Some thoughts on Piping and ornaments.

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

I've been fortunate to meet Paddy O'Brien a few times, talk with him about music, and listen to him play. Coming from the Scottish piping world, I went through a long period (which I still occasionally lapse into) where I was obsessed with trying to fit in ornaments, tight triplets, etc. wherever I thought they could possibly go. This may be alright to do if one is practicing ornaments, but it rarely results in good music that others would want to listen to. I think this is one reason why albums like "Kitty Lie Over" work so well because the tunes are taken at a relatively relaxed tempo, and you don't really notice the ornamentation at all--all that you do notice are the great tunes.

There's a great diagram in Roddy Cannon's book "The Highland Bagpipe" where he shows the (d)evolution of grace noting in a reel, starting with its first printing in the early 19th century up to an arrangement in a contemporary music collection. It starts out with no doublings, heavy grips, or birls; just a few single grace notes and strikes. By the final arrangement, the tune appears to have maybe three or four times as many grace notes as it started with. While there has been some reaction to this lately, often times when I look at new Highland piping tunes, it seems like the composer/arranger didn't put much thought as to why a certain ornament was put in a tune, rather he was just trying to fill a certain grace note quota. The result is more often than not music that is technically very, very impressive and almost instantly forgettable.

While I certainly recognize the dangers of turning a tune into a slobbery mess of ornaments, I think ultimately it can be helpful to try playing a tune at opposite extremes with little ornamentation at all and with a considerable amount in order to find what feels like a reasonable medium between the two.

When I was first learning pipes, I never took them to sessions. Rather, I'd sit and watch pipers and look what they were doing very carefully. I'd ask them questions about how they did a certain technique; then, I'd take my pipes out the next day, pick one of the techniques I had noticed and focus on it. I don't think I played pipes at all in a session until I had been playing for about a year or so, and in retrospect, I probably should have waited longer. To this day, if someone plays a tune that I don't feel like I know all that well, I generally switch to the flute because if I screw up, I can duck out and play quietly until I figure it out. For the sake of maintaining civilized relations with other musicians, I feel it would behoove all novice pipers (and even some not-so-novice pipers) to do the same and not play tunes that they don't really know. As the fiddle-playing-ex-priest Feargal Mac Amhlaoibh once put it to me, "Fiddle and flute players have it easy because they can just kind of blend in, and that's how you learn. But if you're going to play the pipes or the box, you really have to know what you're doing, because if you make a mistake, God can hear it."

[fiddlerwill]

''There's a great diagram in Roddy Cannon's book "The Highland Bagpipe" where he shows the (d)evolution of grace noting in a reel, starting with its first printing in the early 19th century up to an arrangement in a contemporary music collection. It starts out with no doublings, heavy grips, or birls; just a few single grace notes and strikes. By the final arrangement, the tune appears to have maybe three or four times as many grace notes as it started with''

Excellent point, and often newbies therefor assume that the modern arrangement is 'the way' and struggle to achieve everything written down, which of course is going to be a struggle and result in poor music and poor piping. IMO as a piper, the first and most important necessity is stable blowing and good tuning and good rhythm.[and a good tune!]
Simple things are generally stronger than complex things IMO, a simple tune, played well with drones locked in, chanter sweet, little in the way of ornaments is much preferable as a listener and for me as a player and to play along with as a fiddler.
I feel that the subtle control of intonation and rhythm often are skipped over in favor of fiddly finger work. Thats why we have pipers who even if they get all the notes, ornaments etc in the right place, still leave the music empty inside.

A lot of modern playing and music is often filled up too much IMO. Folk assume that as their role models play all these ornaments and shtuff that so should they, little realizing that they are skipping over an essential stage in development. Superficially they might achieve what they attempt, but the music is still hollow.

[Joseph E. Smith]

Fellow pipers,

Last weekend I had the chance to hear accordion player Paddy O’Brien at a house concert in Asheville, NC. His playing reminds me of Miko Russell, simple, sparse and virtually free of triplets, rolls, cuts etc. Listening to great player like Paddy, two facts describe his style…hard rock rhythm and sticking very close to the melody, not filling it with ornaments. With those two simple techniques the tune comes through strong and beautiful with lots of emotion. When Paddy does put in and occasional ornament it really means something and grabs our attention.

I have had the great and rare pleasure of travelling and performing with Paddy for a few wonderful years (in the early 90's) as a duo called Glensheen. What Pat says here is the truth about Paddy's playing... the melody or "tune" is best left uncompromised and pure. Each note has it's value in time and tone and must be heard. Nothing wrong with fancy playing but it can "hide" the true tune, thereby not conveying the true emotion of the tune.

