Well, here’s something new and interesting my eBay Favourite searches have just turned up… Angus Fifes & eBay shop.
N.B. I have no connection with or commercial interest in this.
“Interesting” in particular regarding various discussions on C&F and Woodenflute over time about fifes, what precisely “fifes” are or to what instruments the term may be properly applied, and also the musical associations and uses of them. Whilst I had of course heard of the lambeg, I had no idea it had its own sort-of-separate (from the better known Ulster Marching Band flute band set) fifing tradition, let alone that that tradition uses C# instruments (semitone below a D piccolo, “in B” in orchestral terms). As far as the “fife” definition goes, the website for Angus Fifes linked above doesn’t give any technical info on the construction/design, so I don’t know if they have a cylindrical bore. The profile and the finger-hole size and spacing certainly looks classic true fife.
Flute player Rev Gary Hastings has published a book about such things…fifing and the tunes associated with it…a very rural Ulster pastime that is maybe gonna come back now that the shackles of politics and religion are loosening.
I have just picked up my Miller Browne flute which sits doing nothing at the side of my computer screen 24 hours a day. ('cept gather dust)
It is ‘in B’ (really C#?) just like the Angus fifes you link to, the difference being mine has five keys fitted. Although technically it is a fife, it is always refered to as a flute in Belfast. I used to play in the type of marching band you mention, the style of playing there was totally different from what was required from fifers who played along to the Lambeg drum.
The Ulster marching band use the five keyed fife, better known as an Orange flute (after the Orange Order).
Lambeg drumming is done mostly with the accompaniment of a keyless fife which is not known as an Orange flute.
On this page, scroll down and you will see a Fife of the kind used along with the Lambeg drum. http://www.causewaymusic.co.uk/cdftf.html
There is a very strong tradition of fifing in Antrim and County Down which died down over the yeras but has made a resurgence in more recent times. Here is a more detailed description of fifing Ulster Scots style. http://www.causewaymusic.co.uk/usfif.html
When playing along with the Lambeg drum, jigs and reels are played with modified timing. One tune I liked in particular was ‘Young men in their bloom’ which is a jig with 4/4 timing but with six notes to each bar. The first note of each bar is held for two beats and the other two beats played almost as normal.
Thanks for the info. Ceili-whistle-man - interesting, and I’ll follow the links when I get a chance…
Your post kinda points up the usual confusion over fifes and band-flutes, though - I’m virtually certain that your Miller Browne 5-key will have a simple system flute bore - cylindrical head and tapering conoid body - and as such it’s a band-flute commonly colloquially mis-termed a “fife”. The whole pitch thing is a can of worms too (what did you do with it, Cocusflute? It’s vanished again just when we need it!) as it can be hard to distinguish between High Pitch Bb and modern concert pitch B! Your Miller Browne, though will have (I’m pretty sure) a B or Bb six-finger note and diatonic scale. The Lambeg fifes have, as I understand it, a C# six-finger note and diatonic scale. The orchestral terminology names flutes a tone below how we think of them, so your “B” would be their “A”, not “C#”. (There’s been loads of threads/discussions of this confusing issue…)
EDIT - aaaah, I’ve just been reading the links you gave - seems the C# pitching is actually a residue of late Classical (late C18th-early C19th) orchestral pitch with A in the 430s Hz, roughly a semitone below modern pitch, so these are really Low Pitch D instruments (by contrast with the High Pitch Bb band flutes!!! )
Brilliant stuff, Boyd - thanks for finding and linking those - they certainly fit with my understanding of the terminology. Not sure how much of the lambegs I could take, though - a bit monotonous/unvaried compared with some drumming one hears - I’d have expected a basser sound from them too!
The Miller browne is pitched B flat and is truly in a as Jem Says.
Marching bands use keyed flutes, http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kGnyT4U8GeQ like this band withj parts including piccolo with keys aiding the chroamtic notes and fifes would be referred to as keyless or would usually have the e flat/d sharp involving cross fingering. Some bands just play the melody with no parts.
Their are a varied mixture of Marching bands in Ulster using fifes here is a clip of One using Antique Skeleton drums with a unique sound and using fifes playing mostly tunes done on the pipes http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OsNAmNF2wMs
As said their would be a fifer accompanying a lambeg drum.
For the Record i play in a marching band and get a bit annoyed when people refer to English made Flutes as Irish flutes as the vast majority of these flutes were made for bands in Ulster and Scotland!
Sorry folks, there seems to be some muddled explanations come through here, and they are all from me!!
Let me unmuddy the waters as it where!
I always thought my Miller Browne was in Bb, that was what I was told when I was a kid and first started playing. I have just gone to my keyboard, and yes the flute is in Bb…that is if the bell note gives me the key of the instrument in this case? So… all those marching band tunes that I played for all those years were on a Bb flat flute!
