Regarding birls and Skinner.
My former ethnomusicology tutor Dr Peter Cooke of the School of Scottish
Studies was a bit of a pioneer in using technology as an aid to
understanding the fiddle traditions - hence my own interest in the
scientific approach. Peter's view is that the human ear really needs all the
help it can get in transcribing and analysing such music. You may be
familiar with his book on the Shetland fiddle which includes sound waves of
fiddlers there and I remember him showing me a huge roll of paper which
represented the waveform of a recording of Tommie Potts being transcribed by
Michael O'Sullibhean as part of his PhD thesis which was being examined by
Peter.
Anyway, I've measured a few birls selected at random from a number of Cape
Breton fiddlers (using the 1970s Topic album of tapes by John Shaw) and I
conclude that, if anything, the birls are in fact longer than the Skinner
ones I looked at previously (although there could be a speeding up of the
Skinner recording due to the mechanical recording and playback process).
Furthermore, the general ratio of the three note lengths would appear to be
close to 1:1:3 which is what I measured Skinner at. The Skinner birl seems
to be very crisply executed with the first two notes almost precisely the
same length while there may be a bit more variation in the Cape Breton ones
with the first just a bit shorted than the second - it is difficult to be
precise here. Listening to the Cape Breton record (its one of the few Cape
Breton fiddle disks I don't get tired listening to) I note that the birl
often precedes a long note - am I correct? If so then it might be possible
that the ear links the third note with that which follows - if it does this
could result in the ratio 1:1:6 or so. Hardly a scientific sample but what
do you think?
I can post some more MP3s to explain if necessary.
The more of Skinner's playing I listen to the more of a fan I become. Yes,
he was bilingual in both art and traditional music and he had personality
traits which many find hard to stomach, but, hey, he could certainly birl
and I'd have shared a drop of Talisker with him anytime - I probably would
not take my fiddle out of its case though - I've read what he has said about
sloppy, untutored fiddlers!
Birl on.
Stuart Eydmann
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