Why do we have to learn complex ornamentation on the UP

[nemethmik]

Most tripletts, rolls, and many other types of ornamentation are so hard to learn and require years and years of practice. And even after years of efforts you may feel that you cannot perform them properly. Many of the pipers do not recognizes this; youtube is polluted with hundreds of uilleann videos where the piper plays tunes with too much ornamentation at a speed that is far beyond the capability of the player, therefore rendering his/her performance unmusical. This is what I noticed as well when listening a number of "piper's chair" performances at tioniols.
I am more and more convinced that only the most talanted are able to learn these complex ornamentations at a decent speed, and only the virtuoso pipers can perform them properly.
Is it meaningful and regarded OK to play Irish pipe music in a simple way?

[Pipewort]

Everyone should play to their abilty, but maybe practice somewhat above this, certainly from time to time.

Yes, to your question. The ornamentation is there to add colour and verve to the tunes. Otherwise long notes would most often be boring. Ornamentation also adds emphasis to beat notes, e.g cuts, short rolls. Triplets, crans, do both, along with popping, vibratto.

Together, ornamentation does these things and brings useful variation to otherwise simple tunes, to add to the musical appeal. They should be used in a musical way, and not just for the flash effect; and in that, tempo should be managed also, and matched to ability.

Pwrt

[Key_of_D]

Depends, do you want your music to be simple, or do you want your music to sound interesting. As for the pipes, I don't think there is anything simple about them. I believe a lot of the "complex ornamentation" is what makes the UP's sound so unique. I think it's unproductive to get caught up in how different people may pick it up faster then others. I'm of the opinion if you have proper instruction and you practice good technique, anybody can learn anything. But above all else, ornamentation should not affect rhythm of course, rather it should add colour to your playing.

I mean we all have to start somewhere, but in the long run it's about how far you want to take your playing and to what level you wish to bring it to.

Cheers

[Mr.Gumby]

If you apply yourself properly there no reason why you wouldn't be able to have all manner of triplets and bits under your belt within a few years.

But there you have it: you need to apply yourself and put in the work. It's that simple. Playing any musical instrument, you'll have to do the work. And listen to yourself to weed out the weak points.

[Hans-Joerg]

I agree with you very much, Mikki. Many pipers overdo it (sometimes just meaningless to show off) and consequently loose their timing (absolutely awful for every listener - even non-ITM specialists - although Seamus said: "First you must learn the toc...(They do the truckelyhowe only )). FWIT, a slow tune in perfect rhythm is much more "expressive". However, the ancestor of the Uilleann (Union) Pipes were the Pastoral Pipes - an "open" bagpipe - and ornaments were the only way to "split" tones - so they seem to be part of a long tradition already? Later in the playing development "tight piping" seemed to have come up. In addition, you might listen to Johnny Doran - the most creative genius: Apart from the ornaments he has audible stops between the melody-tones.

[TheSilverSpear]

I don't think you have to be a "virtuoso" to play proper triplets. It's not a Rachmaninoff (sp?) piano concerto, is it? If you put serious work in for several years and make sure you learn them correctly from the beginning, you should be able to play them no bother. That part of it is critical, though. One teacher once told me "Practice makes permanent, not perfect." If you push ahead too fast and have sloppy, out-of-time triplets or crans, then that will become a habit and it will be a bigger mess untangling it later.

[highland-piper]

I don't play UP, but I was blown away watching Paddy Keenan. The fingering was good and all, but what really floored me was how he worked the regulators!

For your ornaments, you just have to practice them. I don't think anything y'all play is particularly harder than what we play on highland pipes, ornamentation wise. But it doesn't come natural to anyone. It will probably take you around 1000 hours of effort to raise your playing to the level of generally competent (standard rule of thumb that seems to apply to all musical instruments).

So that's an hour a day for three years. Or 15 minutes a day for 10 years. If you want to learn to play well, there's just no substitute for consistent practice under the instruction of a good teacher.