Paddy is an accordian master, the pipes have a different voice. It seems to me that the "space" between the notes (in piping), is the way with which to allow each note it's due... and rolls, crans... etc... is how these spaces are created.

Having said this, I will also state that an "economy" of "spaces" is preferable to my way of thinking, playing and listening.

[pancelticpiper]

quotes from "The Sporting Pitchfork" in boldface:

Coming from the Scottish piping world, I went through a long period where I was obsessed with trying to fit in ornaments, tight triplets, etc. wherever I thought they could possibly go...it rarely results in good music that others would want to listen to. I think this is one reason why albums like "Kitty Lie Over" work so well because the tunes are taken at a relatively relaxed tempo, and you don't really notice the ornamentation at all--all that you do notice are the great tunes.

Hear, hear!! I too came from the GHB world and went through that exact thing. The longer I played Irish music the more I came to realise that it's not about the ornaments, it's about playing at the right tempo with the right "feel".

There's a great diagram in Roddy Cannon's book "The Highland Bagpipe" where he shows the (d)evolution of grace noting in a reel, starting with its first printing in the early 19th century up to an arrangement in a contemporary music collection. It starts out with no doublings, heavy grips, or birls; just a few single grace notes and strikes. By the final arrangement, the tune appears to have maybe three or four times as many grace notes as it started with. While there has been some reaction to this lately, often times when I look at new Highland piping tunes, it seems like the composer/arranger didn't put much thought as to why a certain ornament was put in a tune, rather he was just trying to fill a certain grace note quota. The result is more often than not music that is technically very, very impressive and almost instantly forgettable.

Yes indeed. So many GHB players take the heavily ornamented version of a tune they find in a book somewhere and treat it like it's written in stone. They don't have the perspective to realise that those old tunes, once used for dancing, were retrofitted with lots of ornaments so as to be used as "show-off" or competition tunes. That's changing quite a bit nowadays: current Grade One pipe bands' versions of tunes often have very few ornaments, sometimes an entire bar of a jig or a "hornpipe" (reel) having but a single G gracenote etc.

[Brazenkane]

There is always a strange delineation, in print and otherwise, when discussing "technique." A common example is one describing playing a melody with a good sense of time (rhythm) as separate from technique.

To play a tune with literally no grace notes, convincingly, in time, and with some sort of feeling requires a great amount of technique! One uses "technique" (I.e. the facilitation of the intention, to the actual audible sound) to get the music from in one's head, or dare I say ..off a sheet of music, to the fingers, and ultimately to listeners ears.

If we look at the (old) regional styles for example, a listener/musician might feel that musicians who play in the style associated with southern Donegal may put too much into the tune, play too fast, and or are too "busy." Somebody else might feel that style of music is the juice of life! A different listener/musician might feel that the music of Micho Russell is too simplistic and boring, when in fact both the Donegal musician and Micho used extensive amounts of technique to achieve the end result.

The melody of the tune is important and cannot be played/heard without the technique it took to play it, be it simple and sparse, or complex and full. Emotion, groove, time, intention, and a whole list of other descriptors may serve to elevate the music if they are present, or leave it purely as a technical endeavor if they are absent.

[ausdag]

Piping must have ornamentation. We can't tongue notes like a flutist; we can't stop notes as readily as an accordianist; we must have rolls and gracenotes in order to prevent our chanters sounding like rusty car horns. Whether you decide to play a triplet as a roll, three stopped staccato notes, or a pippity-pip-pip staccato, either way, you must have it. Try playing the Dublin Reel without rolls. You simply can't apply the 'less-is-more' philosophy to gracenotes and rolls.

Where I think people are getting confused is between that just mentioned, and what I call 'acrobatics', referring not to 'technique' or 'ornamentation', but rather 'variation' of the tune where some pipers feel the need to verge as far as possible away from the basic tune in order to show off. Colonel Fraser is a classic example of a tune where this so often occurs.

Of course, pipers who can do those acrobatics well have my admiration - to be able to go oh-so-far off the tune but still hold the tune without totally losing it all together is admirable. But it also get tedious.

I think I interpret Brazenkaine correctly and agree that 'technique' is not the problem, nor is 'ornamentation' if by that we mean the essential gracings and pippity-pip-pips that even 'straight forward' pipers (actually an oxymoron) like O'FLynn and Reck make good use of, but rather over-the-top variation and divergence which wows the uninitiated but irritates just as many.

