Many tunes seems to have this structure, sorry I cant figure out ABC notation, but it’s like:
e a a-triplet f a a-triplet
It’s that a a-triplet thing that’s tripping me up.
An example is second part of Kildare fancy or Dinky’s (yeah, I know I already asked about that one).
So how do you do it? I can barely do an A roll. My fingers just don’t go very fast. Especially my ring finger. It does not want to move. I swear that thing has no connection to my brain. Seriously. How do you do it? Do you really do a roll there?
To be honest, finger articulation studies can be boring. B-O-R-I-N-G!!!
However, they generally are essential, at least for most players.
After all, it’s just not fair to expect the fingers to execute any given ornament unless they already know just what to do, and how to do it.
About that ring finger, my suggestion is to first work at getting it to cooperate, as a member of your digital team. That may take some extraordinary effort, concentration and patience on your part, and let me also suggest that you begin that effort VERY SLOWLY, and VERY DELIBERATELY, while giving the matter all of the time it could take to succeed.
I think this a sheet music issue: You are looking at stuff written as a fiddle would play it. You could triple-tongue it, but on the flute the natural thing to play there would be long A rolls: E A-roll F A-roll.
Along the same lines, SB, I believe I’ve heard Matt Molloy play precicely in unison with a fiddler bowing triplets on a tune like Glass of Beer (the same phrase I think SB is talking about). Does anyone know if Molloy is triple tonguing or is he adding an additional cut to the rolls, or does he tongue the first note of the roll after slurring into the first note of the four (A’s in SB’s case)? Doing a regular flute roll can fill the space and sound good, but it still lacks that 4th note/pulse. I believe Molloy does this same thing in Toss the Feathers.
In other words, SB, I’ve had the same question, so thanks for getting this thread started.
You also hear flute players use a triplet pattern with the note below in the middle, which in this example would be e a a-g-a-triplet f a a-g-a-triplet. You can finger that just like a roll, but with the tap elongated so you can actually hear the note.
(Some?) Fiddlers do that sort of thing as well, but usually not on open string notes like the third string A, presumably because it would involve crossing to the D string in the middle of the “ornament”.
Note that these figures would normally be used starting on the offbeat, so that if you think of each measure of music as being four quarter notes, it is always the 2nd or 4th quarter note replaced by the triplet.
I bumped into this when looking at Boys of the Lough.
On Matt Molloy’s “Matt Molloy” CD I was convinced there was a triplet on F -
dB|:AF (3FFF - as indeed the ABC from thesession.org shows. However it did not seem right to me. After some asking around and some very careful slowing down and experimentation, it seemed to me that the closest I could get to how he sounds was to play dB |: AF ~F2 … ie. AF followed by a short roll on an F Crotchet. Note that this is the same as A~F3 just that the other way of writing it made it clearer to me what was happening.
And the strange thing about this is that it does sound like the F crotchet is split into three elements, even though it is actually cut-F-tap-F with the cut on the off-beat (i.e the “2” of the 1-2-3-4 : 4/4 time signature). This also works for me on e.g. Silver Spear, Bag of Money and a few others where something similar happens. (A long roll on the beat (e.g. XX | ~F3X XX XX |…) needs a completely different treatment…)
Probably not the only way of dealing with this, but…
Yes, we really do roll on the triplet (can be written equally validly as a crotchet with a roll). I think in that kind of context in reels I tend to tongue the start of the roll lightly - in the equivalent figures in jigs one drops straight into the roll. I’m pretty sure MM either tongues or glottals these in reels at least some of the time.
As for tapping with L3, if it won’t do it, it’s a tension/posture issue. Get it relaxed and “throw” it at the tube to bounce off - you just have to practice, as has been said, doing that without any obstructive tension.
When I hear fiddlers do it, it really is a triplet and it’s very crisp, not all slurred together. Anyway, it comes up a lot and despite my efforts I find it tremendously difficult to do. Sometimes when I listen to flute players I don’t think they are doing rolls there either. It just sounds too perfect.
I think they probably are doing rolls. But it takes a long time to get them clen and sharp and crisp. It’s not like I am so good at rolls or anything, but it took me a full year of practicing them reeeeaaaally sloooooowly every day before I got them halfway decent.
Here’s the beginning of the Maids of Mt Cisco, with the speed halved to help bring out what is going on. This is Paddy Killoran on fiddle, and IMO you can very clearly hear that he is playing the A triplet-A pattern for the “A” measures and a standard G roll for the “musically equivalent” spot in the “G” measures.
Ornamentation techniques and capabilities differ from one instrument to another. What is possible to do on the fiddle may not necessarily be possible on the flute. This is yet another reason why sheet music is not always the best approach for learning Irish tunes, since any transcription of a tune that is done to any level of detail beyond just a basic notation of the melody is going to favor one instrument or another. Even a basic melody notation may need to favor particular instruments, such as in very notey tunes where including all the notes would not indicate where the flute player needs to breathe, but leaving out notes to show the flute player where to breathe would give the fiddler or piper no idea of what to play in those spots. The best approach is to find a recording of the tune played the way you would like to sound, and then adapt your playing and techniques to whatever will most closely approximate that sound. Recording one’s self and listening back can greatly accelerate this process.
As for the comment about rolls not being possible in places where fiddlers play triplets, a properly executed roll on the flute when played at speed can end up sounding just like a triplet. The key is to remember that the cut and the tap have no time value whatsoever in a roll, but serve only as separators to divide up the note being rolled. As such, they perform the same job as the tongue or the glottal stop would do in dividing that same note up into a triplet. If you practice even your slow rolls with this in mind (i.e. you are dividing one long note into three shorter notes, and you are free to play with the rhythm of those three notes rather than always playing them equally) you can learn how to make the cut and tap so efficiently that they indeed have no discernible time value even in a slow roll. From there, it is not much of a jump to being able to play triplet-sounding rolls at speed.
The slow-down thing is helpful! It also shows quite clearly that Paddy Killoran doesn’t play a quaver triplet as the ornament to/in place of the crotchet A, but two semi-quavers and a quaver. Very often when one sees triplets written in ITM notations, both as ornaments as in this case or as melodic variations, they are rarely played as true triplets with three equal notes in the time alloted to two. I agree with John Kerr that one can play about with the rhythmic timing of these things, but they are hardly ever played as true triplets, regardless of how the separation of the notes may be articulated. Another case of the written notation being misleading; or else the style of playing has changed since O’Neill and co. were transcribing all the tunes - maybe they played true triplets back then…
As a side note, some fiddlers substitute the fiddle equivalent of a cran when needing a roll type ornament on the open string if they don’t want to do a bowed triple - two hammers on to different higher positions instead of the impossible hammer on (cut equiv) and pull off (tap equiv).
Sometimes in place of what is written as a triplet, like in the tune Brenda Stubbert’s, instead of a roll which I often can’t even fit in the space, I’ll just stick a cut in the middle of a note. I hope that’s not cheating. Feels like cheating.
It’s not cheating. You can even just leave out the roll and just play a long note. Or depending on the context it might be a nice opportunity for a breath. Ignore any indication of ornamentation in the sheet music! You can fill that stuff in later on your own using your own taste.
Just a comment on the sheet music. I find that I get a lot more targeted responses to my questions when I refer to it rather than the vague “we don’t know what you’re talking about” answers when I just say like how so-and-so plays it in whatever tune. In other words, I am using the written notation so you know exactly what kind of sounds I’m talking about. I have yet to hear anybody play my example tunes without some kind of ornamentation in those places.
By the way, I got a PM about two-handed B and A rolls. I will have to try that.