Thanks for all the suggestions, tunes, techniques and other stuff.
It has definitely brought out some new idea and awoken some forgotten ones. I will be collating a list of tunes (titles only at this stage) and the more obvious technical opportunities they offer, mainly for discussion amongst teachers here in Manchester. But if anyone would like a copy when it’s done pm me, it could be a few weeks off being finished.
Suggestions from here will be put together with those from Manchester students and also from our 5 excellent and committed teachers.
From all this, Manchester teachers will try to create a gap free progression route through piping technique, allowing time for repertoire to increase, finger strength and coordination to improve, synapses to form and musicianship to happen.
This we hope will be better than any book, video or DVD.
Of course it will take years But we have to start somewhere.
I’ll gladly take you up on it, and return the favor, if ever I should find myself Manchester way… Perhaps we’ll have to buy a few for Mr. Walker too. Ben? You up for a few pints?
PJ..ye have missed the point completely…the Armagh Pipers Club Book was produced for…yep The Armagh Pipers Club and was used as an aid by the tutors for the pupils at the club.Much Like we had our own in London and presumably what Manchester is looking for A mere collection o tunes is of no use unless there is something to learn from them.
Slán Agat
Uilliam
Got to disagree with you here David (or your fiddle/mandolin player to be precise)- IMHO this is where a lot of people have trouble - they take a tune and practise it over and over again which doesn’t really improve technique specifically. I have found it a lot more useful to pick out sections of the tunes (no more than 1 or 2 bars) that you want to concentrate on (either because they are hard and are tripping you up or because you are working on ‘technique’ at that point) and practise just those 1 or 2 bars over and over and over again until you are satisfied that you can play them well before putting them back into the tune and picking the next 1 or 2 bars that you want to work on and doing it all over again.
Yes…I was actually intending to kind of disagree with him myself, which I think I expressed to some degree in the rest of my post. Hence my concern that pipers who focus on learning tunes and more tunes and then go to tionol or summer school to learn more tunes are in danger of stagnating. They may have an impressive repertoir, but their technique is less so.
Then I think we need to define technique as something more than just an ability to play the 2nd octave of hold a hard D.
My point is that you can ask people’s opinions of what tune is good for a technique and eventually, if enough people respond, you’ll find that every tune in the Irish Music world has been offered as a good tune for something.
That’s why it’s important to learn a technique, not necessarily in isolation from a tune, and you obviously have a particular tune for a particular technique, just like I use(d) Lark in the Morning to practice rolls - but at the same time, why not use Lark in the Morning to practice staccatto - just make all your notes staccatto?
It’s all relative.
No tune is any more better suited for certain types of technique (to offer my opinion to Joseph’s question) than any other tune. Do with a tune what you like, but to do so, you need the technique first. That will determine whether what you like to do with a tune will render it sounding like a rusty car horn, or skilled, well-executed music.
I think much of what tells us that a particular tune is suited to a particular technique is that someone has recorded it previously using well-executed bippity-bips or whatever, and so we think - ‘that’s a good tune for practicing bippity-bips’. Nothing wrong with that, but as I say - it all relative.
And I agree with you on the idea of taking a small section and practicing it first. It’s basically an essential habit to get into.
I think it can be very useful to approach a tune from different angles, let different styles loose at it. for example play the fermoy lasses the Tommy Reck way, the Liam Flynn way and then shred it open playing it the Doran way with off the knee stuff multiple rolling etc. Some tunes are very versatile and can stand very different treatments which adds greatly to your insight in both the tune and the variety of sounds and techniques available to you, which in turn enables you to carry that over to other tunes putting you on the road towards developing your own style.
That’s fine. Hence no objection to offering a tune as a good tune to practice a technique, such as Frahers.
I wonder if there is a difference in the (subconscious) learning process between the young Irish person who is born into a musical family, who hears music played before they can even talk such that by the time they are ready to take up the whistle or the pipes, they have an inate feeling for the music so much so that they can focus on learning a technique and almost immediately be able to apply it to a tune, compared to -
the rest of us, many of whom start learning the pipes before we even know much about Irish music, let alone have spent any considerable time listening to it first. I guess I was fortunate in that owing to not being able to afford a set of pipes I spent a good 5 years just listening and absorbing the piping of O’Flynn, listening to what he was doing, not necessarily understanding how he did it, so that by the time I got my set, I had a good idea of what things I wanted to be able to do, before even learning a tune - I wanted to be able to do those pippity-pip things he did in such and such a tune. “AAAAADDRIAAANNNNNN…how does he do thiiiiiiss???”
This is probably a question of mechanics (physiological) rather than technique.
