[NSP] Re: D set keys (was Looking for players..)
See below... Dick HensoldSt. Paul, MN 651/646-6581 Traditional Folk Music, Early Music, and Cambodian Music Northumbrian smallpipes, recorder, Medieval greatpipes,Swedish sackpipa, beyaw. [1]www.dickhensold.com On Aug 26, 2009, at 7:34 AM, Philip Gruar wrote: Dick wrote My D set has a high C, and if pipemakers are interested in my opinion, I don't think D sets should be made without a high C. It's just too useful, and allows much more concert pitch playing. Probably too obvious to mention, but I guess we are to assume this means virtual high C, which on a D set actually sounds concert-pitch G. Right, and I'll continue to use G system terms. As I pipe-maker, I take the advice on board. It seems very sensible, there is easily room for it on a D chanter, and I'll always be interested in Dick's opinion (flattery is never out of place, and this is sincere anyway :-)) Which side is the key on, Dick? and where should the key go if all D chanters are to have a high C as standard? The tricky thing about a high C is accessing it as easily from high A as from high B. If you make the high C the top-left-back key, you can play it with either the left little finger or the right thumb, or if necessary, both in sequence. So both B-C-B and A-C-A sequences are not too difficult. B-C-A and A-C-B sequences are still hard, but this can be helped by bending the keys in just the right way. That being said, the high C is still the trickiest key on the set to deal with-- but so useful it's worth it. My D set has only 4 top keys, (forgoing the F# which I rarely miss since I play more often in concert pitch than G system) the high B-flat being the top-back-right key. This puts the B and Bb holes very close together, but maybe not so bad on a D set. Anyway, it works on my D set. I use the B-flats quite a bit but this seems to be a personal idiosyncrasy; whereas I'm not sure that most players would benefit from having a high Bb, I think they *would* find a high C very useful (on a D set). And as Philip says, the more the D set is used as a concert pitch instrument, the more useful the high B-flat is. So to answer your question more directly, the high C should go on the back left, and whichever other one you use should go on the back right. The usual solution with a standard-pitch F set is to put a high C on the left, paired with the A in place of the seldom-used high A#/B flat, And this is how my *F* chanter is set up, which makes it very useful as a concert-pitch set to play F and Bb tunes, both of which go great on an F chanter but usually need that top note. Pauline does this a lot, I believe. And I don't miss the high Bb on my F chanter, where it would be a rarely-used (concert) Ab. But it seems getting a high C onto an F chanter is difficult... I haven't discussed this with many makers, so don't know too much about it. but on a D chanter that little-used B flat becomes a useful F natural, while on the right side the useful g# of a standard set turns into d# - maybe not so useful if playing at concert pitch, so perhaps a high C could go there instead? And what if there are already two keys on each side? A triple slot on the left is I don't have enough experience with a chanter with 5 top keys to make any useful comment. what I used for John Clifford's chanter, but there may be better solutions - any input, Colin and other makers? Philip To get on or off this list see list information at [2]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://www.dickhensold.com/ 2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[NSP] The timing description of str 6 of AtNILwJ
Hi I sent this yesterday but apparently only some people got it (the email that is), so I'm sending it again, with some additional comments. * For any of you who care to help me with my little experiment in directed listening, here is the description of how I was trying to emphasize the beat in strain 6 of the clip of All the Night I Lay with Jockey, the link of which was supplied in my previous email. In some of the beats containing the Bdgd arpeggio (mainly in the 2nd and 3rd groups of arpeggios), I play the first note very slightly late and rush the next 3, leaving a small space at the end of the beat. The first and 4th groups of arpeggios are done a bit straighter. The first note is played late in part for accent, in part to keep the section from rushing, and in part to get the articulation to click with the grace note played by the backing Scottish smallpipe, played by Laura MacKenzie. I shouldn't make a big deal about the lateness of the B. It's slight enough that I had to listen to it several times to make sure it was really there. The important point is the space at the end of the beat. If this sounds like what you heard, please email me back and tell me you're in group A. If not, please listen again to the clip and see if you can hear this timing subtlety now, now that you know what to look for. If you do, please email me back and tell me you're in group B. If this still sounds like complete gibberish, please email me back and tell