Tunes that helped your technique.

Uilleann Pipes
1

We are trying to get our teaching more organised here in Manchester.

Currently we are trying to put together a selection of tune that will become the core of our teaching, onto which we can “hang” different bits of technique (more or less).

If you have found that learning and practicing a certain tune or a specific version of a tune has helped you with a specific or general part of your technique and/or playing it would be great to hear about it.

We can then, hopefully get together a more varied and informed selection of tunes.

For example, from the point I learnt the Star of Munster I was never afraid of spending large amounts of time in the second octave.

Thanks in advance.

David

2

There are many tunes that have helped me gain better insight into piping style and variation. Here are but a few:

The Gander At The Pratie Hole… aided greatly in my lower octave FGA triplets and Cnat/C# variations/interplay in the second part. It is also a good one for cranning.

An Phis Fluich… aided in embellished C natural usage… and it is hard to keep from overdoing it in this particular tune… which for me is still very much a ‘work in progress’. :smiley: It is also a mighty tune for cranning.

The Silver Spear… forced me to variate the second octave, to keep it from being redundant. It also forced me to get over being afraid of the second octave b.

Jim Ward’s Jig… aided in my rolls, on G, B and C natural, and certainly the cran.

The Rainy Day… is currently aiding me in a B, Cnat and d ascending triplet to second octave g. It is also a good one for the descending triplet a,g and f in the second octave as well as exploring more C natural usages.

The Old Torn Petticoat… again, C nat usage, second Octave b and drawing/sliding up to a in the second octave.

Sean Bui… an excellent tune for crannage, dudes and dudettes. :smiley: But in addition to that, it is also a great tune for rolling.

There is a little bit of everything in the above tunes, and I haven’t covered the full possibilities that these few tunes can cover and assist with in learning ornamentation, phrasing and the ‘feel’.

Great topic David! Brilliant! :slight_smile:

3

Munster Buttermilk Jig is good for crans as it goes back and forth between the D cran and E cran, plus gives a beginner a workout in both octaves.

The Tempest Reel is good for learning not-so-linear tunes. Also forced me to learn to use the Fnat key in the lower octave.

The Fairy Queen Hornpipe was good for forcing me to use the G# key.

Overall, I have had more success with tunes that have their own distinct melody, as opposed to some of the more non-descript reels, or tunes that seem to be made up of bits and pieces of others. They seem to stick in my head better, and I can recover in them faster if I get lost.

djm

4

Here are a few useful tunes that immediately come to mind.

Hug the Bundle = the Triplets of Doom.

Kesh = hopping from the back D to second octave notes.

Craig’s Pipes = great for B rolls.

Mason’s Apron = hopping from G to second octave notes.

King of the Pipers = bouncing from bottom D to other notes.

Star of Munster = getting a nice, wailing C natural.

5

Quite literally just put down my pipes after giving this question some thought and going through some tunes…

In Highland piping, there seem to be two schools of thought regarding technique–one is to practice it separately from everthing else and do specially formulated exercises; the other is to use tunes or parts of tunes to practice certain techniques. I tend to go for the latter, but some tunes that are good for technique might not be all that enjoyable to play. During my short tenure with the Glasgow Piping Centre Pipe Band (which may be defunct now…), I was bemused to discover that the pipe major considered “Scotland The Brave,” my least favorite tune of all time, to be one of the greatest exercises of all time and he’d play it at every band practice.“Aye it’s a great tune for loosening up the fingers,” he’d say. “Ye cannae play a chune like ‘The Shepherd’s Crook’ without mastering ‘Scotland The Brave’ first.” Though I absolutely destested playing it over and over, and though I don’t want to come out and actually admit he was right, I will grudgingly conceed that I can see his point. If I wind up in Hell though, I have visions of sitting around a table with practice chanters and playing Scotland The Brave over and over and over…

Anyway. As far as UPs go, I would say that “The Harvest Home” is a good choice. Though considered “simple”, it is deceptively so and requires good control of the chanter to play well. As you get better at it, you can also add tight triplets, popping, etc. to suit your tastes. Others:

-The College Groves (aka The New Demense) contains perhaps the most representative collection of piping techniques in one tune: rolling, cranning, tight notes, triplets, etc. The musical equivalent of a Prego ad: “It’s in there.”

-Jenny’s Welcome to Charlie for more of the above plus funky ghost d stuff.

-Hand Me Down The Tackle for back d/low D interchange. “The Glen Road To Carrick” is also good for this if you haven’t had enough of big 5-part tunes yet…

-“The Groves” is good for tight bcd triplets.

-An Bonnan Bui for alternating between tight fingering and rolling. Also An Rogaire Dubh.

-Lastly, for conquering your fear of the 3rd octave d, try The Bee’s Wing. Joe McLaughlin plays this on “The Drones & Chanters II” and makes his flat set almost sound like a soprano sax. Can be frustrating at first, but it sounds sooooo cool when you actually manage to pull it off.

