Piping blog
Irish World Academy : Elective study. Uilleann Pipes
Uilleann Pipes a quick recap:
I have wanted to learn to play the Uilleann pipes for a long time, and when I learned I had received funding from Katherine McGillivray’s Get a Life Fund to study at the Irish World Academy it made this particular desire a possibility at last.
Before I left London I was rehearsing at the Royal College of Music with friend and musical colleague Bridget Cuningham, and she took me to the museum where we came upon this cabinet in the midst of the harpsichord collection. It was amazing to see this quintessentially Irish instrument given pride of place in the heart of the Classical music establishment in London.
The Tom Mahon set of Union or Uilleann Pipes said to have been owned by the famous piper Tom Mahon of Finea, County Meath, and presented to him by Queen Victoria on her first visit to Ireland in the 1840ʼs. (Royal College of Music Museum, London)
Print of the Limerick Piper in the Royal College of Music The print features Patrick O’Brien, a blind Gaelic piper from Labasheeda, in John Patrick Haverty’s Haverty’s painting. There is a collection of small pipes below.
Finding an Instrument
The next stage was getting hold of a set of pipes, or a half-set. A half-set contains the drones, but not the regulators which are considered very difficult to master and inappropriate for a beginner to even attempt. I knew I would be in Clare over summer, and had spotted a set for sale in Clare at what seemed like a low price on the internet. The set looked elegantly made and I contacted the seller, who turned out to be a Highland Piper from the Tulla piping Band, Thomas Foy. He was selling a half-set made by Mark Donahue in Tipperary, and he drove out to Lahinch to meet us and show me the pipes.
Thomas Foy in the house at Lahinch August ‘09. The first time I try on the set.
Tom warned me that taking up the pipes was a huge commitment. He said he was selling this set because he hadn’t the time to devote to it, and although clearly an accomplished piper on the Warpipes (or Highland pipes as they are often known) he felt that the time required to make any progress on the Uilleann pipes was prohibitive for him, hence the sale.
Thomas the Highland Piper meets James the Uilleann piper in Bru Na Gruadán and the sale is agreed.
Lessons Begin
In fact I had almost lost my nerve when electives where due to start as the Uilleann pipes are such a demanding instrument and the general consensus seemed to be I was either foolish or brave to take them on. In addition there are so many things to learn here – I was also considering slow airs as an elective choice, and composition, or sax and piano, but as I already play sax and piano I wasn’t sure how much I would learn if I chose one of those -although I might end up with a better grade I came here to learn about Irish music after all.
I asked Niall Keegan for some advice. He said do what you can’t do in London – you won’t get a teacher like Mikie (Mikie Smith) in London and the pipes will help you with flute ornamentation.
This was good advice and I haven’t regretted it for an instant, lessons with Mikie and talking to pipers generally has been one of the highlights of the course for me. It is however an excruciatingly slow process, and the sound I’m making is terrible to my ears most days, but all the pipers I’ve spoken to tell me perseverance is everything with pipes in the early stages, and you just have to go through this barrier.
The Basics – Posture and Putting the Pipes on
My first lesson with Mikie involved some very basic postural advice. I was instructed to sit forward on the chair with my right knee down. The chanter is placed on the right top thigh.
This sounds very simple but it’s actually quite awkward to sit straight on with the pipes to begin with as they require such a lot of physical strength it is tempting to sort of curl your body into them, but obviously this wouldn’t make for a good technique or a healthy back!
I still find I have to remind myself to sit up straight when I begin to collapse in on myself. In fact much of the advice Mikey gave me in the very first lesson has proved indispensable every time I pick up the pipes.
It’s actually quite complicated just putting the pipes on, and there’s a definite sequence of events involved in order to cause least damage to the instrument. Firstly you strap yourself in, then as Mikie has taught me you hold the bulk of the instrument by the stock, which is what supports the drones, so as not to damage these. Then you connect the air pipe between the bellows and the bag, and finally you connect the chanter as this is the most vulnerable part of the instrument. I need to get extra holes put in the leather strap as it is too big for me Mikie has noticed, and this results in the bellows not being under control. A trip to the cobblers at the local shopping centre quickly fixes this, and indeed it is easier to control the bellows and there is more air to play with all of a sudden.
Making A Sound
For the first week or so Mikie just wants me to concentrate on producing a consistent sound. This is challenging enough. I am to play a low E and sustain the note. This involves a huge amount of co-ordination as any fluctuation in air pressure seems to produce either wild fluctuations in pitch or hiccups in the note. It feels almost impossible to create a consistent note in terms of tone and pitch. Maybe this is why they say it takes twenty-five years to learn the pipes! I am also to practice a steady series of crotches on FGFEFAFB etc through all the notes.
