Fiddle bow "scratch triplets" on flute?

[Conical bore]

Hi all. I'm a relative beginner on flute, but I've been playing Irish, Scottish and Cape Breton music on mandolin for a while. On a tune like Jerry Holland's "Brenda Stubbert's reel" (and many others like it), fiddlers play a very quick, hard, scratchy triplet ornament. Listen to Jerry Holland's original recording of the tune for an example. The tempo isn't blazing fast, but that little scratch triplet ornament makes the tune seem much faster. It's a great rhythmic element in Cape Breton music.

So, how do 'ya do that on flute?

I've been trying to follow recommendations I've read to avoid tonguing notes, when learning Irish flute. I've been focusing more on finger ornaments and experimenting a little with glottal stops. But a roll sounds too soft and indistinct as a substitute for that triplet, and there's no way I'll ever do a glottal stop that fast. So, is this a situation where triple tonguing is "legit" on flute?

P.S. I did a search here and came up with just the one thread here, but it turned into a discussion of rolls more than alternatives. If there is another thread that covers this, please point me to it:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=55971

[brad maloney]

I use.a 'double cut roll' or at least that's what grey Larsen calls it. it's an approximation of a bowed triplet, but it won't be as percussive and it takes a lot of practice to get sounding good.
here the fingerlings I'd use for the a note in Brenda stubberts reel
oxo ooo starts with a cut, you don't hear the note, it's played so quick it just breaks the flow to articulate the main notes into a triplet
xxo ooo note
oxo ooo second cut
xxo ooo note again
xxx ooo like the cut but you strike or tap the finger quick enough merely separate the the A note
xxo ooo

Or throw the following abc into http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html
X:1
T:double cut roll aka triplet of sorts
K:A
M:C
(3{c}A{c}A{g}A

I'd of done it myself but I'm only on an iPad.

[woodfluter]

Hi C.B. -

This is an interesting topic. I hope to hear of some nifty alternatives here.
Brenda Stubbert's is a tune one of my bands plays pretty often.
So this is something I've had to contend with.
The triplets or some substitute are not optional if the tune is to retain its character.

Tongueing doesn't quite sound right to my ears for this.
I do use glottal stops (or what is generally called that) a good deal.
I've had some very good musicians tell me authoritatively that I'm tongueing when really I'm not. I know the difference.
With practice you can get this to be quite fast. Almost a "rebound" feeling.

To me it feels like I'm doing this all with my diaphragm and tension in the chest area.
That's probably delusional from what I've heard about physiology and the mechanics of singing.
My guess is that there is a "resonant frequency" that's tuned by the glottis and the tension you apply there.
You can get the tension high enough that triplets in Brenda sound...well, at least sort of plausible.
They are fast enough, but just barely. They aren't "brittle" like tongueing, but a bit too rounded.

So, building on that, I've been working on an alternative that sounds better - when I can get it to work.
Instead of "uhh...uhh...uhh" done very very fast, been trying to put a cut in between two pulses.
So something like "uhh...[cut]...uhh". The trick is to get the cut timed right.
When I succeed, it sounds sharp enough and close (at tempo) to the impression of a bowed triplet.
I'm getting better at it but it takes a lot of practice, and I'm way short of consistent at this point.

I'm also wide open to another approach.

[brad maloney]

I tried glottal stops but couldn't get three of them that quickly, I should work on that. I usually do most of my articulations with my fingers, mostly because I came up on whistle and was taught my basics by uileann pipers.

Brenda Stubbert's reel is a Cape Breton tune and since GHB pipers are so common there, and I know many of them play the tune, it might be well worth it to ask the same question in the "non-uileann piping section of C&F. Although a GHB plays an A as a D flute would play a D, so they probably crann it, or something similar.



Anyway, It's worth noting that a "Scratch triplet' (A term I don't really care for because scratchy is not something anyone should ever strive for in their fiddle playing, but it's in the lexicon now so what can I do about it) isn't really a triplet per se, it's really more like two 16th notes followed by an 8th. It sounds like d-d-dah more than an evenly spaced dah dah dah.

Also, I was thinking about that 'double cut roll'.... you really need to have your cuts and taps in line to pull it off well, it's fairly advanced. Some other options might be as follows, starting with the triplet itself then ornaments from easier to more difficult.


Again, these are just various approaches I have used.

[Peter Duggan]

Although a GHB plays an A as a D flute would play a D, so they probably crann it, or something similar.

It's a birl.

it's really more like two 16th notes followed by an 8th. It sounds like d-d-dah more than an evenly spaced dah dah dah.

Yep, it's a birl!

Also, I was thinking about that 'double cut roll'.... you really need to have your cuts and taps in line to pull it off well, it's fairly advanced.

I hope to hear of some nifty alternatives here.

Have you tried tonguing just the first note to produce Brad's 'd-d-dah' by tongue-cut-strike?

[Elvellon]

I play a short roll {B}G{F}G or a double tongued triplet thing "t"G/"k"G/"t"G (1/16, 1/16, 1/8 with "t-k-t" articulation). Tried Grey Larsen's double cut roll some time ago.

