Technique question....rolls, staccato, etc.

[Jonathan]

Hi
Sorry if this has been covered here before, but I couldn't find it. When playing rolls on notes like F#, A, or C, is it most common for the tap to be silence as opposed to an actual grace note? Or do you play the main note with some sort of open fingering so that an actual grace note sounds on the tap? Also in the H. Clarke tutor, I believe it said that when playing staccato notes, to just lift on finger. Does this also apply to C (when the note is supposed to be C nat but lifting one finger would make it come out C#) ?? I assume not. Thanks in advance.

[djm]

A stacatto note is still a stacatto note, whether it needs more than one finger to play that note or not (e.g. Cnat). It needs to clearly jump out from a brief moment of silence. Same for your rolls - a tight, stacatto roll needs to completely close off the sound for the briefest moment to make the notes jump out.

djm

[Harry]

In the case of a triplet that a piper wanted to sound 'tight' generally pipers play a C sharp (BCD, ACD, DCB, DCA,BCB,ACA etc..). Often a C natural is changed to the sharp note to make a tightness in the unadorned course of the melody such as in the playing of Willie Clancy where he used it to great stylistic effect. Since these notes are short and snappy the fact that it is possibly not the 'right' note (as in a tune in G major) doesn't stand out so much or, in my opinion, lends a nice 'oddness' in places.

On the roll question you will find different pipers do different things. I can tell you what I do if it's of any use.

On the B roll I tap on the A with the next hole down open.
On the A roll I tap on the G with the two top fingers of the bottom hand open (sometimes off the knee).

On the G I tap on the D (rolling the note with top 2 fingers of bottom hand) off the knee.

On the F sharp I tap a D with the 2 middle fingers of the bottom hand off the knee (just the uppermost of these 2 fingers in the 2nd octave).

On the E I either roll it on the knee tapping just the uppermost of the 2 bottom holes, or off the knee doing the same thing but with the little finger left down.

Regards,

Harry.

[eric_smith]

The main feature of staccato notes is that the note length is cut in half and followed by silence for the rest of it, but this is usually only really identifiable in staccato crotchets. Usually, staccato notes are found in quavers, particularly triplets. In order to pull off this clipping of the note value on quavers, you really have to resort to one finger. However, the E really needs two fingers, even in staccato quavers. Also, you may find that you can pop the B out with two fingers. If not, resort to one finger in the triplet. And as pointed out, the staccato C quaver is always the C#.

Regarding rolls, you should be aware that this unfortunate term applies to a variety of different techniques and the same notation applied for all of them, usually the half-moon symbol introduced, I believe, by Breandan Breathnach as a short-hand for ornamentation on crotchets and dotted crotchets. This symbol is actually unnecessary. You rarely have an unadorned crotchet or dotted crotchet in Irish Dance Music.

Denis Brooks, in his "Irish Union Pipes", has the most complete description of how these two note values are ornamented. Without a doubt the most complete catalog of these ornaments in context is Pat Mitchell's "The Piping of Patsy Touhey". followed by "The Dance Music of Willie Clancy".

What you probably know as a "short" roll, or crotchet roll, typically has two approaches. Mr. Brooks calls one the "open" roll and is the crotchet split into two EQUAL parts, separated by a tap (or pat), with the first note graced with a cut. This is probably what is in Heather Clarke's tutorial. The dotted crotchet roll is the same idea with the dotted crotchet split into THREE EQUAL parts, separating the first two with the cut, and the second from the third with the tap (pat).

Mr. Brooks describes the second approach as a "tight" roll. This is basically the crotchet, but instead of just gracing it with a cut, you grace it with a QUICK cut-note-tap. The crotchet has almost its full value. There isn't really a dotted crotchet equivalent of this.

The cutting of the crotchets depends on how much attack you want. The higher the grace note, the more bite you get. I personally think you can get plenty of bite with the note directly above, provided it's short and precise enough. Some pipers, Jerry O'Sullivan for instance, tend to cut all of the upper hand notes with the back D. There is also a common tendency to cut the lower hand notes with the A. Just be aware that there is no hard and fast rule.

The taps (pats) are not really a lower version of the cut. The cut is actually the Acciaccatura of "other" music, and is followed by a note of almost its full value. The tap is really a Lower Mordent, the splitting of the note value in two by a lower note (or silence). It always sounds like two notes (not three including the grace note).

