Half-holing C-nat

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Nanohedron
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Re: Half-holing C-nat

Post by Nanohedron »

squidgirl wrote: Thu May 27, 2021 4:50 pm
R_whistle wrote: Thu May 27, 2021 1:39 pmI've been finding that putting my ringfinger of my right hand back down once I get up to A/B has been working just as well.
Yep, that's what I've been doing for all of these years, due to my dinky pinkies, and it works OK. But I'm curious whether moving a little further toward a pipers' grip might enable lower pinky to do settle down and get a job.
It's worth a try. I didn't use piper's grip on high whistles, and although my pinkies, too, are underendowed (I call it Dinky Pinkie Syndrome), it simply didn't matter to me; never thought of the pinkie as freeloading, as it were. I just now tried piper's grip on a stick and I was able to rest my pinkie on it. Basically, you just move your grip to a place where the pinkie is able to hit the right spot. If that grip doesn't crowd your playing fingers too much, then it looks like Bob's your uncle.

And I also discovered a mystery: even with the pinkie down on the stick, I found I could raise my ring finger with relative ease, unlike when you hold the palm down flat, as on a table. I wouldn't say it's ideal, but it seems probably quite sufficient. So if this true of everyone, then I hereby officially retract my earlier concerns and pronouncements on the matter. Please regard them as inapplicable, null and void. Pinkie-brace away, if you like. I probably still won't, but old dogs and new tricks, and all that.
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Re: Half-holing C-nat

Post by Stev0 »

I'm not really a whistler yet, except for having tested my daughters whistle before sending it to her for christmas last year (I'll be getting my own in a few weeks), but I have been playing keyless flute for almost a year. When I started flute, I was naturally trying to brace it with my right pinkie and was getting terrible cramps in my pinkie from the stretch. I started using a folded up piece of paper stuck to where my pinkie goes with a hair tie. It gave me a raised brace to reduce the stretch and was much more comfortable. Eventually I started learning half-holing starting with F-nat and then Eb, ocassionally other notes, but not much as forked fingering feels alot more natural to me. I found that using pipers grip on my right hand not only made half-holing easier and more accurate, but also eliminated the need for the pinkie brace. Win-win! :D
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Re: Half-holing C-nat

Post by pancelticpiper »

About the topic of anchor fingers, I made a little video where I talk about the various approaches I've observed trad whistle and flute players using:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ_ypnajB44&t=6s

About approaches to playing C natural, I've always done both the half-holing and the cross fingering. Indeed the two approaches aren't mutually exclusive, and on the uilleann pipes especially are commonly done in conjunction. I've always done the same on whistle.

Passages that go high B > high C natural > high B I've always done by leaving the top finger down and cracking it open a bit.

For middle C natural (which I call that because middle D is its neighbour, and the flute can play low C natural) I've always done the crossfingered C natural, with or without also venting the top finger.

Yes there are players, very good players, who don't use the crossfingered C natural. But be aware that most of these players aren't playing half-holed C naturals in all the spots that you think they would. Rather, they tend to play C# in many places that, in theory, a C natural would be played.

The most extreme example of that I've personally observed is when I arrived at a house party to find two young Irish fluteplayers sitting in front of the fire-place hammering out reel after reel, and nary a C natural between them! They were excellent players and knew loads of tunes.

In many tunes it mattered little, but it was odd to hear tunes like Rakish Paddy, the Gravel Walk, the Nine Points of Roguery, and the Bank Of Ireland played with C sharps throughout.

There are many tunes that would be extremely clumsy to play if you tried half-holing all the C naturals. Of course there are many ways of restructuring tunes to avoid difficult notes, and Irish pipers and whistle players have long done such things regarding the note F natural. There are many tunes that I've heard played with F naturals throughout by fiddle, banjo, and box players that I've heard with F sharps throughout by pipers, fluters, and whistlers. I've heard players who only half-hole C natural apply the same sorts of stratagems to the note C natural. (F natural has to be half-holed on keyless uilleann chanters, flutes, and whistles.)

One cool thing about crossfingered C natural is that it's part of a shared suite of performance practices amongst trad Irish woodwinds (uilleann pipes, flute, whistles). Obviously this isn't a practical argument for using crossfingered C natural, but it does help explain why it exists. Add to that the fact that the Baroque flute used crossfingered C natural as well.
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