I often heard airs played by pipers who leave out notes or phrases which are needed to bear the metre and words of the asssociated songs, or more often insert redundant notes or phrases which are not supported by the song metre and for which no corresponding words exist. For the listener who knows the words, this is torture. The listener who does not has no yardstick with which to asses the validity of an instrumental rendering of a song air, and is therefore in no position to do so.
You may or may not agree with this school of thought, I think there is a point to it. Air playing is as I said an instrumental rendering of an essential vocal piece, the expression and validity of the tune comes from the words associated with it. Personally I feel when I play an air to which I have no words [and I quoted the Valentia Harbour I left on th Clips page as an example], I do nothing more than making meaningless sounds. Can be fun and pleasantly self indulgent but it doesn't make for good air playing.
As an example you can take the particular poignant F natural that comes up in the last verse of A Stor Mo Chroi, it has no meaning really unless you know it's the cry of the lover of the emigrant calling him back from the land of the bright lights. I think you really need t oknow the song to do a proper job on that.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2003-02-12 10:27 ]</font>