Or just too busy making music? I'm involved in a project with Jimmy
Little at the moment. He was one of the ranting Teddy Boys spied by
Louis Killen at Alnwick in the late 50s and learnt pipes from his
father and grandfather in an isolated farmhouse on Alnwick Moor. None
of them
Anthony
I wholeheartedly agree with you, and count myself extremely fortunate to be
able to play with Jimmy on a regular basis. Besides holding hundreds of
tunes in his mental database, he has this amazing bounce in his playing, and
he's also brilliant at keeping time with a very secure foot
If anyone would like to learn some tunes linked to North Northumberland,
Andy and I are running four workshops and linked concerts over the summer
months in various venues along the Northumberland coast. Learn the tunes in
the workshop and join in playing them in the evening concert if you feel
I am pleased to read about the respect given to Jimmy Little up at
Alnwick. The group of pipers at Morpeth who mostly play from music and
sound as 'flat as the paper the music is printed on' are not interested
in any input from people like myself. They seem to be more concerned
Dear All
Surely one of the main aims of all the various piping groups to which we
belong must be to encourage new players and I therefore think there always
has to be 'give and take' where there is a 'mixed experience' group of
players.
One does not want to discourage the less experienced
-Original Message-
From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf
Of Di Jevons
I do think however there is a danger that 'life and bounce' can be
mistaken for 'breakneck speed' and whilst I am firmly of the opinion
that one does not progress if one does
On 6/9/09, Di Jevons d...@picklewood.info wrote:
I do think however there is a danger that 'life and bounce' can be mistaken
for 'breakneck speed'
Well said, Di. Going further, 'life and bounce' are (imho)
incompatible with 'breakneck speed'. Try, for example, to play a jig
with any kind of
From another tradition - some of the best Irish fiddlers, especially from
Clare, play what at first seems painfully slow, then you realise the wonderful
things they are doing between the melody notes.
A lot of players (eg in Kerry) play far quicker for dancing than is musically
satisfying -
I find this very reassuring, Matt!
I'm still bashing away at Peacock, and only recently took note of the
metronome settings in the recent edition, some of which are, to me,
stratospherically fast.
I've been wondering if these were based on general practice, either
current or
Hello Richard,
A distinction should be made between playing for dances and playing for
pleasure. Dancers need the music to be quite fast otherwise they feel
clumsy and uncoordinated; to move along and feel light on their feet they
need speed - which the player has to provide. When the piper
Thanks Richard - I agree with much of this, though I feel it needs to be
the right speed, rather than just speed.
I have played other instruments for various sorts of dance, both
traditional historical, for a long time now, where indeed the dancers
need to be able to rely on the right
I just had to pass this on as a change from some of the current threads.
Sheila
-Original Message-
From: schenk2...@windstream.net
To: John Bridges bri...@aol.com
Sent: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 3:59 pm
Subject: piper
THE IRISH BAGPIPPER
As a young bagpiper, I was asked by a funeral
The Peacock tunes should be played at a speed such that the shortest note
passages (usually the semiquaver figures) can be played well - accurately,
comfortably, and with a sense of phrasing. Too slow, you can lose the sense of
the underlying harmonic rhythm, but too fast, and you get a heap of
This is a very interesting topic, but the thread that followed AR's
post seemed to miss the point a bit.
It's becoming an accepted notion that ear-learners (people who started
out playing music entirely by ear, and only started reading music years
later, if at all) think
14 matches
Mail list logo
