Oak: Triplets
Sep. 21st, 2002 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tmcgThe hardest thing I've faced in playing the banjo and bouzouki is triplets. That's where you pick a quick down-up-down or up-down-up on one string to provide ornamentation. You usually do this in the space of a quarter note. As a keyboard and woodwind player who once took violin lessons and can play a little fingerpicking guitar, I find flatpicking the most alien finger/hand action involved with stringed plectrum instruments. Coordinating the right-hand pluck with the left-hand fingering of the note, keeping the ups and downs straight when crossing strings--I'm getting a handle on those. But the triplets are only just starting to come. And only when I play quietly--i.e., when I'm picking lightly across all the strings, which means that my pick doesn't have to dig in hard, and can flick across the string surface easily enough to produce the ornament without snagging. In a session, to be heard, at least given the acoustics in the venue where I play most regularly, you can't play that quietly. Which means that I have not yet managed a triplet when I was leading a tune set on the banjo. I've done it from the safety of the crowd, on relatively simple tunes like "Saddle the Pony," when I wasn't worried about being heard messing up or being heard at all or carrying the melody without an overambition meltdown. And I've done it at home. But never at a session when it was my set. So that's my small personal banjo ambition.
It's not just how lightly I'm picking. It's also the tension of performance. Even in a session where you're comfortable and confident, there's some performance pressure when you lead a set. I dig in harder not just to be heard but because I'm tensing up.
The triplet ornament on the whistle can be produced in various combinations of tonguing and finger action, but the predominant method is the roll. That's a combination of a cut and a strike: lifting and replacing one finger to cut from the note above the ornamented note, then lowering and lifting another finger to strike the note below the ornamented note. It sounds complex, but it becomes reflexive, almost second nature, and it's done so fast that what you hear is a lovely burble on the note. That's the ornament. And ornaments are an integral part of Irish traditional music. How you ornament, and how well you ornament, isn't as important as your phrasing, or the lift and rhythm of your playing, but it's up there.
In playing the whistle, I think often of ice skaters. The roll on a whistle is like a triple axel or lutz or flip. The performer knows it's coming. The skater sets up for it, physically and psychologically. Sometimes the skater doubles it or singles it, falling out of the turn too soon. Sometimes the whistler does, too. It's as much in the mind as in the fingers. And landing a quad in competition has often been the big pressure point for skaters.
One of these days soon I'm going to land a triplet on the banjo in public.
It's not just how lightly I'm picking. It's also the tension of performance. Even in a session where you're comfortable and confident, there's some performance pressure when you lead a set. I dig in harder not just to be heard but because I'm tensing up.
The triplet ornament on the whistle can be produced in various combinations of tonguing and finger action, but the predominant method is the roll. That's a combination of a cut and a strike: lifting and replacing one finger to cut from the note above the ornamented note, then lowering and lifting another finger to strike the note below the ornamented note. It sounds complex, but it becomes reflexive, almost second nature, and it's done so fast that what you hear is a lovely burble on the note. That's the ornament. And ornaments are an integral part of Irish traditional music. How you ornament, and how well you ornament, isn't as important as your phrasing, or the lift and rhythm of your playing, but it's up there.
In playing the whistle, I think often of ice skaters. The roll on a whistle is like a triple axel or lutz or flip. The performer knows it's coming. The skater sets up for it, physically and psychologically. Sometimes the skater doubles it or singles it, falling out of the turn too soon. Sometimes the whistler does, too. It's as much in the mind as in the fingers. And landing a quad in competition has often been the big pressure point for skaters.
One of these days soon I'm going to land a triplet on the banjo in public.