me you're in group C. So group B is people who heard something in the timing the second time that they didn't hear the first time, as a result of being told what to look for. Group A didn't need the explanation to hear the timing, and the explanation made no difference to what group C heard. The clip is from the CD Piper's Crow, track 10 I'm not advocating this as an approved interpretation, just using it as an example of what I'm talking about when I refer to rhythmic subtleties. They are probably not the same sorts of subtleties that AR was talking about in his post which started this discussion, but once you are able to hear this sort of thing, you can do it in many different contexts. I also want to clarify that I wouldn't expect ear-learners to relate to this way of approaching music; for them everything tends to be a bit more intuitive, so they would think this whole thing to be a bit of a waste of time. A person with a good ear can copy rhythmic subtleties without actually thinking about what's going on. I wish I were so talented! Thanks! Dick HensoldSt. Paul, MN 651/646-6581 Traditional Folk Music, Early Music, and Cambodian Music Northumbrian smallpipes, recorder, Medieval greatpipes,Swedish sackpipa, beyaw. [1]www.dickhensold.com -- References 1. http://www.dickhensold.com/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[NSP] Re: Was: this list is safer now//speed
Hi Matt, et al, Dick HensoldSt. Paul, MN 651/646-6581 Traditional Folk Music, Early Music, and Cambodian Music Northumbrian smallpipes, recorder, Medieval greatpipes,Swedish sackpipa, beyaw. [1]www.dickhensold.com On Jun 10, 2009, at 5:14 AM, Matt Seattle wrote: ...Richard Y mentioned All The Niight I Lay With Jockey - I'd recommend you also listen to Chris Ormston's recording. I play this tune on Border pipes (not NSP) and one thing I noticed recently was how the arpeggios in the last strain - which I previously thought of as mere padding - can come alive if the initial note of four is held as long as possible without making the next three impossible - does this work for any NSP players here? There's also the Clough procedure, which Chris does in his repeat, of filling out the arpeggio, B/c/dgd rather than Bcgd. There are other ways of varying what appears to be the most boring part of the tune... I thought that was what I did with that variation-- it's typical of what I would do. But when I listened to my recording, a clip of which is available at: [2]http://www.dickhensold.com/mp3s/All_the_Night_I_Lay_with_Jockey.mp3 , I found I did something different. BTW, I don't consider that strain to be mere padding. The previous strain is sweeping scalar figures, emphasizing melodic contour, and the strain in question contrasts the previous one by using the repeated arpeggios to emphasize the beat, which is what I try to do in my version. The repeated Bs, which fall on the beat, help to emphasize it since B's are sort of a live note on our pipes, owing to the particular resonance the B has with the drone. As it happens, my rhythmic treatment of this strain is also an example of the kind of rhythmic subtlety I was referring to in my first post, and can serve for a pedagogical experiment, if you'll please bear with me. This experiment would give some idea of the effectiveness of directed listening for ear-training. Here's how it would work: Listen to the clip above, especially strain 6 (which starts at about 1:01 in the clip, and goes to the end of it), and try to hear what I'm doing with the rhythm to emphasize the beat. In a later email, I will describe what I'm doing. If my description matches your observation, you would be in group A. If you're not quite sure what I'm up to (rhythmically, that is), or the description DOESN'T match, listen to the clip again and see if having read the description makes it possible for you to hear the rhythms described. If, after reading the description, you can then hear what I'm doing with the rhythm, then you would be in group B. If, after reading the description, you CANNOT hear what I'm doing with the rhythm, then you would be in group C. You could then all email me off-list and tell me what group you're in, and I would count how many were in each group. I would then be able to tell by the numbers in each group whether the description (or directed listening) was effective. I'm guessing it would take you 5-10 minutes to do this (assuming you listened to the 15 seconds in question several times). The description will be in a following email. I really appreciate anyone who takes part in this impromptu, unscientific, ad hoc little experiment. I think often about trying to explain music to people, and I really hate wasting everyone's time when the explanation isn't working! -- References 1. http://www.dickhensold.com/ 2. http://www.dickhensold.com/mp3s/All_the_Night_I_Lay_with_Jockey.mp3 To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[NSP] ear-learners vs note-learners
