I’ve been listening to my newly-acquired double CD of Willie Clancy and I can’t stop playing it. I’ve always been a Clancy fan, more than I have an Ennis fan though they both, along with Reck, are my all-time inspirations.
Here’s my own personal musings on what I’ve been listening to as an isolated antipodean piper of 19 years -
I like the round ‘woody’ sound of his Maloney and Egan B chanters. If that’s only in the quality of the recording, well, then real life chanters should sound this way too.
I like the way he plays his B chanters like he plays a concert chanter. What was that about the wide finger spacing and the necessity of the ‘less-is-more’ approach to flat set piping? Willie Clancy sure new how to work those B sticks.
I love the way he packs in the ‘technique’ even if he does fluff some notes here and there, leaving you hitting the replay button over and over again to pick up on little gems that one missed the previous time.
I think of comments once made (somewhere I read, here perhaps) that the standard of piping has improved greatly in the last decade or so. I’d say, the piping of Clancy remains unsurpassed.
The overall technical standard of piping (or perhaps the overall standard of piping technique) has improved significantly in recent years. But there is more to being a good piper, or a good musician for that matter, than just technique.
With enough practice, anyone can learn piping technique (how to play a tight triplet, double roll, back stitching, etc.). But it’s harder to learn how to play the pipes well. That takes technical ability (absolutely) but also a good ear, a sense for what sounds good, not to mention respect for the music.
Clancy certainly had good technique but more importantly he also had an excellent sense for how to use that technique to bring out the best in the tunes he played.
However, none of this explains why I can no longer listen to Willie Clancy while I’m driving. Seriously, I’m usually a very zen driver but when I’m listening to a Clancy CD, I get very impatient - why is that?
Funny, the same happens to me. I tend to drive faster than normal. I’d say it’s the way he swings ! And perhaps some uncertainty in his rhythm too from time to time…
Perhaps it’s a subconscious desire to suddenly want to get home to your pipes ASAP to try out something your brain picked up on subliminally in bar 13 of track 17.
I don’t think there’s an Egan on that recording. Most of the B-ish tracks are on the Maloney, and I believe the other B-ish chanter is the Coyne which Seamus O’Rochain now plays. The Coyne doesn’t have terribly wide tonehole spacing - not sure about the Maloney.[edit: this was wrong, liner notes do say that 8 through 10 on disc 2 are ‘almost certainly’ an Egan]
Gorgeous recording though - it’s great to have these recordings available. Essential listening! Thanks Peter and everyone else who made it happen!
I’m not sure..you’d have to compare today’s pipers with all the master and gentlemen pipers in history (if you have access to their playing) and make a definitive comparison. As much as I try to appreciate today’s pipers, and there are one or two who I could listen to all day, I am continually drawn back in time.
However, I would suggest that piping technique, or the application of technique has been refined in the past 15 - 20 years. But refined is not always a good thing. We all know the superficial and mass appeal of ‘refined’ foods, and we are now aware of their longer-term effects on the colon.
I was always told he was playing the Coyne C he had as his first flat set on that tape. Hope they fixed the pitch, some of that is very obviously running too fast.
When I first heard him Willie sounded to my very much like a blues musician. Have always wondered if anyone’s investigated any connection historically between blues and “nyahhh.”
Willie and his peers put plenty of heart into what they played/sung, which is an obvious standard. If your music doesn’t have its heart, it’s heartless by definition, right?
I had to tune up a semi tone to Eb to play along with some of it the other day. As regards piping today having a higher standard! I dont think so. Technically perhaps, but Music is so much more than superficial technique.
Its a spectacular album , its been on since I got it! The Man!
Interesting you say that…Paragraph 4 of pg 10 of the liner notes mentions the “‘piper’s C and the piper’s F’ being in the same position on the scale, 3rd and 7th, as the ‘blue note’ of early jazz and blues…”, which Clancy and “Good pipers in the past made very effective use of”
Early in my piping career I picked up a book, Air Columns and Toneholes, which has an interesting chart of scales; aside from ET and JT (equal and just temperament) it showed various experimental scales like Partch’s, 51 tones or whatever to the octave; also “blues.” Whereas the pitches of other scales were represented by dots on a line the “blues notes” were shown as little clouds of pitch. I could dig, having been bending notes on guitars for about 10 years at that stage. Let me tell you, bending a note on a chanter is a lot easier, too.
Another thing I liked a lot about the pipes was the great variety in sound, not just the pitch but the tone itself. About the only other instrument with such a lack of uniformity in the sound would be the electric guitar, I’d say. The crustiest old fiddle might be a world away from Issac Stern’s Strad, but even that difference is less than Taylor vs Coyne vs Harrington vs Rowsome, not just chanters but drones and regs of course. That’s worlds, plural form. Other instruments are positively machine stamped in comparison.
You can hear samples from the 2CD at The Rolling Wave, including the very earliest, from 1947, where Willie was apparently a dutiful student of Rowsome’s, with attendant bonk bonk bonk.
Actually they play Rakish Paddy from the Paddy Hill tape. They’ve slowed it down to where he’s in Bb.
I’ve ordered the 2CD but it hasn’t arrived as of yet. They’ve done great things with the sound from what I’m hearing. The 1972 material in particular I’ve only from a 4th generation Bill Ochs gave me years ago, his original was eaten by the machine from overuse. Back in the days of IRTRAD-L Bill was very keen on turning that tape into a commercial release, great that they’ve finally been able to pull that off to an extent.
I’ve some recordings of Liam O’Flynn from 1964 where he’s doing the constant comping (sp?); have also heard of some very early tapes of Paddy Keenan where he too is a bonk-a-phile, apparently under orders from his Da, a solid Leo fan. It seems to be a phase you go through. It’s excellent practice; if you can keep that up you can regulate anything you please.
even if he does fluff some notes here and there, leaving you hitting the replay button over and over again to pick up on little gems that one missed the previous time.
Perhaps it’s a subconscious desire to suddenly want to get home to your pipes ASAP to try out something your brain picked up on subliminally in bar 13 of track 17.