I think it’s your stick, and you should play it in whatever way brings you joy. There is value in leaning the tradition and the commonly embraced techniques and ornamentation, but I see no harm in completely ignoring them and playing what you want. If you can produce music that is in tune and can express melodic ideas with any instrument, then fair play to you.
On the flip side, I heard a highland piper in a local Celtic Rock band who had no idea how to even finger any of the notes in the accepted way. He couldn’t play even remotely in tune and his timing was all over the place…yet he was on a stage at an Irish festival presenting it as if it had some musical value. I don’t agree with that. Maybe it had some entertainment value in some way, but not for me. Nothing wrong with playing it any way he wants, but I don’t think he should have been taking money for it and calling it piping.
The last poster contradicts himself. Viz. play what you want; and then knocks the guy, playing GHB, who couldn’t do the business, to the tradition, whilst playing in a free sort of a style.
There is something called style/idiom. If you pretend to be an ITM player, surely you have to do the tradition. Break away from that too much; your not an ITM musician.
Use uilleann pipes to produce whatever music you want, naturally, or synthetically, but at some point, some one is going to say ‘play The humours of..’. If you haven’t got the N’YAH; they will be very disappointed.
Mr. Gumby rightly pointed out the importance of phrasing and rhythmn, too, to the general arguement, that the answer is; because.
Do not wander too far from the original question.
Maybe my point was a little too subtle.
I think it’s your stick, and you should play it in whatever way brings you joy…If you can produce music that is in tune and can express melodic ideas with any instrument, then fair play to you.
Translation: Play music to bring yourself joy. Playing in tune and expressing melody can be pleasing, especially to yourself, even without detailed ornamentation.
…had no idea how to even finger any of the notes in the accepted way. He couldn’t play even remotely in tune and his timing was all over the place…but I don’t think he should have been taking money for it and calling it piping.
Translation: Playing out of tune (unintentionally) is not musical. Calling it piping and charging money to do public performance of it is cheating the audience and the people paying for it. My point is that there are far worse things that detract from playing music than going light on ornamentation. If you are nicely presenting other facets of music (tuning, rhythm, tempo) then it can still be enjoyable music.
Now on to your quotes:
the answer is; because.
and…
The last poster contradicts himself.
I think the argument you make is weakened when what you use to support it is is an attack on the writer instead of what was written, and that your ultimate answer is “because”. I’m just sayin… 
The gist of the last few posts amuses me. I like where this is going.
What else but a bagpipe could call itself a genuine ‘folk’ instrument, wrapped in poverty and adorned with the blood of peasantry; and yet demand the strictest of ‘classical’ technique from its disciples; casting them into a genre bound by a straitjacket tighter than that of 12 tone serialism, as if by its own innate savage nobility it can singularly bridge the divide between the weighty artifice of gentility and the banal bliss of ignorance. ha. 
Hmm … It’s not clear to me if you’re promoting or mocking the false folk/art music dichotomy and serialism straw man. Please clarify so your poor moderator doesn’t have to think so hard. 
ROFLAO.
Finally, an instrument for the common man! Excuse me as I go out to the shed and whip one up…
Rereading the original post again I see the op is venting at those who try beyond their ability and lose the music. taking back my it’s all about the ornamentation post but with some pipers it is. After all a gentleman is someone who can play fast and heavily ornamented but doesn’t always need to or maybe can’t but adds a rythmic dimension or subtley that shows complete involement or understanding of the music. I’ve read Pat Mitchell’s article a few times and it’s a wonderful answer to the original question. I love Micho Russell and I love Patsy Touhy, go figure. Never heard Matt Kiernan or Jim Brophy but have heard some of his father Pat Brophy. I really like Mitchell’s list of the things that add up to a consumate perfomance, though, nice things to think about. The best words of advice I was ever given on this subject is to over exagerate everything in practice and then to forget it all in performance.
I find non musicians or musicians involved only on the surface of it all tend to respond to speed and virtuosity more so than rythmic subtlety and phrasing because they haven’t dedicated the time into listening to the music. The music is like a tide pool. takes a long time to see all thats going on and appreciate the importance of it all. sometimes all we see are the bigger fish.
lads, either way all I know is when I see a piper play I’m mesmerized.
And here, once again, we meet the need to develop a critical ear.
I’m going to take a different tack than this thread, a broader overview if you will.
It struck me, a long time ago, that whether I was listening to a Bulgarian bitov ensemble (gaida, kaval, gadulka, tambura, teppan) or a Central French ensemble (cornemuse, fiddle, and box) or an Irish ensemble (uilleann pipes, fiddle, flute, box) that the bagpipe in the ensemble’s role was to play a more ornamented version of the melody than the other instruments. In each tradition there are pipe-specific ornaments which the other musicians either don’t play or, in most cases, have a simpler equivalent of. So in a broad European traditional music sense, no, it’s not OK for the uilleann pipes to play in a simple way.