6

This is an excellent topic and could turn into a usefull resource for aspiring pipers.
Sliabh Russel- This jig I think is excellent for the practice of cutting the high E with the G finger, a technique which can subtley change a piper’s playing over night.

Dublin Reel- This great beast of a reel is excellent for trying different tones of F rolls in the low octave, of the knee of course with either the F finger of or the F&E finger leaving the little finger down. Great for practicing of the knee rolls that hear the swell of the bottom D in them. Also, the second part can help perfect the art of popping a note well.

Plains of Boyle- A great hornpipe to introduce a player to a AC#A tight triplet.

7

Hi

‘Sean Bui’ is gret for practicing closed styles. It also allows you to experiement with playing normal style playing with the chanter of the leg. Great fun.

‘Tommy Reck’s Polka’ is a tune that you can have a lot of fun with veriations. Especially with the regulators. As an example of veriations try adding doublings or triplet grace notes where singular ones are in place. You can create some interesting but benefitial sounds that can really set of the tune

Cheers L42B :slight_smile:

8

Anyway. As far as UPs go, I would say that “The Harvest Home” is a good choice. Though considered “simple”, it is deceptively so and requires good control of the chanter to play well

Now I’m depressed. :frowning: I have been learning Harvest Home for six months now and am just gotten up to speed on the whistle and 1/4 speed on the pipes. Oh well, maybe that’s why my dear sweet Mother likes to call me a simple man. :roll:

Good Topic

John

9

Ah, but notice I said deceptively simple. I’ve been playing it ever since I started uilleann pipes and I’m still not satisfied with the way I play it.

Cheer up. If playing this stuff were easy, there wouldn’t be much point, would there?

10

I’d throw in a couple of hornpipes as well.

Boys of Bluehill and Off to California are two that have helped me get over my fear of the second octave as well as a starting point to learning the hornpipe rhythm.

11

Now this is an interesting concept - Tunes that help technique. I was once at a session and a fiddle/mandolin player was asked by another less proficient fiddler "how do you practice to improve your technique?..his answer was simple “I play tunes”, not meaning he has any particular tunes he concentrates on feeling that they aid his technique more than others, but just that playing any tune is his way of developing his technique..

Questions of fiddle being easier or otherwise than the pipes aside, I wonder, aren’t all tunes equally worthy of being good for technique?

After all, a tune is what you make of it.

You could take a rolling tune like ‘Lark in the Morning’ and play it full of rolls and say it is good for rolls. (Rolls with orange marmalade isn’t it Joseph? :smiley: )

Or you could play it completely staccatto and use it to develop your staccato playing. Neither variation would be wrong either (except that the very title itself suggests a little lark rolling about in the air flowingly as the sun comes up and hence it’s probably best played that way).

This gives rise to one of the chicken-egg type questions - which comes first, the tune or the technique? Do you learn a technique so that you can play a tune, or do you learn a tune so that you can learn a technique, or is it all just one happy spiralling continuum?

Personally, I would argue that emphasis should be placed more, but only slightly so, on developing technique first, that is, learning the mechanics behind rolls, staccatto triplets and such and then learning to apply them to tunes and learning where you can can apply them to tunes such that no tune can be said to be less helpful than any other.

My reason is that I have observed pipers who prefer to focus on learning tunes who have been at it ten years, yet their technique seems to have stagnated; if it has developed beyond simple rolls and the occassional crann,that is.

I focussed on technique first so that I could play tunes. I wanted to be able to play staccatto triplets first, so I could then apply that technique to any tune I came across as a variation to rolls. Whether that tune was “Diddle de Dee” or “The Humors of Diddle-de Dum”, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Anyway, as a contribution to the initial post my suggestions would be any of the tunes in Heather Clarke or the NPU videos. At least then you’ll have a common grounding shared by most pipers around the world.

Cheers,

DavidG

12

Just to follow up on ausdag’s post, my teacher is constantly throwing new tunes my way. Technique has nothing to do with the problems I encounter, but rather new combinations of notes, new patterns, things I’m not used to. Even stuff that sounds remarkably simple can throw me off at first until I practise the new combination. From that standpoint, I can see that plowing through lots of tunes won’t necessarily help with technique, but will equip the finger memory to handle a wider variety of tunes with ease, so that technique can then be added where and when we choose.

djm

13

Hard bottom D - the March of the Kings of Laois. I heard this on the weekend, played by Nick Whitmer, and whether it was the tune or the way he played it or his chanter but it gave me a great appreciation for the crisp hard D. I spent all Sunday trying to do it, with mixed results. Still, I recommend the tune.

14

I love the march of the king of laois. One thing that helped me when I was learning it (and since I’ve more or less forgotten it, will help when I relearn it) was listening to a scottish smallpiper playing it.

My pipe teacher mentioned that he thought it was a tune intended for the piop mhor, and to me it appears so. Food for thought! (psst… if you have a recording of Nick playing it, I would love that!)