Again, I took it for granted as a kid when I was told that it was a flute that I was playing, so that was good enough for me. It wasn’t until many years later that someone (who was a bit more in the know than I was about flutes/fifes) told me that technically it was a keyed fife I was playing. He went on to describe why, ( I can’t remember what it was about them he said was different, all I was interested in was playing the damn thing!!)
Now I am at the point where I really don’t care if the Miller Browne is a flute or a fife !! Personally I go for the flute description because I have seen/heard fifes being played with the Lambeg drum and my flute sounds nothing like and looks nothing like those fifes. Jem, I have a dvd here that I will send you if you are interested, it gives a really good condensed history of the Lambeg drum and all the different styles and regional variations there are in the playing. Did you know that the drums play the tunes that the fifers are playing? They aren’t like rock drummers who find a beat that fits around a guitar riff or base line. The experienced listener waits for either the fifer or the drummer to call a tune, then they can listen to the song/tune being picked out rythmically on the drum.
The clip of the massed drums and fifes features a modified hornpipe, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7UzN8UvI5g the name of which escapes me, I should know it, it is about as common to fifing as ‘Drowsy Maggie’ is to a session!
I also agree with you Boyd, the condenser mic on a video camera just hasn’t got the dynamic range or ‘oomph’ in playback to give the Lambeg drum any feel. Standing next to one waiting to see if your own belly skin or the skin on the drum bursts first is just an awesome sensation!
You know those wa-ky books about ‘a hundred things you should do/see before you die’? Well I say put, ‘stand next to a ‘Slasher’ in full tilt’ some where on that list!
I’m away for a lie down!!!
Ceili-whistle-man - thanks for the dvd offer - I’ll pass, though I appreciate the offer. I’m interested, but not that interested… I can imagine what you mean about the effect of lambegs live, and the stuff about how they play the tunes is interesting - I guess it’s like many things in music, you have to learn how to listen to it or it’s not immediately apparent. When I said about other drumming styles, I wasn’t thinking of rock drum kits (don’t listen much to that kind of thing, nor find it interesting), but rather of African drumming (polyrhythmic), or Samba, or Indian tabla and other kinds of Indian drumming I’ve come across, or even the developed military type drumming of army-style drum corps or Scottish pipe bands. The massed lambegs in Boyd’s linked clip may have been playing the tune, but they were all playing the same thing (in not stunningly good ensemble) and I found it lost my attention quite quickly as there were no contrasting parts, development, variations or cross rhythms etc. If that’s not part of the style, fair enough, and without experiencing rather more of it and preferably live, I’m not dismissing it - but those were my impressions based on that limited exposure.
Thanks, all, for the very interesting thread. I’m getting more and more taken by the sound of the fife, whether it’s these Ulster players, or Skip Healy, or Otha Turner (http://www.othaturner.com/).
Sorry, I posted the first clip out of divilment…its not a good example as its actually 4 different Drum & Fife bands. .. plus a few juniors.. so way too many…but you get an idea of the hairblasting volume…
The 2nd clip maybe is a better example…2 drums and 3 fifes…very traditional, and much more together.
I have seen a better example somewhere, but I’m darned if I can find it now.
Great thread! On this side of the Pond we call them Fife and Drum Corps and/or Fife, Drum and Bugle Corps. There sometimes was a Glochenspiel added. My first taste of playing music was in a Boy Scout Fife, Drum and Bugle Corps (with a Gloch.). Although we also played Bb instruments the sound was somewhat different. I currently play keyless simple system flute using many of the fife tunes from the 1800’s and early 1900’s. The fife is not a parlor instrument but the tunes are identical to Irish music: jigs, hornpipes, marches, et al.
I’d like Skip Healy to jump in here and provide a sample of his playing. He is my idol for fife playing - and he makes great ones as well. Well, until he chimes in, go here http://www.skiphealy.com/music/cd/cd_purgatory_chasm.htm and make a selection.
Fantastic thread. Full of information. My brain feels stuffed with fifey goodness. I loved the YouTube video. Glad I dropped by the forum after such a long time away.
You really want to read this on the subject, nice book which steers clear of the controversies of sectarian connections without avoiding the issue. Very informative.
I bought one of those Miller Browne yokes in Dublin in 1979. Has been sitting in a vase ever since. Will be happy to sell.
The only flute that can really stur up several negitive & violent emotions when 20 drunken bigots come swaggering down your street pedaling there sectarian hatraid all in the name of religous liberty!
)
!! Personally I go for the flute description because I have seen/heard fifes being played with the Lambeg drum and my flute sounds nothing like and looks nothing like those fifes.