[fiddlerwill]

I disagree, grace notes, yes they are pretty much essential, although many times they are optional, the rest are not. I hasten to add that as a GHB player I am a great fan of ornaments. My point is the process in which they become part of your playing. Top flight players are not good because they can play all the extras, they can play all the extras because they are good. Also I feel that many people are taken in by the assumption that more is better. Which brings me to ' what is 'better''?
Do we play for the sake of the music? other pipers judging us? the uninformed general audience, ourselves? Why do we play the pipes. All our answers to these will influence us as to how we play the music and what we feel is important in our piping.
Take the Dublin reel, of course it can be played with little in the way of ornaments. crotchets are crotchets , you can choose to ornament them, break them up into triplets etc , or not. This is how we, as individuals, vary our music.
Whether we wish to play the tune straight, is of course up to us.
Why ,then would we choose to play the tune straight? My answers for me are this. To let the tune breathe, to master the simple before attempting to master the complex. To play super fast and still maintain good form, to make music that is more approachable and understandable to many, to give ourselves a base line that allows contrast in dynamics. Dynamically, if we fill the tune up as much as we can there is no where to go apart from taking stuff away. or start simple and add in complexity. Variation is not variation if its done all the time. So to add variation we can in fact take away variation!!
To allow us to vary the music in original ways a base line of the tune, simple and pure, gives us the canvas upon which to paint. If the canvas is already full of stuff then where do we 'paint'? We cant, its just 'painting by numbers' Not to denigrate painting by numbers, but IMO its not reel art[intentional pun]

[Brazenkane]

Technique is not the problem, it's the answer! Technique is only a problem when you don't have it!

"Technique" is simply defined as : "a procedure used to accomplish a specific activity or task." If one doesn't have this "procedure," or the many procedures that it takes to produce music from the pipes ( or any instrument for that matter), sorted, It would be an obvious presumption that the musician is not going to be able to achieve their goal of producing something that is better than just "listenable."

Rolls, graces, crans, popping create rhythmic variation. Rhythmic variation is a much-needed element in music. Micho Russell clearly did not have all of the roles, graces, etc. that Mary Bergin has, yet he had an command over rhythmic variation, it was a different set of musical tools he relied on to achieve such.

Ornamentation causes rhythmic subdivision and by default creates more notes. As we all know sometimes we make subdivision can cause more of the same notes, or additional notes. We should be grateful for this, because this offers us not only more rhythmic interest, but the potential of melodic interest and invention as well!

Rhythmic subdivision and melodic variation, providing one has the technique to do such, certainly shouldn't have the blame left at their proverbial doorstep for enticing a player "go astray."

"Acrobatics/pyrotechnics," variations, moving away from the melody, enhancing a melody... they are all very different things. None of them can be done well without a mastery of the respective techniques needed to execute such enhancements. . Barring influences that are clearly not part of Irish traditional music (for example, quoting Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" within "The bucks of Oranmore"), the rest, is a matter of taste. One man's irritation is another man's elation.

Discussing technique and variation alone, is still a conversation that is happening ( In many regards) out of context, and/or in suspended animation. It is a discussion that should happen within the (broad) boundaries of what is agreed upon as part of the idiom. These boundaries I'm not really be established in a forum such as this. There are simply different levels of understanding and experience as to what vocabulary the idiom entails. So, in effect without establishing such a context, the conversation may have its own acrobatics and drastic variations on its proposed "melody line!"

More simply put as Mr. Cannady stated (and I paraphrase), "you have to listen to a lot of trad!"

[ausdag]

Trouble is, when I hear pipers play tunes 'straight' and close my eyes, I think to myself that it could just as easily be a robot playing dem pipes. That's when I put on a recording of Liam O'Flynn and listen to just how incredibly complex his piping actually is. It's like watching an episode of the Simpsons over and over again - I always pick up on something I didn't notice the time before:) But isn't that one element in the 'art' of piping, to be so deceivingly 'straight'?

[TheSilverSpear]

Fiddlerwill, I know this has been said to your elsewhere, but you can't separate "the tune" from "ornamentation," "variation," and "technique." As was said above, ornamentation is essential to the pipes since it's the only method you have of emphasising, phrasing, and articulating notes. If you play a tune "ornamentation free" like you are advocating, you end up with a series of notes with no discernible phrasing. And phrasing is key to making Irish music sound like Irish music.

[pancelticpiper]

ornamentation is essential to the pipes since it's the only method you have of emphasising, phrasing, and articulating notes. If you play a tune "ornamentation free" like you are advocating, you end up with a series of notes with no discernible phrasing.

