ORNAMENTATION FOR PLAYING IRISH MUSIC ON THE HAMMERED DULCIMER

Cliff Moses -- January 1998

I have taken a different approach for applying ornaments to my music than others have taken. Rather than starting from the point learning how to play the more common ornaments of Irish music, e.g., cuts, rolls, and crans, I have started from the point of taking something that is most natural on the dulcimer and developing it into a system ornamentation. In other words, developing "dulcimer ornaments" rather than learning techniques to play fiddle or pipe ornaments. In this way, I find that the ornaments occur more naturally and serve to color the music without interfering with the melody, the rhythm, or the hammering patterns.

This approach is not as unorthodox as it may sound. Even on the more traditional instruments of Irish music, the ornamentation varies from instrument to instrument, and even on the same instrument, they can vary from region to region. In his excellent collection of Irish traditional music Ceol Rince na hEireann (The Dance Music of Ireland), Brendan Breathnach points this out and illustrates the ways that each note of the scale might be ornamented, i.e., the notes used, on the Píb (pipes), Feadóg (flute), Fidil (fiddle), and Cáirdín (accordian). While many of the ornaments are the same from instrument to instrument, many are obviously affected by the peculiarities of the instrument. As examples, one would not normally change strings on the fiddle to get a grace note or change octaves on the flute; a different note would be used for the gracing. Similarly, a button accordian player would use notes that do not require changing direction of the bellows. (Button accordians, and Anglo concertinas, are like harmonicas: A given button sounds two different note depending on the direction of the bellows.) Also, pipes and flutes do not have a note below D in the lower octave.

It is some of the limitations of instruments and styles of playing that gave rise to ornaments. Generally speaking, the ornaments were developed on the older instruments used for playing Irish dance music, the pipes and fiddle, and then adapted by other instruments as they came into use. Two good examples are "rolls"and "crans", which are used primarily on pipes, flutes, and whistles.

Pipes are bellows-blown instruments, and it is not possible to stop the air flow through the chanter to end a note. Therefore one cannot play repeated notes. Instead, another note must be sounded as an interupter without diminishing the importance of the note being repeated. If a phrase in a jig were to end as:


A piper would add interupter notes in between the final D's to get something like this:


This is called a cran; the actual notes used as the interupters may vary somewhat between players, but the effect is the same. In addition to producing the desired rhythmic effect, the use of several different notes as the graced notes in the cran give a certain coloring to the final measure that would not be realized if all the interupters were simply the next note up the scale which would produce a trilling like effect. Note that the interupters are all higher than the D because, as mentioned before, D is the lowest note that can be sounded on the pipes.

Next consider the "roll". In the north of Ireland, the fiddle players tend to bow every note of a melody and have a sound that is more reminiscent of piping than the bowing style more associated with the west of Ireland where longer bow strokes are used and individual notes are fingered with the left hand. In the Northern style, it is obvious that repeated notes can be played simply by changing the direction of the bow, but in the long-bow style, interupters must be applied with the fingering to play repeated notes. The most common practice is the "roll" which usually look like the following examples:


The interuptors are produced by flicking the next finger down onto the string to produce the next higher note and then momentarily lifting the finger of the primary note to get the note below before returning to the primary note when the finger is replaced. Different notes are used as the interupters depending on the instrument and the primary note, but generally it is considered to be the note above and the note below. The result has the distinct different effect on the melody than the bowed triplet of the Northern fiddle style or tonguing on the whistle would have. The tutoring cassettes Learning the Irish Fiddle by Kevin Burke include a lesson on playing rolls and other ornaments for the fiddle; it is an excellent resource for understanding fiddle ornaments. Learning the Irish Fiddle was produced by Homespun Tapes, Box 694, Woodstock NY 12498. Another excellent tutoring book with cassette tapes is The Irish Fiddle by Matt Cranitch, published by The Mercier Press. Both of these should be available in most stores specializing in traditional music.

The roll is also used extensively on the pipes, flute, and tinwhistle. Although repeated notes can be played on the flute and whistle by stopping the blow or "tonguing", ornamentation provides a much more colorful and interesting result, and is the traditional way of playing Irish music. Excellent discussions of ornamentation on the flute and tinwhistle can be found in The Complete Irish Tinwistle Tutor by Larry McCullough and The Irish Flute Player's Handbook by S.C. Hamilton.