Tunes for technique: Fraher’s for crans and ghost d.
Maid on the green for variations and 2nd octave Cnat (well, from Willie Clancy’s playing anyway)
Lark’s March for tight playing and a bit of popping, but mainly for storytelling.

15

Unfortunately I don’t have a recording of Nick’s version. It was during an impromptu session over a few pints after our pipers club meeting. His chanters have a lovely hard bottom D. I’m currently playing one of them and it just hums like an angry hornet on the hard D.

I did have a Horselips version of the tune, it’s at the start of the song More than you can chew.

16

I have been learning Harvest Home for six months now and am just gotten up to speed

Don’t get down on yourself on that account: speed is learned by playing slow, relaxed, and accurate. I’m of the opinion that you don’t “go” to dance music-- it comes to you. Meaning, if my experiences are representative, trying to play too fast before you’re ready only locks in muscle tension, which is a huge barrier to progress.

Ausdag, I understand what you’re saying about techniques being available to any tune. The point might be though, that in the beginning stages, I know ~I~ didn’t have enough grasp on the music to hear where most opportunities existed. I needed to have a tune where they were built in, like Fraher’s for cranning.

I agree with practicing technique in isolation to focus on relaxed and accurate control (this includes finger independence). Practice a technique over and over very slowly, and then practice it slowly in tunes. Back and forth. Increase speed in small increments while maintaining that hard-won relaxed and accurate control. Of course we all need to go nuts occassionally and play much faster than our skills allow, but we need to be careful that we don’t forgo correct practice in the learning stages.

DJM brings up another good point. I don’t know what to call it…interchange between notes? There’s always a spot where you stumble because of an uncommon or difficult interchange. IMO, practice them in isolation, concentrating on relaxed, accurate control. Even going from A to B can be practiced to gain finger independence: IMO, lifting the middle finger shouldn’t cause the pointer finger to tense up. Even a simple technique like cutting the B shouldn’t affect other fingers.

The most difficult interchanges for me involve C nats, especially if varying whether you color the C and/or close the chanter to emphasize rhythm. The 2nd part of the Curragh Races would be an example.

As for another tune that helps a lot: I’ve taken to a slow (very slow) reel called The Humors of Scale.
Go here: http://www.metronomeonline.com/
Start with the ticker at 50 beats per minute.
Now, play the D major scale up and down, each note 4 times in a row, with two notes per tick: DD DD EE EE FF FF GG GG etc, as high as you can manage using lead notes (as short as possible) for top hand 2nd octave notes.

Points of the tune:

Close the chanter between every note, although you can use cuts on bottom D if you like.
Relax your hands and forearms as much as possible when you play. Feel the buzz on the tone holes.
Fingers should move from the big knuckle.
Every finger should move independently, for example, opening the middle finger (or middle and ring) for F# should not cause other fingers to tense up or move. Opening the top hand ring finger for A should not cause any other finger to tense up or move, with the little finger as an exception.
Hands/fingers shouldn’t tense up in reaction to operating the bellows.
Hands/fingers shouldn’t tense up in reaction to squeezing the bag, especially in the 2nd octave.

Vary the exercise as you wish (such as same note twice, then once, etc), keeping it at 50 bpm. When you can play it relaxed, try upping the metronome.

The idea is to learn what “relaxed” actually feels like, and commit it to muscle memory. Then slowly increase speed with the point of keeping that relaxed control. When you play this exercise, never play it faster than at which you have relaxed control. Sure, test yourself and go nuts with the speed on occassion, but always return to relaxed accuracy.

To get finger idependency, you may want to put down the pipes, rest your hand on something and slowly lift each finger, concentrating again on relaxation and eliminating sympathetic movement. Be aware that moving a finger doesn’t involve the bicep or shoulder, though you’ll likely notice, as I did, the tough fingers cause those areas to “sympathetically” tense up. Eliminate sympathetic tension.

These are the kinds of exercises that I’ve found Most Effective in eliminating years of bad habits that prevented me from playing better. I hope they’d help people avoid the same pitfalls.

17

One of the reasons I like Brian McNamara’s style of playing is that he takes his time and concentrates on the ornamentation (without overdoing it). This allows me to play along (when he’s playing a concert chanter).

It’s pointless trying to do this with Paddy Keenan, who, I’m convinced, doesn’t use drones but benefits from the prolongued sonic boom caused by the speed of his fingers when he plays reels.

18

This could go on for ever with individuals favourites!! :boggle: In London we had a standard wee book that was useful but its probably out o print now.Why don’t ye use Heather Clarkes Book or the Armagh Pipers Book which will give ye uniformity of tunes plus a natural progression of techniques.simple really. :wink:
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam

19

…aahhh, that’s the thing… if it is simple, then I have a rough time getting my head around it. :smiley:

20

Clarke’s tutor is excellent, but the Armagh Pipers Club tutor is really only a collection of tunes. There are no real lessons or exercises in it and it is quite poor on explaining piping technique.