Another key check please....

[DrPhill]

I am having difficulty figuring this one out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwmvOuap7Z0

I can find a lot of the notes on the A whistle but my (home made) bass A may not be perfectly in tune so that may be throwing me a little.
Any clues would be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Phill

[benhall.1]

Hi Phill

It's in E minor. This setting on the session.org isn't bad. Some of the rhythms are wrong, but you'd get that from listening in any case, and the notes in this setting are pretty much right.

[benhall.1]

Oh, and it definitely won't fit on your A whistle - well, not without a LOT of bending notes, half-holing etc. [But see on; I changed my mind. Sort of.] It would be best on a D whistle, I think, although you would have to fold some notes up an octave. If you have one, you might try either an alto or low G whistle, which would give you less folding at the bottom end of the tune, but would need some folding down (as it were) at the top end of the tune.

Actually, on second thoughts, maybe you could try it on your A whistle. One of the problems with that is that the seventh note of the scale ('C' fingering) is one of the strongest notes in this tune, and the one that the tune starts with.

I'm going to have a go on my A whistle now ...

Nope. It's beyond me. It goes way too high. I think the only whistle that I can make it work on is a D. It's because the tune covers a full two octave range, and I really don't like 'folding down' at the top end, so folding up at the bottom end seems to be the only solution - for me at least. You only have to deal with one note - the low B.

[DrPhill]

Thanks Ben. I must be getting better as I seem to have come to the same conclusion as you in your second and third thoughts. My home-made Bass A has humoungous holes, and the first octave B is strong as a half-holed note. I got that. I ran out of puff for the higher notes though - I can reach the second octave B but only without an audience, and certainly not while playing along to a track that I am learning.

As usual I hate folding. I have a mental block about it - if I am learning a tune by listening then folding throws me completely. Never mind that some tunes that I have learnt are already folded (in a manner of speaking) by having large, even octave, jumps as part of the tune. If that is not the way that I hear it in my head I cannot do it. I just cannot hear D and d (for example) as the same note. Maybe it is musical insecurity.

Thanks for a pointer to the setting on the session, but I am going cold-turkey on dots at the moment. I am making progress, and I am enjoying learning the tunes more by ear than from dots. When I learn them from dots I get a mechanical representation of the tune, and then have to relearn with the expression. Learning by ear *seems* slower at the moment but is possibly faster overall as I only learn once.

I had a 'doh!' moment earlier when I realised that the rather odd choice of a Ab note on a tune otherwise in D was actually a G# and the tune was in A. Probably because I am listening to 'pesky fiddlers'. 'The gentle light that wakes me' fits a treat on the bass A btw - give it a try. It is reason enough on its own for having a bass A. It works on the D but looses something without the bottom A (sort of substitute the D on a D whistle but it is second rate).

Edit: I will try on the D, though.

[Peter Duggan]

As usual I hate folding. I have a mental block about it - if I am learning a tune by listening then folding throws me completely. Never mind that some tunes that I have learnt are already folded (in a manner of speaking) by having large, even octave, jumps as part of the tune. If that is not the way that I hear it in my head I cannot do it. I just cannot hear D and d (for example) as the same note. Maybe it is musical insecurity.

I don't think it's any kind of insecurity. Some tunes fold gracefully and some don't. For some it's the norm when transferring from, say, fiddle to whistle/flute whereas others are irreparably destroyed (on which note a few GHB settings of this and that spring readily to mind). Some still sound fine in ensemble with some instruments (e.g. whistle/flute) folding and others (e.g. fiddle) playing all the notes where they might be less satisfactory as folded solos. And of course there's an art to appropriate folding when the most elegant solution isn't necessarily folding just the out-of-range note(s). The bottom line is that D and d are not the same note and you're not wrong to be bothered by it.

[DrPhill]

The bottom line is that D and d are not the same note and you're not wrong to be bothered by it.

Thanks for the reassurance Peter.... I figured that there must be a skill to folding - probably entire phrases rather than just a quick blip doubling the expected frequency. I do not have that skill yet.

[benhall.1]

The bottom line is that D and d are not the same note and you're not wrong to be bothered by it.

Thanks for the reassurance Peter.... I figured that there must be a skill to folding - probably entire phrases rather than just a quick blip doubling the expected frequency. I do not have that skill yet.

With this particular tune, it's best just to fold that one note: the bottom B.

[pancelticpiper]

The thing about folding is that when the player is really good, with great rhythm and tone, folding sounds good no matter how awkward it looks on paper.

I'll always bring up Paddy Carty, who would do the oddest sorts of folding. In other hands it might sound clumsy, but in his hands you hardly notice it.

