Chiff and Fipple Forums

hi all
It all depends who’s plain, that is, HOW it’s being played.
We all have likes and dislikes and favour certain styles of musical expressions and when real music is being listened to the instrument and even the player evaporates and all you experience is the music - pure and simple.
This requires that the listener can avail themselves of the experience also.
A tall order indeed.
I tend to think that’s what the musician should strive for when playing, that is NOT imposing the instruments or player’s technical aesthetic or their ego on the piece.
Off coarse I could be very wrong - ho hum
Un.

Nanohedron wrote:

Lightheaded Mike wrote:I think that "Music for a Found Harmonium" sounds dreadful on flute, but nice on fiddle.

It's dreadful on any instrument.

I would go along with that, but it is a good exercise for fiddlers.

Some interesting stretches along the way but a diabolical tune as far as tunes go.

Slan,
D.

dubhlinn wrote:

Nanohedron wrote:

Lightheaded Mike wrote:I think that "Music for a Found Harmonium" sounds dreadful on flute, but nice on fiddle.

It's dreadful on any instrument.

I would go along with that, but it is a good exercise for fiddlers.

Some interesting stretches along the way but a diabolical tune as far as tunes go.

Slan,
D.

Diabolical as in that the devil has no heart as well.

I can definitively say, as a witness, that none of the Monkees' tunes should be played on the pipes, nor the theme from Bonanza (I DON'T care about all those great cranns. Stuff 'em), and, above and beyond all, The Macarena.

I'm thinking that The Macarena would sound killer on button accordion, though . Imagine getting the basses going...
Ooh, another one: An Feochn (sp?) is a no no on banjo. I don't even think it would sit well on fiddle, but that might just be because I've always thought of it as "that beautiful air that Frankie Kennedy recorded."
It's a flute tune. Period.
Mike

The flute and Reavy tunes in general (Maudabawn Chapel included; then there's the charming little number called Never Was Piping So Gay -- yeah, put THAT on yer pipes and play it). Bleah. I appreciate his willingness to fully explore all octaves and use lots of eighth notes but I so far haven't found a way to make most of his tunes enjoyable on flute -- I always feel like I'm playing something really intended for the piano, and my results tend to be rather "yo ho heave ho" (even Hunter's House & Swans Among The Rushes).

(I'll make an exception for The Whistler of Rosslea, though. It's brilliant )

Oh, and The High Reel. I've been playing that stupid thing for 20 years and have never been able to think of an elegant solution outside nice, bouncy back-to-back A rolls, which I seem incapable of, at least at the speeds the Butterfliers seem to go to when they get excited they're playing a reel

But that's just a personal shortcoming.

Cathy Wilde wrote:The flute and Reavy tunes in general (Maudabawn Chapel included; then there's the charming little number called Never Was Piping So Gay -- yeah, put THAT on yer pipes and play it). ...

Oh, and The High Reel. I've been playing that stupid thing for 20 years and have never been able to think of an elegant solution outside nice, bouncy back-to-back A rolls, which I seem incapable of, at least at the speeds the Butterfliers seem to go to when they get excited they're playing a reel

But that's just a personal shortcoming.

Glad you held back some

I just got into Ed Reavy tunes and they 're a bugger to play well. And yup, try playing Never Was Piping So Gay on your pipes-not me....

SLOW AIRS ON CONCERTINA!

Concertinas are great for quicker tunes, having a rhythmic, percussive sound, but completely without expressional capability, no matter how much feeling you put into it.

A lot of Em tunes sound weird on pipes with a D-drone. Not the tunes themselves, or the tonality of pipes, but something about the droning effect in particular. I love The Green Fields of Rossbeigh to death, but IMO it don't work on pipes

I don't like playing tunes in A on my native American flute, it seems much better for aires:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55m_3HPEuWw

Kinry wrote:SLOW AIRS ON CONCERTINA!

Concertinas are great for quicker tunes, having a rhythmic, percussive sound, but completely without expressional capability, no matter how much feeling you put into it.

Wow. I couldn't disagree more. I find the concertina to be very expressive, and I love the sound of slow airs played on one because of the great range of expression! It's a different type of expression from a flute, sure, but you can't be serious! Cheers,

Rob

Slow airs on banjo played in tremolo style

claudine wrote:Slow airs on banjo played in tremolo style

Gawd. That's a possibility that had never even occurred to me. I can agree with you even though I've never heard it done.

I really don't like slow airs on Uilleann pipes.

I'm not expecting a lot of agreement here, but slow airs in general leave me cold. Most people just don't know how to play them; what should be a richly emotional performance too easily becomes overblown and bathetic. Never mind that there's no surer way to kill the momentum of a session than to grab the spotlight for ten minutes of heartfelt solo fingerholing that everybody is supposed to sit quietly and listen to.

That would be An Feochán, more or less, a breeze or a gust. Tommy Peoples made that one. All hail Frankie Kennedy of course, but it makes a great air on the pipes when you drop it down to D. As long as you spend 20 years learning how to play your F naturals properly.