Fingering
There are instances where the piping fingering system radically differs from the flute. The differences mainly arise from the fact that the pipes operate within what’s called a “closed system.” (Although there is also an “open style” associated with the travelling pipers and favoured by seminal players such as Johnny Dolan, which many established players today such as Paddy Keenan
also use, the closed system is used for learning.
Mikie Smith demonstrates closed system fingering
The “Closed system” – What does it mean?
The pipes use a closed system of fingering when the chanter is stopped on the knee- this means that in order for a note to sound a finger must be released. This has led to the finger being released being given the note name of the note which sounds as it is released.
For example if the first finger on the right hand is lifted that results in an G sounding, so for this reason pipers would call this the G finger.
This is highly confusing for a flute player, as we are taught that it is the finger that we put down which makes the note. So if I put down the first finger on my right hand I will play an F on my flute (or an F sharp on the Irish flute) therefore the first finger is called the F finger.
I have been using this system so long and it has become so ingrained that I didn’t even realise it was a system! The idea the the “F” finger is now the “G” finger is utterly counter-intuitive at this point and I cannot alter my mindset however hard I try. I have come to the conclusion that I’ll have to give up on this – as long as Mikie and I understand which finger we’re talking about it’ll be alright. Otherwise it’s a little like having to translate from a foreign language every time the subject crops up.
The other difficulty with the closed system is the individual note fingering. You have to leave only either one or two holes open to sound a note, whereas the flute is an open system which means you leave all the holes open below the note you are playing. In practise this means I have to use my right hand a lot for what I think of as left hand notes. This takes a long time to sink in and Mikie has to correct me nearly every lesson to start with as I will unconsciously revert to open fingering and cease putting my left hand down for G and A particularly.
Some advice is repeated every lesson, and it needs to be. Mikie constantly stresses that it is important not to pressurise oneself when learning the pipes, that it is a slow process and it will take time.
How To Practise
For the first few weeks I am to practise just ten or fifteen minutes a day. I am finding my fingers hurt quite a lot, I didn’t mention this but to my great relief Mikie brings it up and says it is quite normal, and he even gives me some finger stretching exercises to do to relieve the tension in my fingers.
I have been having trouble with my thumb as well as my joints are hyper-mobile – meaning my thumb bends back on itself which can place extra pressure on the joint but Mikie shows me a more comfortable position for it behind the key block.
Mikie gives me piece of advice which is quite strange to someone who was taught to clean and polish their flute before putting it away after practising – he tells me to leave the pipes out and connected up, in a place where they won’t get damaged but where where I can see them and pick them up easily.
He’s right about this, it does make it easier to practise. As it’s only possible to practise for a few minutes at a time to begin with it is off-putting to spend more time getting the pipes out of the case and connecting them up than actually practising.
The chanter feels so slender in my hands compared to the flute, and my fingers don’t seem to find the holes very easily. The biggest problem however is co-ordination.
Co-ordination
We are constantly coming back to the question of co-ordination in every lesson, and I think if I have only managed to achieve this by the end of semester 1, I will feel a sense of achievement.
Mikie tells me that this is the single most difficult thing to begin with, and then he says one day you will wake up and it will have become easy.
He explains that you want the movement to go across your body, so that as you pump the bellows with your right arm your left arm allows the bag to fill with air, then the left arm begins to squeeze to push air down into the chanter.
The tricky part of this as I see it it is that then you have to pump again with the right arm, but this movement needs to be independent both of the movement of the left arm and of the rhythm of the music you’re playing. It’s really hard not to pump in time to the music to begin with. Maybe it isn’t entirely independent of the left arm as Mikie describes it as a wavelike motion going across the body, which seems to make sense.
Learning tunes
I am learning the jig “The Gander in the Pratie Hole” and that is exactly what I imagine I sound like. This might be one of the few cases of onomatopoeic tune names in irish Traditional music- the insistently repeated quavers on high D in the B section of the tune do sound like the honking of an aggrieved goose. I don’t think the rest of it is meant to sound like that though…(You have to have a sense of humour, I am realising, in order to learn the pipes…)
This is a great tune to learn as it has two notes going up into the second octave. This means we cover going up into the second octave in addition to learning how to separate the two high D’s with a “cut”. In this instance Mikie teaches me to use my left hand thumb to make the cut, by swiping it across the thumb-hole at the back. Again this is vastly different to the flute where you’d most likely use a G or E finger to make the cut.
The Gander is also a handy tune to learn as it is full of repetitive motifs, so it really enables me to get to grips with some of the fingering. Going from F to A for instance. I spend a lot of time practising going from G to A outside the tune as well. This takes me about a day to get into my head and my fingers, just these two notes, and I still slip back into open flute fingering if I’m not vigilant.