[brad maloney]

After pulling out the flute, I found I usually do play a tongue/cut/strike.

Yeah... I tongue it no fancy glottal stops on this one for me. But it gives me the sound I'm after, more defined and percussive. But I use a softer d instead of a harder t tonguing.

BTW what would a highland piper do for a triplet-like thing on an E, which transposes to an A on a d flute. I know about doublings, is there such a thing as an e 'tripling'?

[Peter Duggan]

BTW what would a highland piper do for a triplet-like thing on an E, which transposes to an A on a d flute. I know about doublings, is there such a thing as an e 'tripling'?

Doubling followed by strike, sometimes called hornpipe shake, jig shake, hubadah, pele or various other things, but basically equivalent to a double-cut roll.

[jemtheflute]

I think I do initially tongued front end crotchet (roll at start of 1/4 note) rolls on those (not a tune I "have", but can busk it in sessions). However, triple tonguing with t-d-l and slurring up to the following note gives a pretty good effect ("tuddle-ah-ah"). If you prefer "glottalling", start with one of those followed by d-l - "huddle-ah-ah"

[Conical bore]

Thanks everyone, for the feedback!

I have the Grey Larsen book, so I'll have to review that section on double cut rolls.

I spent some time this afternoon trying different ideas. The closest I got to something I liked (and could actually pull off, at my level) was using tongue for the attack, followed by a strike on next lower note to break it into a triplet. I hadn't considered using tongue for just the initial attack, without a full triple-tongue for that phrase. The tune needs that hard initial attack, and it sounded better to me than a cut or roll. My technique is still at the lower-intermediate stage, so that's a limitation. Same thing with glottal stops... I think that has potential but I'm just not there yet. I'll keep working at it, and thanks again for all the ideas.

@brad maloney: Yes, it's more d-d-dah than an evenly spaced triplet. That's always a problem in describing "ornaments" in this music. I play it that way with a "treble" ornament on mandolin (another weird term), so I think I've got the timing right.

[pancelticpiper]

For one thing, keep in mind that Cape Breton fiddlers often aren't doing a triplet at all, but, what would you call it? A "doublet"? Anyhow used in spots where an Irish fiddler would use a triplet but with only two notes in it. Listen to Jerry Holland, he does it in Brenda Stubbert's Reel. The exact match on flute would be an Irish "short roll", two notes with the first note cut very short and the second note correspondingly longer. (Two notes not counting the gracenotes.)

For another thing, the "scratch" triplets (I never heard that name before, but it does fit the sound of them) often aren't three notes either. An Irish fiddler, in a workshop, was describing the way he and many other Irish fiddlers played them as being a quiver of the bow, the bow changing directions several times in a splitsecond. I guess somebody would have to slow them down with software to hear exactly how many notes are in these things, it probably varies from player to player. The guy doing the workshop guessed that his bow was changing direction five or six times (they're not heard as distinct separate notes but merely a splitsecond scratchy sound). Once again a flutist doing a crisp "short roll" would match the overall sound nicely.

I asked this very question of the flutist in Altan years ago when he was doing a workshop here. I heard how well he matched the tight triplets the fiddlers played and asked him what he was doing, and he demonstrated it: an ordinary short roll.

A double cut roll would take too long, be too labored and note-y. Flutes don't have a quick enough response time to do a doublecut roll as fast as it would have to be to match the fiddlers' triplet. The Highland pipes do have a quick enough response time and I've heard Highland pipers do things which mimic the fiddlers' tight bowed triplets quite well.

[brad maloney]

There are three notes in a triplet from three changes in bow direction, every irish fiddler plays them with three notes, the attack and timing is different from fiddler to fiddler though.

Sean McGuire did occasionally play quintuplets, but that was Sean McGuire being Sean McGuire.

Brenda stubberts was written with triplets in mind, of that's at least how the guy who wrote the tune taught me how to play it.

Fwiw... CB fiddlers call trebles/ triplets/ scratch triplets "cuts" which is horribly confusing as the rest of the fiddling world defines a cut as an articulating grace note, usually used in a roll or to cut a quarter note into two eighth notes without changing bow direction.

Names be damned though, it's the sound that counts

[highwood]

every - an oft over used word

every irish fiddler plays them with three notes

Sean McGuire did occasionally play quintuplets, but that was Sean McGuire being Sean McGuire.

The one exception that proves the rule I guess!

[tin tin]

Here's a video that demos the triplets (she calls them 'birls') both slowly and up to speed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhl8L2XEnrM
I'm with pancelticpiper: short rolls do the trick and match up with the fiddlers. (And when I can get my fingers coordinated enough, it's a fun--if rather busy--variation to play short rolls in succession on the low A, the high A, the low A again, and the high G at the start of the B part).

[Peter Duggan]

Here's a video that demos the triplets (she calls them 'birls') both slowly and up to speed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhl8L2XEnrM

Ha, I was going to post that one (yep, they're birls to Scots!) along with Duncan Cameron's, where he's playing both AAA birls and an ABA alternative.