Scottish, Irish, and just generally Gaelic Flute Music?

[WildThistles]

Hi! I just found this subforum, and looked through it quickly for any mention of the flute, of which I haven't found any. I was wondering if anyone knows any good Irish or Scottish sheet music, or songs, for the flute? Or exercises/techniques to practice for this musical style? I've been wanting to get back into playing my flute more often, and I know the flute is a big part of traditional Irish music, hopefully it's also a part of Scottish music. Any aid at all is greatly appreciated.

[OC Richard]

I've had one foot in the Scottish Highland piping world, and one foot in the Irish Traditional Music world, since the late 1970s.

My take on it is that in Scotland the older traditional dance music has been dominated by the fiddle and the Scottish pipes (both the Great Highland pipes and the numerous species of Scottish bellows-pipes).

Interestingly the pipes haven't travelled as well as the fiddle, and in places largely influenced by Scottish music such as Donegal, Cape Breton Island, and to a lesser extent Appalachia the fiddle is king.

Of course there are places in Scotland where fiddle has always been king such as the Shetland Islands and Aberdeenshire.

Ireland is a different story. For whatever reason there's traditionally been more instrumental diversity. What instruments have traditionally driven the music varies greatly from County to County.

Donegal has been dominated by fiddle. In Clare the uilleann pipes, flute, fiddle, and concertina have long been popular. Sligo as I recall has traditionally been about fiddle and flute.

I'm talking in generalities. I'm sure exceptions can be found for each and every thing I've said. And recently there's been tremendous cross-fertilisation because anyone anywhere can watch a Youtube video by anyone from anywhere.

There quite possibly have always been Scottish fluteplayers. Perhaps somebody has done a Doctoral Thesis on them. But my impression is that Scottish fluteplaying has long been a tiny minority thing. If there's an old traditional Scottish stream of fluteplaying I've not heard about it.

There was a Scottish band in the 1980s called The Whistlebinkies who had a fluteplayer, but he sounded to me like a "classical" fluteplayer. A few Scottish trad/pop bands in the 1980s and 1990s had a thing where one of the musicians whose primary instrument was accordion or Highland pipes or whatever had later picked up flute. The guys I heard were playing in a mainstream Irish trad style.

[OC Richard]

Here's an interesting chat with some insights into traditional Irish fluteplaying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1m1KMtIjWA&t=216s

The Irish fluteplayer Conal O Grada is a real throwback, he sounds so much like the early recordings of Irish fluteplaying from the 1920s.

Listen how much lift and rhythm comes out of the flute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQvtl1QZW_c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj_EALcNsV0

[OC Richard]

Here's a quite different style, popularised in the 1970s and 1980s by Matt Molloy.

It's full of uilleann pipe ornaments, and the overall playing is more "on the stream"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS7NxJDp4zQ

[OC Richard]

Here's The Whistlebinkies a sort of Scottish version of The Chieftains.

I don't know what kind of flute the fluteplayer is playing there. I know I've seen him mostly play a Boehm flute, and his style sounds pure classical/orchestral to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVhz6hTTIbY

[WildThistles]

Here's a quite different style, popularised in the 1970s and 1980s by Matt Molloy.

It's full of uilleann pipe ornaments, and the overall playing is more "on the stream"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS7NxJDp4zQ

I'm currently going through the videos you sent and watching them. I forgot to inquire when we first discussed the topic, what did you mean by 'on the stream.' Are there specific musical traits that uilleann pipe ornaments draw on? Listening to these videos, it's interesting. I've been reading up on SCD a bit, and the types of Scottish country dances. The terms "reel" and "jig" seem to correspond between both the traditional Irish flute play and the Scottish country dances (in terms of denoting time signature at least).

[OC Richard]

The terms "reel" and "jig" seem to correspond between both the traditional Irish flute playing and the Scottish country dances...

You're correct, both Scottish and Irish dance music have both reels and jigs, and they're often played pretty much the same in both traditions.

Scottish "country dancing" and Irish "ceili dancing" are similar in many ways, though the specifics of the footwork are different. (Ceili is also often spelled ceilidh, the final "dh" is silent.)

Irish ceili dancing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HhC_4jPigc

Scottish country dancing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqShm5XeKMA

There are cases where reels or jigs can sound rather different in Irish and Scottish music, two examples are

1) in Irish "step dancing" they have "heavy jigs" which are played much slower than jigs normally are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcfD4PQwD2E

2) in Highland pipe music reels are generally played "dot/cut" or "pointed" and also often somewhat slower than they would be for either Scottish country dancing or Irish ceili dancing. A lot of Highland pipers used to heavily "point" jigs as well though this isn't in fashion as much nowadays.

Highland pipe March, Strathspey, and Reel, jump to 2:59 to hear the reel played at 86bpm, far too slow for RSCDS or ceili dancing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWdIn38-5xM

(I should mention that in Scottish Country Dancing no distinction is made between reels and jigs, both are called "quick time" and you do the same steps at the same speed for both.)

what did you mean by 'on the stream'?

On Irish flute some players have a lot of rhythm, a lot of pulsing, in their blowing while others play with more even blowing, which you'll sometimes hear called "playing on the stream" or playing with "flow".

Are there specific musical traits that uilleann pipe ornaments draw on?