There are tunes for example where on the box or fiddle the tune goes D C# D. Most pipers/fluters/whistlers would play a cran or something there, D D D or what have you, or perhaps play D A D to break it up. Somebody might play the whole bit up an octave d c# d. But Paddy will play D c# D (yes the leap of a 7th) and few probably notice.

Also listen to Matt Molloy play Pull The Knife And Stick It Again. That made me realise that what octave a note happens in doesn't matter as much as playing the notes and keeping the flow going.

I do think that folding tends to work better on flute than on whistle or pipes.

Paddy Carty; jump to 1:14 to hear the D to c jump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s8yzKp ... G&index=12

Matt Molloy (at 1:00) playing octaves all over the map https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4qflFfkvCM

[flyingparchment]

if Paddy Carty wanted to put the C# there, i wonder why he didn't just play the low C# - was the objection to using notes which don't exist on the pipes, or some other reason?

[Peter Duggan]

That made me realise that what octave a note happens in doesn't matter as much as playing the notes and keeping the flow going.

It can matter. While it probably doesn't in the trad dance tune context where it's the norm, it can spoil some things completely. Like Mozart, where the solo parts of the long-accepted versions of his Clarinet Quintet and Concerto for standard clarinet were crudely hacked by person(s) unknown to keep them within range and so obviously suffer (especially in the Concerto) from distorted lines compared to the restored versions for basset clarinet. You can take a typical trad dance tune, fold the odd note (especially in ensemble) and it can be perfectly effective and idiomatic, or you can take something else (perhaps a wide-ranging fiddle slow air) that simply doesn't fit your instrument and hack it to bits trying to force it. There's good folding and bad folding, and I don't think Phill's wrong to be wary even if it's not a problem in the tune he wants to play here.

PS (edited) and, yes, blowing through the octaves on the flute in a dance tune can add to the sense of pulse and idiomatic enhancement, even where there's no need to fold. I love that when done well!

[pancelticpiper]

if Paddy Carty wanted to put the C# there, i wonder why he didn't just play the low C# - was the objection to using notes which don't exist on the pipes, or some other reason?

For sure for all the years I played Irish flute- over 30- I used the C# and C footjoint keys when needed. I was fortunate to have a nice mid-19th century flute where all the keys worked well.

But every time I handed my flute to a "real Irish fluteplayer" the first thing they would do is rotate the footjoint so that the keys were pointing away. (The second thing they would do is shove the headjoint all the way in...but that's another story.)

I can't recall seeing any of the trad fluteplayers I was listening to use the footjoint keys. I don't think Carty did, nor Molloy.

As to the "why" of not using the footjoint keys, you would have to ask the people who choose not to use them.

[bradhurley]

I can't recall seeing any of the trad fluteplayers I was listening to use the footjoint keys. I don't think Carty did, nor Molloy.

As to the "why" of not using the footjoint keys, you would have to ask the people who choose not to use them.

Carty might have used them on the Jug of Punch, I can't remember. He was a watch repairman by trade and would have kept his keys in working order, likely including the low ones. He played a Radcliff system flute, sort of a hybrid between simple-system and Boehm. But in general, I think there are several reasons why those bottom keys aren't widely used by traditional Irish flute players:

1. If they learned on the whistle first--and many did--they got used to jumping the octave for notes below D and it just carried over to the flute.
2. Some players removed those bottom keys to make the bottom D stronger, and on many older flutes those keys didn't work reliably anyway or the notes were weak.
3. It's easier to jump octaves than to train your little finger to hit the bottom keys accurately. I played 6-key flutes for decades before getting my first 8-key flute...the six fingers covering the tone holes had about 30 years of practice, whereas my pinkie was still a beginner and far behind in terms of dexterity and accuracy. For a while I was playing with a fiddler who played lots of Paddy Fahy and Eddie Kelly tunes, and there were a couple of sets in which I used all 8 keys on the flute. It took me almost 7 years to get them to sound close to effortless and I never entirely succeeded.

[pancelticpiper]

Carty might have used them on the Jug of Punch, I can't remember. He was a watch repairman by trade and would have kept his keys in working order, likely including the low ones.

That got me looking, because AFAIK Carty never used those keys.

Here you can see he has the footjoint turned so that the touches are pointing away from him, quite out of reach of his fingers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR-Pygcqo8Q

Here, while playing, you can see that the footjoint is rotated out of normal position (in which the footjoint key touches are directly under the little finger). With the footjoint misaligned like that it would be difficult, though perhaps not impossible, to reach the keys. I imagine the goal was to get the keys out of the way so that the little finger could rest on the wood body of the flute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0Ro1INYLXQ

[bradhurley]

You're right, and I checked Grey Larsen's notes to his transcription of Carty's setting of The Jug of Punch (which has a lot of notes below D), and he confirms that Carty just played those notes an octave higher despite having the low C# and C keys available.