There is a lot of variation in how pipers will do these taps, and is often chanter dependent because some notes won't be in tune on particular chanters. Or you may be trying for a particular sound

E tap - tap the bottom two holes with both fingers of the lower hand AT THE SAME TIME with the chanter on the knee.

F tap - the trouble is you have one finger up for the F natural. Now what? One solution is when you're going to 'tap' the F to keep the bottom three fingers off the chanter, and tap all those fingers down over the holes (or somewhat over half the holes to prevent closing them off).

Another approach when you have the single F finger up is to tap it down over half the hole.

Or do this while raising the chanter off the leg slightly just as you tap (hard to pull off for the beginner).

Or raise the pinkie off the bottom hole to play the F and tap.

You get the idea. You'll have to find what works for you and your chanter.

A tap - tap the third finger down over half the G hole. You can also "vent" it by raising fingers off the G and F holes (see Harry's version above). With the tight roll described above, this would be too slow, I would think.

B tap - tap the second and third fingers down together. Note the difference between this and Harry's approach. The method given here yields "whumpier" results.

Otherwise, Harry has given other lines of attack.

You are trying to be in tune, but also aiming for a certain degree of bite in the cuts, and whumpiness in the taps.

Eric

[j dasinger]

Good advice from Harry. Also remember that there isn't really a "rule" as far as rolls go. Your best bet is to try it both ways (silence and note) and see which works best for the tune you are playing, or which sounds better to your ear. I do almost everything exactly opposite from Harry, but I don't think my playing suffers for it. Remember, if it sounds good, it is good.
James

[Harry]

Another thing worth keeping in mind is that the notation of all aspects of piping technique can be misleading (and it is invariably inadequate in portraying what is actually going on...even more maybe than in other music given the levels of articulation present). In the case of tight triplets you will see BCB, GFE, ACA etc. triplets written out in their groupings of 3 with dots over the top. This implies that the same stacatto effect is being used to make these notes. This is not the case. Generally one of the notes is much shorter and 'popier' than the other two (the plosive note as Jakie Small described it in the P Touhey work) and often the remaining two notes are of different lengths.(eg. often a GFE triplet in the second octave will have the dotted, plosive G to start, a tight or tightish F to follow, and a relatively long and relaxed E to lead to the next note...)

Messrs Small and Mitchell made what I think was a useful distinction between the plosive (dotted note) and a relatively 'calm' note articulated with a chanter stoppage (they use a comma symbol). There is also the matter of release of a built up pressure that gives certain notes that very distinctive dotted tightness (that lends attack to a well played triplet). Most tight triplets and movements are not at all as tight as the written note might have us believe.

This is a fairly minute level of detail, but I find explaining it useful to people who are beating themselves up trying to play tight as hell where they could do what they want quicker by considering where the focus of the tightness should be rather than trying to 'pip' out every note in a so-called tight movement. The tendancy is to rush it if you are thinking too uniformly 'tight'... tight uniforms on the other hand

Regards,

Harry.

[eric_smith]

What you probably know as a "short" roll, or crotchet roll, typically has two approaches. Mr. Brooks calls one the "open" roll and is the crotchet split into two EQUAL parts, separated by a tap (or pat), with the first note graced with a cut. <snip>

Mr. Brooks describes the second approach as a "tight" roll. This is basically the crotchet, but instead of just gracing it with a cut, you grace it with a QUICK cut-note-tap. The crotchet has almost its full value. There isn't really a dotted crotchet equivalent of this.

After I wrote this, I started wondering how this distinction was dealt with in The Piping of Patsy Touhey. To my surprise, it isn't.

I thought I'd dig a little deeper, so I found a tune where Mr. Tuohey does it both ways, such as a crotchet G roll in The Shaskeen. Using Messrs. Mitchell and Small (M&S) handy Finding Aid (p32) I located their example of the G roll from Table 5:

G: 1:10.1

This is the first bar in The Shaskeen. They fade in here, so I substituted bar 5. Although I could clearly hear how this was being played, I cut out the bar in SoundEdit and slowed it down to 75% to make sure.

M&S use the half-moon shorthand for the roll, but on pg 21 they give the expanded version, namely | {AGF}G2 |

So then I cut out and slowed down bar 8, where the G roll is again used, but it stands on its own, so to speak.