This is a very interesting topic, but the thread that followed AR's post seemed to miss the point a bit. It's becoming an accepted notion that ear-learners (people who started out playing music entirely by ear, and only started reading music years later, if at all) think about/experience/play music in a fundamentally different way than note-learners (people who were taught to read music concurrently with being taught their instruments), and I've only recently come up with any sort of idea why this is. I think it is because when you learn music by imitation, you don't think of any particular aspect of music-- you experience every part of it simultaneously, and it doesn't occur to you that any part is more important than any other, so you don't subconsciously overvalue or undervalue anything. (Unless of course your teacher points out something particular, typically keep the beat!) And you typically learn it all as an intuitively-unified whole. A person who learns to read music from the beginning of their music studies will tend to consider music as emanating from the mathematical matrix of notation, and will tend to visualize musical notes as taking up precise, blocky chunks of time. Such a person is often unable to hear the rhythmic subtleties that give life/bounce or lift/drive to the music. So, many teachers (such as Margaret) try to counter this by teaching tunes by ear in workshops. It's a good idea, but does it work? In other words, does it actually teach people to hear the subtleties they've learned to miss over the years? This is an honest question, and I certainly invite comment, but I'll start by doubting that it does work. I think once you've learned to hear music a certain way, the simple intuitive approach will no longer work. Your ears can certainly be retrained, but you've developed hearing habits of hearing that must be actively broken. Can note-learners learn to play like ear-players? I think so, but I'm still working on what methods work best. I tend to analyze everything and do lots of directed listening, and while this is very good at helping to hear new things, it's sort of counter-intuitive to think that analyzing something will help you eventually arrive at a more intuitively-musical way of playing. Comments, anyone? By the way, I have been using this website: [1]http://www.cbfiddle.com/rx/index.html for my studies of Cape Breton music, and it has been really helpful for learning style and eartraining. Maybe someone with a little time could make a database like it for Northumbrian pipe music! It would be very useful and much easier to accomplish, since it's a much smaller field. At least it might be a way to get everyone to send you a free CD... and lastly, has anyone sorted out how to get emails to Julia Say? Mine (to either address) always bounce... Dick HensoldSt. Paul, MN 651/646-6581 Traditional Folk Music, Early Music, and Cambodian Music Northumbrian smallpipes, recorder, Medieval greatpipes,Swedish sackpipa, beyaw. [2]www.dickhensold.com On Jun 9, 2009, at 2:12 AM, Anthony Robb wrote: Or just too busy making music? I'm involved in a project with Jimmy Little at the moment. He was one of the ranting Teddy Boys spied by Louis Killen at Alnwick in the late 50s and learnt pipes from his father and grandfather in an isolated farmhouse on Alnwick Moor. None of them read dots. He came up with a goodun last week when he said a lot of people now rely on dots too much and the tunes comes out as flat as the sheet they are reading it from. Got me thinking, surely style is secondary to life/bounce in the music? As aye Anthony -- References 1. http://www.cbfiddle.com/rx/index.html 2. http://www.dickhensold.com/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[NSP] stiff fingers and aging
I was apparently doing something else for the last couple hundred messages, so am only now getting into the discussion... What interested me were the comments about fingers stiffening with age. I'm only 50, but my fingering has improved steadily (that is, way too slowly) as long as I've been playing. At what age have people noticed it starting to go the other way? Is it possible to rule out inefficient practicing/warm-ups? I also wonder if the British climate is a factor, because my fingers have felt unusually stiff when practicing in Northumberland. Are there any (especially older) players who have lived in both Northumberland and North America that can comment on this? Or for that matter, is there anyone familiar with medical statistics who knows if arthritis or other joint problems are more prevalent in Britain than N America? Dick HensoldSt. Paul, MN 651/646-6581 Traditional Folk Music, Early Music, and Cambodian Music Northumbrian smallpipes, recorder, Medieval greatpipes,Swedish sackpipa, beyaw. [1]www.dickhensold.com -- References 1. http://www.dickhensold.com/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[NSP] my new website
My new website is up, if anyone is interested... lotsa stuff available for download... www.dickhensold.com Dick HensoldSt. Paul, MN 651/646-6581 Traditional Folk Music, Early Music, and Cambodian Music Northumbrian smallpipes, recorder, Medieval greatpipes,Swedish sackpipa, beyaw. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