Hmmm... yes and no, it seems to me. It's certainly possible to play tunes on the pipes with excellent phrasing and articulation but with little or no ornamentation. Several times I've been amazed when I've slowed down a Paddy Keenan recording to halfspeed in order to transcribe it and discovered how little ornamentation there is. I recall one polka where there's almost none... in an entire phrase there's one thumb gracenote and it pops out at you like a bomb went off. The magic is in the flawless phrasing, not in the ornaments.

(Slowing down Keenan reminds me of when Rembrandt cautioned a person examining one of his paintings not to view it too closely. Why? the viewer asked. Rembrandt replied "the smell of the paint isn't good for you".)

I suppose it can get down to splitting hairs, to semantics. If a piper is articulating notes by seperating them with little silences, is this simply articulation? Or does the fact that the silences are achieved though the movement of fingers mean that they are in fact ornaments? I myself choose to regard "ornaments" as things which are superfluous to the melody and which are added for decorative effect. So, to me, rolls and cuts are not ornaments per se but are articulations.

On the other hand I sure agree with Ausdag: it's awful to hear someone playing the bare melody notes only, on the pipes, like they learned the notes from a book somewhere. But these people lack not only the ornamentation but also the phrasing and articulation that makes pipe music sound "right".

[TheSilverSpear]

At the end of the day, these discussions about the grey areas of semantics between words like articulation,ornamentation, variation, or whatever, are just a good way to waste a lot of time on the internet. However you want to label it, or however you choose to understand the relationships here, doesn't really matter so long as what comes out of your instrument sounds like a discernable tune.

[fiddlerwill]

Playing straight does not mean like an automaton. It is a stage in the road to mastery of your instrument. Simplicity is strength. This means that the core of your playing is solid and connected with your voice. Miss out on that stage and it is clearly evident in your playing. It will be Hollow.
Traditionally this is the way its been done, first you learn simple tunes with a few cuts. You dont attempt to mimic Mr Ennis on day one. Its a process. You might think that there are shortcuts but its not the case. This stage between no ornaments, and full ornamentation, last for a different length of time in all individuals, but IMO its inadvisable to attempt to miss out on it .

Phrasing is only partly about ornaments. It is about note length and note positioning and the many, many subtle ways of controlling the note. Especially for pipes which are blessed with so much potential..
Ornaments can be used to develop phrasing, but too often they simply obscure it. Of course the tune can be separated from ornament and variation, very easily. Take the first bar of the chanters song'; 2 D crotchets an A and g-e quaver. This is the tune, simple and effective. No need to ornament it, unless you choose to. I do, perhaps excessively! but first I learnt it without ornaments. If you have the tune, how did you learn it?
As far as ornamentation goes its a great phrase for it, and for variation .
A beginner playing a tune straight, or full, is still a beginner playing. A master playing straight or full, is still a master playing. There will be many many subtle differences that make it obvious which is which.


There are many ways to play a tune ornament free, explore them and you will be a better piper for it.

[fiddlerwill]

We disagree PCP on rolls. I come to the pipes from firstly guitar, then mandolin then fiddle, then pipes over the course of a few decades. So I've spent 20 odd yrs learning tunes with no rolls. IMO they are undoubtedly ornaments. Specific techniques like graces where the separate notes, or the silences to separate notes I would not view as ornaments but articulations.
I view all the various tricks we have under a simple heading of variation.
I hasten to add that I view variation as the lifeblood of trad. My point is more to do with the process of learning. That the stage of learning includes the simple tune and that missing out or shortening this stage is IMO inadvisable. Also that more is not necessarily better, just because we can play super fast, or fill up our music with every ornament and articulation under the sun does not make it better playing, or that we should.
IMO, and its just my opinion, The basic functions of the music should be kept in mind, that of music for dancing and for expressing human emotion.

[TheSilverSpear]

What the hell is "full ornamentation?"

To be honest, I don't know what "hollow" playing means. When I listen to pipes, or play them, I worry about where the timing, rhythm, and phrasing are. Over-ornamentation becomes a problem when it throws off any of those three things. That's what other posters on this thread have been reiterating. If you can play a tune with pyrotechnics while maintaining timing and rhythm, more power to you. If you can't, back off on the pyrotechnics. See, straightforward. The fuzzy, "emotional" qualities you seem obsessed with, as if that's the primary thing you should focus on when playing this music, will come through when you can make a tune flow effortlessly and nail the rhythm and the timing. It's dance music. Timing is key. I don't care how much "emotion" you've put into a tune, if your timing, phrasing, and rhythm are off, it won't sound good. It might make you happy if you feel you are expressing emotion through the tune, but if your rhythm sucks, it's not going to make anyone who has to listen to you happy.