Chiff and Fipple Forums

I'm looking to improve my playing of (Jonathan Swayne style single drone border) pipes for dancing. It's been said that the constant sound of the pipes don't give a sufficient emphasis on the 1, the first beat of the bar, to help the dancers keep in time and feel the beat.

Has anyone got any tips for emphasising that first beat of the bar? I obviously can't emphasise the 1 through a change of volume or timbre as I would on other wind instruments, so is there for instance a form of ornamentation I could use on the first note of the bar, or any other tips on that from pipers who play for dancing?

I should emphasise that this isn't a question about playing *in rhythm*, there's no issue around that - it's very much around the way that there isn't a strong natural 'push' or a 'lean' on the first beat of the bar to distinguish it from the other beats.

TIA

I don't know the variety of ornamentation used with that particular flavor of bagpipe, but a cut to a note more than a single scale step is the most basic way of emphasizing a note.

dave boling

In Highland piping, which has been used for dancing for centuries, emphasis is created by 2 methods

1) ornamentation

2) timing.

Ornamentation:

If you look at pretty much any piece of Highland pipe music there will be a "High G gracenote" (played with the upper-hand index finger) either on its own, or as the initial note of a "doubling", on nearly every "1".

This is the second-highest possible gracenote. The highest one, the "High A gracenote" (played with the upper thumb) is used instead of the High G gracenote in certain contexts.

But for whatever reason High G is the "default" gracenote on the Highland pipes, while the upper-thumb gracenote, the highest possible one, is the "default" gracenote on the Bulgarian pipes.

Oddly, the Highland pipes' more complex ornaments like the Taorluath don't usually fall on the "1".

Timing:

It's nearly universal for Highland pipers to think of the music in terms of phrases, generally 4 pulses long, but it depends on the genre of tune.

These phrases are made clear through timing, which entails slightly lengthening the "1" of each phrase and also slightly lengthening the last note of each phrase.

So each phrase, to put it crudely, goes "long short short long" (on a tune with four-pulse phrases). These note-lengthenings are quite subtle.

Obviously for dancing the major beats have to be consistent, it's the timing within the beats that makes the phrases.