A few other threads have made me feel like posting this topic.
Cmon then…
What would the sages here say are the main differences between a flute player who owns a set of uilleann pipes…and a real uilleann piper?
Boyd
And what’s an uilleann piper with a flute? Certainly not a real flute player, eh?
I’m a flute player with a half set! 
An uilleann piper without an embouchure
or
A flute player without an armpiture
djm
(I knew I could fit that in somewhere)
Um…playing them?
…as pipes, and not as a flute, that is, of course. Surely you’re not suggesting, boyd, that the two must always be mutually exclusive, i.e., you can’t be one AND the other…?
Um…playing them?
…as pipes, and not as a flute, that is, of course. Surely you’re not suggesting, boyd, that the two must always be mutually exclusive, i.e., you can’t be one AND the other…?
Tut tut, you should know I’d not be saying that!
I was hoping the thread would get more specific to technique differences.
The technique used to play a flute just sounds wrong when applied to uilleann pipes. And as a piper who bought a flute, I’d say its prob true the other way round too…I prob sound fekkin woeful in the ears of a non-piping fluteplayer…just as I myself find that hearing fluteplaying being done with a chanter grates on the ear.
Maybe I was being too obscure with this thread…I should just post a few opinions on some of the other threads and “do a Peter” as they say…well, as they used to say
(Hi Peter, if you’re lurking, enjoy WW!!)
There are so many personal tastes and styles of playing both instruments that it would be hard to say which style does or does not translate to the other instrument. For example, I love listening to Matt Molloy, yet others find his flute style “too pipey”. I dislike legato piping, but I’m sure it would suit some people’s tastes for being closer to some flute styles.
djm
The fundamental difference between pipes and flutes is that the chanter air flow can be stopped between notes.
It is a feature which makes the instrument what it is…and hard for a flute player to mimic.
Couldn’t you use this to stop the air between notes, thereby simulating the closed chanter?
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/images/ency/fullsize/8686.jpg
(sorry, couldn’t resist…)
I think I know what Boyd is talking about. I’ve heard David Power tell stories about Tommy Kearney grumbling about “flute playing” on the pipes: ie playing that doesn’t use the pipes to their full potential. Not to nock the flute here, there are certainly things you can do on the flute that you can’t on the pipes, but it seems like alot of open style players -particularly (I am ashamed to admit) those in my generation- don’t take advantage of the vast options the pipes offer in terms of phrasing and ornamentation. Instead these players approach the chanter as if it were a whistle or flute, playing in that fluttery open way, which I think is a terrible waste of potential. This commentary is, however, not directed at the older open style players; the sound of players such as Johnny Doran is something else altogether. It just seems to me as though alot of players, and predominantly young ones, are playing in a manner that doesn’t use the pipes to their complete potential, thus the distinction of “flute playing.”
hya Boyd..a couple o my students came across to me as very accomplished fluteplayers and picked up the pipes very quickly I have a 3rd one doing the same.Trouble is they being young and foolish didnae want to listen to me (maybe cos I’m old and boring)
They were more interested in learning tunes.So this they did even going aff to get some lessons frae another piper who is frae the GHB tradition but has since learned how to play tunes on the UPs…Anyways after they learned a whole swathe of tunes they played for me and I told them all I could hear was fluteplaying.
They were not fully utilising the tricks of pipering.
I don’t mean either tight or open playing either.DJM note I think ye will find that Leo Rowesome was mainly legato in his style but could certainly introduce staccato when he wished.
I think it is a case of knowing the music first and foremost and what ye are supposed to be playing so that brings in a certain style in itself.
Hornpipes versus Jigs et al..that did not present a problem so much for the youngsters as they already had it but there was a woeful lack of phrasing which they wouldnae have a problem with on the flute coz that is normally when they breathe.
Ornaments were lacking or should I say sacrificed for the modern "must speed everything up trend"or if they were introduced did nothing for the music but was done more for the virtuoso effect.
I think the crunch will come when they start on the regulators .Ye see its about a whole instrument.Everything harmonising with the drones.
Ye said so yersel about pausing(stopping)and(nipping) these are two of the most important ornaments and of the least used
Now as I said they are young and they have time to develope(I hope) and I keep telling them after they have tried to impress me with their latest offering that it still sounds like a flute …give me some piping please.And I take them back to basics which kinda knocks their wee egos but that’s how I am .
At the other end of the extreme I hear players of many years standing whacking awa at all manner of ornaments to the total detriment of the tune and I think that is as bad as the novice and disrespectful to the music.Some o these play wi bands 
The other evening I had the pleasure of playing a few tunes with Pat McNulty. At one point in the evening I closed my eyes and the music I heard frae Pat was pure Leo Rowesome it was as if I had been transported in time back to the days when ye could hear Irish Piping as it was meant to be heard.