Exactly, but that is the value of learning tunes, versus technique/ornaments, which seems to be the divide in this discussion. Both are important IMHO, and one should not be practised more, or to the exclusion of, the other.
Peter brings up an excellent point re. playing the same tune in multiple styles. If anyone were to come out with a new tutor, this is what I’d be looking for - someone who can tell me how so and so achieved an effect in some tune or other. I can hear things happening but don’t necessarily know how they were done. Sometimes I don’t notice things being done, but a more experienced piper will clue into them and think they are most significant.
A good example of this that was brought up on this board a while ago: Séamus Ennis lifting the chanter off the knee to play the F# roll at the end of each of the beginning phrases in the A part of the Dublin Reel. Its obvious to me now, but someone had to bring it out into the light of day for me to understand what I was hearing.
I would love to see an advanced player(s) come out with an analysis of various players’ styles. This has been done for Patsy Touhey and Willy Clancy, and (it is rumoured, though I am beginning to have doubts) soon for Séamus Ennis. But what about Liam O’Flynn and Johnny Doran and Tommy Reck and and and? For those of us far removed from the piping scene in Ireland, and who may not have access to pipers with the ability to do such an analysis, it would be a great aid in our learning to have someone explain what is being done to achieve some of these piping effects.
Don’t bring that up every time. Martin hayes said on television last weekend in a programme looking at the need to be in ireland to play this music: ‘we’re all in the business of trying to find out what this music is about..’ . It doesn’t matter where you are you have ears and fingers figure out what you’re hearing it’s up to you to discover what your chanter is about and what’s in it. I figured out a couple of nice sounds last week that Clancy used in a Doran sort of style, nobody told me, you go looking and find out useful things. It’s part of the learning process.
I understand that, Peter. The more experienced one becomes on any instrument, the better trained one’s ear becomes, and the better prepared one is to discover new things. BUT I WANT IT NOW!!!
I have seen this with guitar. There are so many excellent books now available that teach young guitarists all the tricks and techniques of the masters of various styles that it is scary what some youngsters can pull off with seemingly little effort. But because they didn’t discover these techniques for themselves, they have little appreciation for the significance of what they are playing.
I can also appreciate that there might be a little jeolousy on the part of more experienced players who have worked things out for themselves over a long period of time, and who do not want to see what took them so long to figure out openly explained for slobs like me to learn with little or no effort.
I don’t mind explaining things but you’re running your ‘little lost piper in the middle of nowhere’ matra a bit often. By the end of the day you have to put in the work and it’s a matter of building up things gradually, you can’t pull it off in one go.
I am teaching someone via e-mail, for the fun of it I did the first tune I recorded for him with all the bells and whistles, explaining later about half the things possible. That gave him a good fright. Seriously though, it’s a matter of adding layers, if only to keep your tunes fresh and new, but you have to add each layer when you’re ready. You play your tune for a while and then you hear someone do something that catches your ear, you add that there and then, after a while you find there are still more things you’re not doing and you get those in. Never really ends but it’s a gradual, organic process. Some tunes you learn add something you can employ in other tunes, they will take you a step further. It’s what this thread is about : tunes that open your eyes to something.
In that case, I learn something from just about every new tune I learn, and I learn something from just about every piping recording I listen to. I only wish I could play half of what I hear. :roll:
The first jig that I ever learned was Bimid ag ol. This was a whistle class in 1977. When I started playing the pipes I made it a part of my repertoire. Last Friday, when everyone in the house had gone out, I went through the tune again, this time listening to the Willie Clancy playing it on the drones and chanter LP.
The differences between our versions were very apparent. I can play the tune backwards and with most variations known to man but the beauty of the tune had been lost (maybe through familiarity). Willie’s playing was extremely tasteful with the minimum of ornamentation and variation. Yet what he did put in was brilliant.
Its good to revisit tunes especially since I have the masters playing them. Perhaps its what you leave out that makes a tune.
This is probably a question of mechanics (physiological) rather than technique.
I view it along the lines that all technique boils down to mechanics. Establishing good mechanics at the most basic level is the foundation for more complicated technique. If someone has no control playing slow and simple, they won’t have more control playing fast and complicated.
I say all this in light of my own experiences. For me, the contents of my previous post was hard-won information.
I’ve found Miss McLeod’s a handy teaching tune, especialy with mixed ability groups, as it can be played a number of ways depending on the ammount of ornimentation used - rolls and triplets can be introduced gradualy as can the idea of variation.
Still use the first part as an excersise when practising to loosen up the top end triplets.
But we have to start somewhere.
A mere collection o tunes is of no use unless there is something to learn from them.