[PJ]

The more I learn, the more that I find that the key to making my piping more musical lies more in the phrasing, than in tempo or ornamentation. Learning the basic tune and playing the basic, unadorned notes properly makes a tune much more musical than trying to it up with triplets and rolls.

[TheSilverSpear]

True, phrasing is key to making a tune sound musical. But ornamentation is critical to phrasing, especially on pipes. You can over-ornament with total disregard to phrasing or you can use ornamentation tastefully to define your phrases. Conversely, you can play a tune with sparse ornamentation but no definitive phrasing but that isn't brilliant, either.

[Mr.Gumby]

And this is the point, for those who haven't done so already, to skoot over to the Seán Reid Society website to read Pat Mitchell's 'Rhythm and Structure in Irish Traditional Dance Music' and then read it again.

[Ballygo]

What makes Irish Traditional music more difficult than say Great highland piping , is that there s no specified points in the tune that one must play a roll or a cut etc. It is left up to the individual , where as in highland bagpipe music for pipe bands , it is indicated where one can cut and ornament.

Rhythm and phrasing , in a traditional style , requires less ornamentation , but is very difficult to acquire. Listen , listen , rather than read notation. Notation is almost useless and is only an aid to learning the basic tune , and is only a snap shot of one version. If you get the rhythm right , then everything else will fall in to place eventually. Try playing tin whistle by ear , and then tackle pipes.

[MTGuru]

I guess I don't understand the premise of the OP. Mik, you seem to be saying that because proper ornamentation is difficult, and because a bunch of internet wankers can't play it properly, it shouldn't be played at all by the average piper. That makes no sense to me.

[hpinson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-51tD4fv0o

[highland-piper]

What makes Irish Traditional music more difficult than say Great highland piping , is that there s no specified points in the tune that one must play a roll or a cut etc. It is left up to the individual , where as in highland bagpipe music for pipe bands , it is indicated where one can cut and ornament.

It actually works both ways. On the one hand, for a rank beginner, it's easier, because there are enough well written scores that one can work from. You don't need to figure out how to do the ornamentation all on your own, because there are standard settings.

The downside to this is, there's a lot more to memorize. Amazing Grace is one of the simplest tunes we play and I counted 99 notes. When I play Irish style music on tin whistle, I am at liberty to play whatever ornaments I like, so long as they support the phrasing.

When I go to learn a new tune, I can usually memorize an Irish tune in a couple hours, but a highland pipe tune usually takes weeks of work. Part of the reason it takes longer is because some of the gracenote choices are seemingly arbitrary, and must therefor be memorized rote, which, for me at least, is a lot harder than learning a melody. And there is just a lot more there to be memorized.

Listen , listen , rather than read notation. Notation is almost useless and is only an aid to learning the basic tune , and is only a snap shot of one version.

The same thing is exactly as true for every kind of music that there is. Classical music of all kinds, rock, Irish, Scottish, blues, jazz. The notation is only a guide, and you can only learn the style by listening. For most people, listening alone isn't enough though, and a teacher is a necessary ingredient. It's kind of funny though. On highland bagpipe forums people discuss whether it's possible to play properly if you don't read music, but on ITM forums people discuss whether it's possible to play properly if you do read music. GHB and ITM are a lot more closely related than a lot of forms of music (contrast Mozart with Ellington and compare that to the contrast between a reel in an Irish session and a reel played by a Scottish piper.)

Anyway -- I don't want anyone to think I'm slagging Irish music or Irish style musicians. All musical instruments are difficult to play, and all styles of music are really really difficult to play well. No matter what kind of music you want to play or what kind of musical instrument you want to play it on it's going to take a lot of hard work to make it sound right. There's no easy way to be an accomplished musician, or we'd all be one!

[fiddlerwill]

And this is the point, for those who haven't done so already, to skoot over to the Seán Reid Society website to read Pat Mitchell's 'Rhythm and Structure in Irish Traditional Dance Music' and then read it again.

Pat is such a wonderful piper, I listen to his album over and over again. One of the greats IMO.