbre.
)