In lesson 2 Mikie teaches me a reel, Mother and Child. Again this has a structure involving repeated motifs – I am beginning to see his method! It really is helping with getting to grips with the fingering and it covers different fingering patterns to The Gander In the Pratie Hole. The co-ordination and fingering work continues constantly.
Mother and Child also involves learning how to separate the notes with a cut on bottom D and A. As I am still coming to terms with cutting finger choices for the Irish flute I am in a complete fog about this until Mikie tells me that in fact it is very simple and I can use exactly the same finger for both instruments. Unless you are using your thumb of course..
Mikie is away for one lesson so Éanna Ó Cróinín very kindly offers to step in and give me a free lesson.
We go through Mother and Child and he records it for me playing my pipes. It’s obvious he’s playing it more simply and slowly than he normally would so that I can work with it, so I also ask him to record it as he would play it naturally. I’m in need of a bit of inspiration as I’m missing Mikie. It’s clear to me that I couldn’t be in a better place to learn. I’m surrounded by talented pipers who are generous with their help and advice. It’s great listening to Mikie, Éanna and James play and I’m aware that they must be three of the best young pipers in the country.
(James Mahon won the senior Oireachtas piping competition during this semester, and when he bought home the cup he showed me Éanna and Mikie’s names both engraved on it. Mikie himself won the senior Oireachtas piping competition in 2001 and 2002.)
Mikie makes up my lesson and I’m sure he fits an extra one in too on top of that, I’m beginning to lose count. But these lessons with Mikie are something I look forward to every week. He is a great teacher.
We learn another reel, “Come West Along the Road” which again features lots of repeated bars and a leap into the second octave. This getting into the second octave is very hard to do consistently – even if you think you’re doing exactly what you did last time the pipes won’t go with you. Mikie tells me not to worry, that it is an accepted feature of piping that you don’t always go into the second octave and Éanna also tells me this. I literally can’t believe the physical strength required to put enough pressure on the bag to get up there, I keep thinking there must be something awry with the set.
We also learn another jig, The Hag at the Churn, and an air, The Eagle’s Whistle
A set back
I can’t believe I’ve done this. I’ve broken a drone, the smallest tenor one. I accidentally trod on it last week and heard a snap. James looked at it for me and found a crack, and advised me to check it out with Mikie. I did this and he thought it would be ok. But then I tried to check it out myself and it just came apart in my hands. It was like wobbling a tooth which comes out. James heard the news and appeared outside my door and managed to carefully remove the shard of wood that was left in the stock. He offers to make me a temporary stopper for the hole from a piece of cork. It’s a real feature of pipers this ability to ingeniously make something or fix something with stuff you might find lying around the house. It reflects the sheer amount of maintenance this instrument requires.
However, there is no quick fix for the actual drone itself, it is sheared in half and the broken sliding part that wasn’t stuck in the stock is stuck inside the larger tube. James thinks this will be very tricky to glue and I might need a new drone. This is likely to be costly so I’m hoping Mikie has a solution. This is an expensive instrument to maintain and repair it seems, and fragile despite it’s strength of sound.
Mikie does have a solution – the bad news is it may cost one to three hundred Euros. There is a piper and pipe maker called Mickey Dunne who lives outside Limerick who he thinks may be able to make a new drone. My course director very generously offers to drop the drone off at Mikey’s house. A short while later I recieve a call from Mikie.
“You must be a savage piper!”
“Just a savage” I reply. He explains that he has managed to glue and wire the drone back together and thinks it might hold. He then drops it off at my house and refuses to take any money. I’m learning a lot about people here through the piping.
An Erratic, Sensitive Instrument
The drones are back on the pipes but now just before my elective exam all the joints are loose -the stock separated as I was practising last night and one drone dropped off last week and another one yesterday. Then the blow pipe came out of the bag. I ask Éanna’s advice and he tells me this is normal. All the joints become looser in winter as the wood contracts and tighter in spring and summer as the wood expands. You need hemp to fix this but I don’t have any. A piece of manuscript paper does a temporary quick fix but there is probably some air escaping.
At at the end of the semester I feel the co-ordination is coming together slowly although it’s not yet automatic, and I have at least got to grips with the fingering, which is largely automatic by now. Mikie said to me at one point that I am a musician waiting to burst out through the pipes and it would be worth taking things very slowly and building a strong foundation as he thought.
I would want to carry on learning after college. I certainly feel like it sounds as if I’m trying to burst out of something sometimes(!) but I am willing to put up with how inconsistent the sound is at the moment and put the work in again next semester as I think this is the start of a long-term relationship with an amazing instrument.
Postscript: despite my fears and the leaping around between octaves of my pipes during the exam I have recently learned to my amazement that I have received an A2 for my first semester’s work with the Uilliann pipes. I am thrilled, and determined to proceed next semester.
Posted by Jacquelyn Hynes on February 9th, 2010.