What I found was that the M&S G roll notation is misleading. Touhey, to my ears (and eyes, since I can see the waveform), gives pretty much equal weight to the G's, (the "open" crotchet roll of Mr. Brooks), although in bar 8, it's a bit closer to what M&S write down with the first G part of the gracing (Mr. Brook's "tight" crotchet roll).

If you are having trouble following along (and care), here is some abc for 3 bars that can be plunked into the ABC Convert-A-Matic on www.concertina.net

X:1
T:Shaskeen
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:Gmaj
|DG {AGF}G2 A Bc | BG{d}AF {AGF}G2 (3AGF | DG {A}G{F}G A Bc |


The 1st bar is Touhey's bar 1, the 2nd is his bar 8, both using M&S's expanded roll notation. The last bar is my rewrite of bar 1 showing what I think Touhey is actually playing (and what any piper would play for this), bearing in mind that he dwells on the first G a bit.

I think Liam O'Flynn is cleanly illustrates the distinction in his playing, and if memory serves, the third part of his Planxty recording of Humours of Ballyloughlin is a string of "tight" crotchet rolls in the second octave.

Leo Rowsome, in his tutor of 1936, describes the roll as a "combination of the Acciaccatura and Triplet". This is described by Mr. Brooks as the "old" roll. Whatever Touhey plays in bar 1, it is definitely not this.

Mr. Rowsome also describes the "turn" as consisting of "the note...,with those above and below in following order (gives illustration)". This is defintely not what Touhey plays in bar 8, as Rowsome gives each note equal weight.

Interestingly, Tadhg Crowley of Cork also published a tutor for the Uillean Pipes in 1936. He doesn't mention a "turn" or a "roll", but he does have "doublings" and "triplings". His triplings are very close to what we normally hear played as "rolls", with equal weight on the dotted crotchet roll note.

I just noticed that in DMWC (p19), the crotchet roll short hand is expanded as Mr. Brook's tight roll. and the expanded dotted crotchet roll notation is yet another slight variation on the open roll and is similar to Crowley's triplings.

I have yet to listen to Rowsome's (or Denis Delaney, Barney Delaney, etc) recordings to see how he actually plays any of this stuff and I wonder if regional differences have something to do with the various approaches to ornamenting crotchets and dotted crotchets.

I know this is ridiculously confusing, but I think the source of the trouble is the attempt to provide a common way of notating ornamentation for all instruments in Irish Traditional Music (such as in CRE), and this has been picked up in the modern tutors and tune collection. Easy to read, but it's like drawing a stick figure and calling it a portrait. It is beyond sad that Francis O'Neill chose this approach as well in earlier days. His was the last opportunity to record exhaustively the playing nuance of traditional musicians before the advent of radio and recordings.

[djm]

Eric, thanks for looking into this in detail. You ask if these differences are due to regional styles. I asked the same question here previously and it was suggested that the differences are more to do with the individual player, as well as on the particular recording, as pipers seldom played things the same way twice. That suggests to me that it would require note for note transcriptions from start to finish of each recording by each piper to capture every possible nuance of every ornament. I understand that Pat Mitchell is attempting to do this now with the playing of Séamus Ennis. It sounds like it will be a mighty collection when he is done.

Instead of every piper having to micro-analyse every note past masters have used, I am wondering if there wouldn't be more benefit in finding a way to teach each ornament with a built in understanding of how to modify it, when and why. These past master pipers changed things up constantly, so I'm not sure I see a point to trying to standardize a notation method for something that refuses to sit still. It seems to me better to find a way to instill an understanding of the beast's nature than to try and set a definition in stone.

djm

[eric_smith]

Well, we'd be in a world of hurt as pipers if Pat Mitchell hadn't come out with DMWC. I could be wrong here, but I believe Mr. Clancy himself was keen to emulate the old pipers when he had access to their recordings, certainly his later recordings seem to show this. I read with interest an anecdote that Peter Laban gave about the "wildness" associated with Garret Barry's playing and PL goes on to say that in certain recordings WC sounds plenty wild himself. WC also made a comment about resurrecting Mici Cumbaw's playing style, which is in this same manner of "bluesy" playing.

I understand your point, I think, and I agree. But I think a particular setting needs to be annotated as accurately as possible. It doesn't matter that the player changes it up ten years later. That's would be a different setting. Liam O'Flynn of 1971 doesn't sound a thing like the Liam O'Flynn of 1994, just as 1950s Willie Clancy isn't the same player as Willie Clancy 1971.

