Welcome to Chiff & Fipple's Irish Trad Music Forum

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Bloomfield
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Welcome to Chiff & Fipple's Irish Trad Music Forum

Post by Bloomfield »

This will be a space to discuss style and technique in Irish Traditional Music, or ITM. Mainly style: Since this forum is not specific to any instrument, but is about ITM, technical questions about the whistle or pipes or didgeridoo should be posted elsewhere. If you're asking if you should use the first or the third finger to cut a G on a D whistle, you'll get a better and quicker reply on the Poststructural Tinwhistle Forum and no one will ask you to take it elsewhere. But if you are asking why Micho Russell always cuts the high A on St. Anne's Reel, this is the place. (I don't know that Micho does, just made it up.) Expect to find here discussions about rhythm, variations, ornamentation as a stylistic device, the different styles of different regions or players, and so forth.

So, why ITM and why a separate forum?

A lot of people play ITM on the whistle. A lot of people play other music on the whistle, but still, as an instrument, the whistle is most often associated with ITM. No wonder then, that there were always discussions about ITM on the Tinwhistle Forum, and that people even posted their opinions about ITM without a disclaimer "what I just said applies to ITM and not to other types of music." As a result, along with discussions of ITM we'd get some discussion of "well, that's only true for ITM, and not for [insert type of music you play]!" A separate forum will allow people to just talk about ITM, and avoid confusion.

Perhaps a bigger issue, though, is the size of the Tinwhistle forum and the speed at which it moves. That makes for good banter, but it's sometimes hard to carry on a focused discussion if the thread keeps disappearing off the page in less than a day.

Finally, by moving to a separate forum, we are inviting all the flute and pipe players, the fiddlers and buttonboxers, and whoever else is out there and interested in ITM but doesn't play the whistle, to join us.

Thanks to StevieJ, Peter Laban, TeriK, and Loren, who all got the ball rolling on this. The idea arose out of a thread about the possibility of explaining and teaching rhythm and its subtle variations in ITM. Special thanks to Stevie & Peter who have volunteered to start discussion with some posts on that subject.

Thanks also to Rich and Dale for Chiff & Fipple and for setting up the new forum.

Enjoy!
/Bloomfield
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ChristianRo
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Post by ChristianRo »

Good idea, boys. After struggling with pipes and whistle for several years I am still not sure what to think of that ITM thing. I remember one tionol when someone hung a poster at the door of the room where the bodhran (!!) workshop was held: "When you first hear ITM, you think "Hey, these tunes all sound the same!" It is only after years of learning and studying of individual and regional styles, variation, ornamentation and structure that you come to realize "Hey, these tunes DO all sound the same!"
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Post by Roger O'Keeffe »

If it's about the fiddle as used in ITM, certainly, though if it comes from a non-Chiffler in search of a forum they would probably be redirected to a dedicated fiddle forum on some other site.
An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
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