There's quite a catalogue of ornaments that uilleann pipers draw on. Sometimes uilleann pipe music is very heavily ornamented, more so than players of other Irish traditional dance instruments (flute, whistle, fiddle, box, banjo) would deem suitable.

However since the finger-holes and fingering of the whistle and flute aren't that much different than the uilleann pipes there's a certain amount of shared technique between all three instruments.

So uilleann pipes, Irish trad flute, and Irish trad whistle all generally play cuts, pats, and rolls in more or less the same way using more or less the same fingerings.

Though using different fingerings, cuts and rolls can be played on fiddle too, and are often heard with Irish fiddlers.

Irish box-players and banjo-players have figured out ways to play analogous ornaments on their instruments as well.

Other uilleann pipe ornaments, though generally viewed as being more uilleann-specific, are sometimes played on whistle and flute, for example the "crans" that you can hear Matt Molloy playing on Bottom D.

Then there are other ornaments that are uilleann pipe-specific like Hard Bottom D, Ghost D, "tight" triplets, backstitching, barking, etc.

[WildThistles]

I've had one foot in the Scottish Highland piping world, and one foot in the Irish Traditional Music world, since the late 1970s.

My take on it is that in Scotland the older traditional dance music has been dominated by the fiddle and the Scottish pipes (both the Great Highland pipes and the numerous species of Scottish bellows-pipes).

Interestingly the pipes haven't travelled as well as the fiddle, and in places largely influenced by Scottish music such as Donegal, Cape Breton Island, and to a lesser extent Appalachia the fiddle is king.

Of course there are places in Scotland where fiddle has always been king such as the Shetland Islands and Aberdeenshire.

Ireland is a different story. For whatever reason there's traditionally been more instrumental diversity. What instruments have traditionally driven the music varies greatly from County to County.

Donegal has been dominated by fiddle. In Clare the uilleann pipes, flute, fiddle, and concertina have long been popular. Sligo as I recall has traditionally been about fiddle and flute.

I'm talking in generalities. I'm sure exceptions can be found for each and every thing I've said. And recently there's been tremendous cross-fertilisation because anyone anywhere can watch a Youtube video by anyone from anywhere.

There quite possibly have always been Scottish fluteplayers. Perhaps somebody has done a Doctoral Thesis on them. But my impression is that Scottish fluteplaying has long been a tiny minority thing. If there's an old traditional Scottish stream of fluteplaying I've not heard about it.

There was a Scottish band in the 1980s called The Whistlebinkies who had a fluteplayer, but he sounded to me like a "classical" fluteplayer. A few Scottish trad/pop bands in the 1980s and 1990s had a thing where one of the musicians whose primary instrument was accordion or Highland pipes or whatever had later picked up flute. The guys I heard were playing in a mainstream Irish trad style.

Richard,
Thank you so much for this thorough and in depth response (and links in the following posts!). Admittedly, considering how widespread the fiddle seems to be compared to the flute in several musical genres, I'm growing to love, a part of me wishes I hadn't switched from violin to flute at a young age.
Perhaps the pipes have travelled less easily than the fiddle due to the large amount of reeds required for the instrument? I had a friend who wanted to get into piping with an old one his family had, but his largest barrier was the price of the reeds (of course this is in a different time period and region, and I've never been a player of a single, or double, reeded instrument myself so I only know secondhand knowledge of prices).
I'll definitely check out the links, and continue to do some of my own research. This is a really wonderful jumping off point you've provided for that research.

[OC Richard]

You're welcome!

There's an odd thing about the traditional Irish flute world.

When I first got into it (in the 1970s) I kept hearing flute players whose goal seemed to be to blend in with fiddle playing as much as possible, and flute players who seemed to be trying to make their playing sound like uilleann pipe playing.

The eye-opener was when I heard the 1920s recordings of Tom Morrison, whose goal seemed to be to make his flute sound like a flute, to capitalise on the things that flutes do, the things that set the flute apart from fiddles and uilleann pipes.

Here he is!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-blZR7M-DI

I've never heard any other fluter (never flautist!) do all the things he does.

In particular I love the thing where he'll play a string of notes staccato, out of the blue.

There were older fluters who had that Morrison bounce to their playing, one such was Michael Tubridy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfaV...uJmXzzTZX7Mkru

[WildThistles]

You're welcome!

There's an odd thing about the traditional Irish flute world.

When I first got into it (in the 1970s) I kept hearing flute players whose goal seemed to be to blend in with fiddle playing as much as possible, and flute players who seemed to be trying to make their playing sound like uilleann pipe playing.

The eye-opener was when I heard the 1920s recordings of Tom Morrison, whose goal seemed to be to make his flute sound like a flute, to capitalise on the things that flutes do, the things that set the flute apart from fiddles and uilleann pipes.

Here he is!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-blZR7M-DI

I've never heard any other fluter (never flautist!) do all the things he does.

In particular I love the thing where he'll play a string of notes staccato, out of the blue.

There were older fluters who had that Morrison bounce to their playing, one such was Michael Tubridy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfaV...uJmXzzTZX7Mkru

Oh huh, I'll definitely check his stuff out! The flute is such a beautiful instrument with it's own strengths, it's a shame to just relegate it to mimicry of other instruments, so his work definitely sounds of interest and educational. Also I've never heard the term fluter before, but it sounds like a fun one: ) Do you know the linguistic/cultural reasons for the differing term?