I’ve heard it on several sorts of bagpipes, the Gaida, the Highland pipes, the uilleann pipes: someone picks up the pipes and plays it by simply transferring their fingerings and style from whatever instrument they normally play, be it flute or whatever. It never sounds “right” because it lacks the stylistic devices normally associated with the particular bagpipe.
On the other hand, the question “is it meaningful and OK to play Irish pipe music in a simple way” can be answered with a big YES. Simple doesn’t necessarily mean non-idiomatic. On a few occasions, when I’ve sat down to transcribe a Paddy Keenan tune, I’ve been amazed at how little ornamentation there is. Yes he CAN play with every ornament in the book but when he’s playing with others his playing can be extremely straightforward. In one polka, one section had ONE single gracenote in it. No staccato triplets, no rolls, no trills, no crans, only that one single thumb gracenote and exquisite timing and phrasing.
It’s on the album Na Keen Affair, the set of polkas Herb Reids/She Said She Couldn’t Dance/Shooting the Bull. Listen to that at half speed… I don’t think you’ll hear a fiddle and pipe playing together more flawlessly in unison than that. Paddy’s playing is extremely pared-down to exactly match the fiddle. It wondefully demonstrates that a top piper can toss out the entire repertoire of ornamentation and still produce excellent piping.
And here, once again, we meet the need to develop a critical ear.
And here, once again, we meet the need to develop an open mind.
I hesitated to get into the middle of this as passions seem to be running high, but I wanted to share an experience from the first Tionol I went to (before I had ever picked up a set of pipes). The person who was teaching the “beginners” class saw that the class was true beginners. I don’t think there was a single person who had played more than six months. He told us the most important thing was to play. If you like Christmas carols, then play Christmas carols. It will develop your ability to play by ear. But he also told us to listen to the greats - Willie Clancy, Leo Rowsome, Seamus Ennis.
My opinion is that you can play without ornamentation, but as you progress as a player, at some point you are going to want to learn the difficult ornamentation. I believe playing becomes much more fun when you can throw triplets or rolls into the music. I personally get great satisfaction if I can sound like a “real” piper. Anyway, that’s my two cents, for what it’s worth.
This is very insightful regarding the impulse behind using a stock inventory of ornaments when playing uilleann pipes (or other pipes for that matter, as you point out). All bagpipes are apparently based on an instrument that must find a way to segment a continuous stream of sound and that’s probably why ornaments were developed (form following function). Even when the instrument evolves into one that can do this by cutting off the continuous stream (e.g., uilleann or Northumbrian pipes) there is still momentum from tradition (the venerable democracy of the dead) that “dictates” that these ornaments be used at critical junctures in the phrasing of the tune (and as you suggest each genre of music in which a bagpipe performs will accomodate this differently vis-a-vis the meter, etc.). Thanks for the information.
just want to highlight, (& I dont know if Panceltic chose these particular pipes on purpose: {sly dog if you did! })
Gaida, Cornemuse du Centre, Uilleann [& NSP] are all pipes whose technique includes the ability to stop the chanter’s sound. In fact in Breton use of the GHB, it is also a common feature to stop the chanter sound.
Please, continue.
Ornamentation is only the means to an end.
If the means becomes an end in itself then I would question its value.
If you want to play pipes within the “tradition”, by which I mean the heritage sense rather than the orthodoxy sense, you need to come to some understanding of that tradition. The Pat Mitchell articles go a long ways towards describing the “end” in words.
Ornamentation is one of the primary means of expressing the “rhythm and structure” of our source music. It is true that, poorly executed, ornaments fail, as they do when used immoderately (except, perhaps, in the most expert hands). There are indeed other ways of achieving similar musical ends, and I think (for instance) that every piper should be thinking hard about phrasing, the precise length of chanter stops, the articulation with which fingers are lifted and put down, alternate fingerings… these are powerful tools, at least as important as cuts and rolls. But I am not sure they are easier!
Bill
And here, once again, we meet the need to develop an open mind.
Having a critical ear is not in any sense exclude anyone from having an open mind. It facilitates forming an informed opinion.
It’s also ‘a means to an end’ as Bill above describes. To play music you need a critical ear, to listen to yourself and make decisions on what to do to make your music shine.
In the Chris Langan book Chris is quoted talking about John Kelly’s approach ‘when I listen to a man playing a tune, I don’t listen to the tune. I listen to what he does with it.’ That’s applying a critical ear. Approaching what you hear for what it is and on it’s own terms, that’s having an open mind.
Accepting everything that’s thrown at you regardless of what it is, that’s a different thing again.
Another factor is the lack of dynamics – ornaments can give emphasis to notes.
If I pick out some simple melody by ear (like a Christmas carol), on pipes or on tin whistle, I find that I naturally put ornaments in to outline the phrases.
So true, great point.