I may be crazy wrong, but I doubt seriously that most pipers even know that a "tight" crotchet roll exists, despite the fact that every bigwig piper recording nowadays uses them. I wouldn't know about it if Bill Ochs hadn't shown me (and that Pat Mitchell's recording uses them so prominently). A "naked" crotchet on the pipes doesn't sound right, but many pipers may not be aware of why their crotchets sound so lifeless. Nuance is everything on the pipes (well, that and tuning).

But then again, there are those who play the uilleann pipes, others who play ITM on the uilleann pipes, and of course, there are those who play the flute on the uilleann pipes.

I should add, I think, that a string of ornaments isn't so great either. It could be argued that the recordings of the piping revival of the last three decades lack phrasing interest or originality, and that it is largely rehashing the tricky bits of the previous generation.

[Cayden]

But then again, there are those who play the uilleann pipes, others who play ITM on the uilleann pipes,

it would be interesting to hear how you would separate them, the way i see it (and i consider myself as playing irish music on the pipes, the pipes being the vehicle) playing music you get to use your instrument to get as best a result you can playing that music.

A solution for the problem above is ofcourse to get to know the music and use your instrument to get the best out of the tunes, doing so i suppose your ornaments will fall into place. Or am I going seriously simplistic now? i mean, you play a triplet/roll or whatever ain a particular way because of the effect it has on the music you're playing.

[eric_smith]

But then again, there are those who play the uilleann pipes, others who play ITM on the uilleann pipes,

it would be interesting to hear how you would separate them,

Uilleann pipes being used in other styles of music.

However, I think I know what gave you pause. You probably wondered if I meant that playing piping specific music was somehow different than playing Irish music (the stick figure I mentioned earlier) with the color and limitations that are characteristic of the instrument. I might wonder this myself because I think that some modern commercial piping recordings perhaps lack some of the phrasing and rhythmic interest that you might find in fiddle recordings, and sometimes seem like "uilleann piping" rather than traditional music interpreted on the pipes.

[Steampacket]

"I should add, I think, that a string of ornaments isn't so great either. It could be argued that the recordings of the piping revival of the last three decades lack phrasing interest or originality, and that it is largely rehashing the tricky bits of the previous generation" Eric Smith.

Aye, but it could also be argued that there are some very interesting modern recordings featuring thought provoking, mind blowing, and I think unique piping - such as Pat Mitchell's LP "Uilleann pipes" from the 1970's, Mick Coyne's CD "Both sides of the Coyne", and Mick O Brian & Caoimhin O' Raghallaigh's "Kitty lie over" CD

[eric_smith]

Aye, but it could also be argued that there are some very interesting modern recordings featuring thought provoking, mind blowing, and I think unique piping - such as Pat Mitchell's LP "Uilleann pipes" from the 1970's,

There isn't a single original or unique note in this recording of Pat's. Not a one.

Don't get me wrong. I love this record. But it is the perfect illustration of what I meant. These modern recordings should be subtitled "played as closely as possible to the manner of Seamus Ennis or Willie Clancy".

Apprentices have always emulated their masters, and rightly so. This is why it's helpful to have fully annotated transcriptions. They I imagine we could all get on with the task of interpreting other tunes and get beyond having to figure out how you do this or that on the beast. Instead, these techniques that give the pipes interest are shrouded in mystery for pipers to solve, generally over the course of many years.

[djm]

i mean, you play a triplet/roll or whatever in a particular way because of the effect it has on the music you're playing.

Exactly. I think I would get more use from an experienced piper showing me how to modify/modulate an ornament to get different effects, than to just learn by rote what some past piper did. That is in no way a slight on what others have done in the past, only that I would like to feel at the end of the day that what I have played is the way that I want it to sound.

These modern recordings should be subtitled "played as closely as possible to the manner of Seamus Ennis or Willie Clancy".

Absolutely. I understand it is PM's pride and joy that he can emulate these past masters so closely. Peter Browne related a story of how he learned WC's playing of a tune note for note, showed it to WC, and WC was upset about this. WC said something to the effect of, "You don't have to play it exactly like me, you know?"

djm

[eric_smith]

I would like to feel at the end of the day that what I have played is the way that I want it to sound.
djm

This is very much a personal exploration. But to learn what can be done to a note or phrase, it's useful to know what has been done, and to what effect.