Think he was (somewhat mischievously?) asking whether maki (or we?) thought L.E. McCullough’s use of double cut rolls and tongued triplets was helpful bringing out the best in that particular tune!
for example in my opinion a double cut roll usually sounds the best
Sounds the best where?
but I can’t say I’ve had many troubles of the sort discussed above. In terms of indecisiveness I always have a general idea of what I want my tune to sound like and make a point to implement my own preferred ornaments and such.
Re; the mischief in the question about LEMc’s playing. There was ofcourse an element of tongue-in-cheek there but at the same time I think it would be more useful if anybody adding clips to this thread could explain what attracted them to the music in them. Otherwise we’ll end up with a few yards of youtube links and being non the wiser for it. So it was also seriously inviting comment.
Where there are four consecutive notes in a fast tune. I said usually because tongued triplets could add a little internal variation to a song such as the Kesh Jig, as where using double cut rolls every time might get a little repetitive.
Well I guess so! Every now and then I wonder what I could do to make a tune sound better, even if I am happy with the way I play it. Which is why it’s important for me to listen to other people playing the same song so that I can go, “Hey, I like the way that person executed that part of the song!” and go on to adjust my own.
Sorry for the double post (not sure how you guys feel about double posting, I know some forums are really picky about this sort of thing), but I actually just want to verify really quickly if triple tonguing is what I think it is. Which would be tonguing three times to separate a note into four. Yes? No?
O’Mulriain, can you actually play double cut rolls? Really? After 5 months??
I’ve been playing whistle for quite a while now, and I can’t even play double cut rolls, at least not spontaneously and reliably. Yes, if I decide a particular spot calls for one and I work it out. Otherwise no. And it’s no great loss. It’s a technique you can go your entire whistling career without, and I can’t recall every hearing a double cut roll from the recorded likes of Mary Bergin or Joanie Madden.
In the case of McCullough, it’s more a virtuoso show-off thing, legitimate but idiosyncratic, and the musicality of which is open to debate - which is part of Gumby’s point. And it’s hard to assert where the technique sounds best when it’s not needed at all.
No, of course they don’t need to be the same. And some things work on one or the other that don’t work on both. But, yes, this (talking ‘more about the wood than the trees’) could equally well have gone in the flute forum. And who doesn’t maintain a broadly similar core when taking tunes from whistle to flute (or vice versa), even though some things change?
OK, I’ll play (with your? recording of Willie Clancy’s Banish Misfortune)…
Steady tempo, variety of articulation and bold use of silence (in terms of staccato/rests) all combining to give the tune striking shape in a manner that’s simultaneously relaxed (even ‘slinky’) but solid, maintaining forward impulse and quite different from the ‘seamless legato piper/whistler style’ (sorry for that lousy designation!) I’m personally trying to escape. Not to mention that amazing ‘sliding c and f’ you so rightly highlight in your commentary as part of its very fabric!
No. Three notes (normally rapid and frequently, but not necessarily, a triplet), all tongued (typically tkt or dgd).
Er, no. Has nothing to do with four notes. It’s multiple-point tonguing, using both the tip and back of the tongue - usually TKT or TTK - to produce three articulations in rapid succession.
In the context of trad technique, it often involves breaking a note of any duration into a corresponding “triplet”: G3 → (3GGG or G2 → G/G/G. But any three notes can be triple tongued, as in jigs: G>AB A>Bc etc.
Well, The Kesh Jig is a tune, not a song. Which is not just playing semantics. Songs and tunes may call for very different approaches, especially if you need to take into account the phrasing of the underlying words.
There’s a quite well-known anecdote around here (SoCal) of an uilleann piping workshop where the teacher called for a double cut roll very early on in the setting or whatever tune he was teaching. He insisted that nothing else would do, and would proceed no further otherwise.
There ensued the spectacle of a room full of fairly experienced pipers foundering spectacularly on the shoals of the double cut roll for a half hour or so. After which the entire workshop broke up, having gone no further than the first few notes of the tune.
Oh, why can’t things ever be what they seem? I thought a double cut roll was the same thing as an extended roll (as in a cut a tap and a cut), and I already told you what I thought a tongued triplet was, and I can see that I was wrong about that. And yes, MTGuru, you are correct in regards to my ability to perform said ornament. I have trouble doing finger bounces on those top three fingers let alone a double cut roll!
Also I always assumed that songs and tunes where synonyms of each other, but referring back to their definitions I realize that was yet another misconception I had.
I look like a real dunce now, don’t I? Well at least I’ve learned something new (or actually a lot of things).
Um… thanks for all your help everybody (even if you where cringing your teeth and rolling your eyes at everything I said ).
a room full of fairly experienced pipers foundering spectacularly on the shoals of the double cut roll
Have to confess the term hadn’t registered with me (despite playing whistle for 30+ years and with some purpose for a good 25) till I stumbled over it in Larsen’s book the other day. Though at least the ‘double cut’ makes sense there where (to my mind) it’s still a daft way to describe a casadh!
Not to muddy the terminology waters … and I have no idea what Larsen says …
But what I mean by double cut roll is not (I think!) a casadh. It’s simply and literally subsituting two cuts for the one cut in a roll.
For example, in a long roll, roughly G{B}G{F}G → G/{c}G/{B}G{F}G. Or in a short roll {B}G{F}G → {c}G/{B}G/{F}G.
If I understand what Bloomfield describes in that old post, that’s what I call (probably idiosyncratically) a flip, sounding the main note briefly before the cut - {GB}G - however it’s approached.
In any case, the “twisting of the fingers” seems like a good description for lots of things.
But my point was that the ‘double cut’ of ‘double cut roll’ describes exactly what I’d expect (‘simply and literally substituting two cuts for the one cut’) whereas ‘double cut’ on its own (as apparently used by some, but not Larsen, for the casadh/flip) is pretty unhelpful when you’re not getting two cuts there!
All this talk of yer fancy-schmantsy double cut rolls. Sure and eventually someone’s competitive streak will have to do one better and we’ll all be breaking our fingers anew trying to learn triple cut rolls. And so on. Where will the arms race end?