With a lot of pipers today I close my eyes coz I am nodding aff to sleep. 
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam
Yeah, boyd, I knew better. I just couldn’t resist an “educational moment”. 
Molloy’s playing is still that of a flute, to me, no matter what elements he’s accused of incorporating. “Too pipey”? I dunno. Perhaps piperish note progressions, too…I have to admit to not listening so very closely to him. I admit to liking his playing, but any “piperliness” has nothing to do with that on my part. He’s just a killa playa to me. Anyway, there are fluters who so far as I know never touched a bellows whose playing I don’t care for at all, and others whom I practically worship. I know of at least a couple of very commendable pipers - understatement - who play flute (“a bit”, said one) and knocked my socks off as pipers and fluters, and there was no confusing the instruments playing-wise at all. As to flute being incapable of staccato playing, I beg to differ: just tongue or throat every goldurned freakin’ note. Blech.
When putting on my piping hat, I make a point of working at closed fingering (and after all, who can resist the charm of the pipptypoppitypip?), but not exclusively. I think that the whole range of possibilities available to the instrument should be taken advantage of, but that’s my personal taste. Closed-only fingering is very, very impressive, to be sure, but for me there’s a further expressive element lost by doing only that, all the time.
Although I am a flute player, too, I don’t care for mainly legato, openish piping. Apples and oranges, to me.
I think both Uilliam and Nano have proved my point for me: its a matter of personal taste what the perfomer chooses to do with the instrument, and a matter of personal taste what any particular listener will accept.
I have no intention of putting either piper down, nor question their capabilities, but they are neither of them pipers I would choose to listen to. Its just a matter of personal preference.
The Flute Forum on this very board was where I ran into this complaint when I stated my preference for Molloy’s flute playing above others. I was surprised to hear this opinion stated by several of the fluters there. But Liam O’Flynn has several times noted that Molloy is one of those musicians that can find the piping part of the music in those special places they exist in a tune, so I don’t think it is necessarily an unfair comment on Molloy’s style of playing, either.
All I know is, I like it.
djm
Closed or open, I humbly agree with all of this.
That seems odd as I thought that if ye believed your own point then ye wouldnae need us to prove it to ye :boggle:I also don’t think I have endorsed or proven your statement re flutes and open playing as the two are not necessarily the same.Indeed if ye would only take the time to listen to Rowesome or Mc Nulty then ye would know exactly what I am talking about.I am in fact saying quite the opposite (I think) to yersel.When I say that ye cannot transfer flute style to the pipes and call it piping.I think if ye equate legato style with flutes then ye are missing the point of piping altogether.
Slán Agat
Uilliam
A very nice fella recently told me I was a “pippity pip” piper and said he was more traveller/Paddy Keenan style…but I’d say Paddy Keenan can pippity pip with the best of them when he choses to do so.
I think there are definite techniques for the flute, and some very different techniques for the pipes…the net effect is that they will/should/must inevitably sound different…and the pipes definitely don’t sound right when played like a flute!!!
I am not favouring flute-like playing on pipes at all (that’s a long stretch of misinterpretation, even for you). I am simply saying that we all have our own tastes and ideas of what sounds good, including legato pipers who could play tight if they chose to, but don’t, and tight(ish) flute players who could play open, but don’t, and those who love to listen to them - or not.
djm
But Uilliam types with an accent which lends even more “authoritah”.
This goes well beyond closed or open piping. There are whole sets of staccato techniques, tonal coloring and vibrato, popping and swelling notes which are used to highlight salient points of the melody. Combining this with a whole “sense” of approach to playing to the pipes’ strengths is what makes up the complete piper.
For those with NPU accounts, take a look-and-listen to Neillidh Mulligan playing the Salamanca, et al. There’s a full range of technique there. It’s gorgeous playing.
As a novice piper who has a to struggle just to get the tune in my head and get it back out in a recognizable form, the thing that keeps me practicing and trying to progress is the wide range of techniques and sounds that are possible with the pipes. The fact that I can change how I play some little part of a tune I have known for 3 or 4 years and make that part sound like when so and so plays it keeps me moving.
I learn tunes on the whistle and transfer them over to the pipes, so I start playing the tune like I do on the whistle and gradually add the things that make the tune more “pipey”. I’d love to have them sound pipey from the start, but since I’m on the slow end of the musical spectrum I guess I’ll just keep chugging along.
John