The reason for going into this brief discourse on traditional ornamentation is to show that the purpose of playing ornaments is to provide interupters necessary on some instruments while at the same time adding interest to the melody, which I have called "coloring". Needless to say, interuptors are not necessary on the dulcimer since the same note can be repeated distinctly many times. However, the use of ornamentation will add "coloring" and interest to the melody and offers another approach to developing tune variations on the dulcimer.


DULCIMER ORNAMENTATION

 (Note: for the rest of this page, clicking on the music score will download a wave file that will demonstrate the example; these files are about 100K in size.)

My approach on ornamentation for Irish traditional music is certainly not the only approach. Karen Ashbrook and David James are both well-known and accepted Irish musicians on the dulcimer, and each has their own individual approach that is somewhat different than mine. Karen has a very good discussion on ornamentation in her comprehensive book Playing the Hammered Dulcimer in the Irish Tradition published by Mel Bay and available in most traditional music stores. David James has won the All-Ireland competition for Miscellaneous Instruments three times giving credence to his method; his book Hammering and Plucking is self-published.

My approach to ornamentation on the dulcimer is based on the following considerations:
My method of adding ornamentation is based on a simple single bounce of the hammer. This is the most natural way to add an extra note without adding a hammer stroke which would change the hammering pattern.

Start with a simple repetition of notes at a very relaxed tempo such as the example below; here "L" refers to your lead hand and "O" refers to the other hand:


Now with the lead hand, allow the hammer to bounce just once creating a double note. Then follow with the other hand without changing the timing or tempo as shown below:


In this example, the letter "B" indicates a bounced note off of the lead hand. Generally, bounced notes will be indicated by a slash line through the note.

If you have trouble getting a smooth succession of notes, it may be that the timing of the bounce doesn't match the timing of the notes. Practice the single bounce by itself, and try to find a bounce timing that seems to work easily. Then adjust the timing of the primary notes accordingly.

Eventually you will want to be able to control the timing of the bounce to fit the tune. This is most easily done by changing the height above the strings that the hammers are held. The higher the hammers, the longer it takes them to fall, hence the slower the bounce timing; to put a bounce into rapidly played notes, the hammers must be quite close to the strings. Once you get a comfortable rhythm going on the above pattern, work toward change the timing by gradually getting slower and then speeding up, slowing down, etc. It is important to be comfortable with this bounce pattern as everything else is built upon it.

Next practice the above pattern but randomly put the bounce in for a few times and then take it out for a few times until it seems natural and you can put the bounced note in at will. Notice that you have now added a note at will without changing your hammering pattern.

Once you have mastered this, the next step is to begin changing notes during the bounce, i.e., the first strike is on one note and when the hammer comes down for the bounced note you have moved your hand slightly so that the hammer comes down on a different string. This is illustrated below for the case where the bounce is the downward direction and the hammer comes down on the next lower string:



There are two possibilities shown, one where the second primary note is the same as the first and the other where it is the same as the bounced note. It should be obvious that similar patterns can be used where the bounced note is the next string higher:



Some people have more difficulty with the "bounce up". If you don't get a good bounce, there is a tendency to drive the hammer into the next string; this is especially true if the sound board is at an angle and you don't move parallel to the sound board.

As with the first exercise, practice putting in the bounced note and taking it out until it seems under control.

The next exercise is an example of putting in an extra note in the middle of a phrase. Try it first without the bounced note, shown as a following grace note, and then bounce in the A coming off of the G:


Now if you get to the point where you can get controlled single bounces with either hand, you can develop a "five-note roll" such as was discussed earlier as a fiddle/pipe ornament:


Here the second note is bounced up form the primary note with the lead hand, then when the off hand plays the primary note, it bounces down for the fourth note, and the lead hand finishes the sequence by playing the last note. The three primary notes should have the same timing whether or not the ornaments are added.

Lets now see how this concept can be used in tunes.


APPLICATION OF THE "SINGLE-BOUNCE" ORNAMENTS IN TUNES

 This discussion will illustrate how the "single-bounce" ornament can be used in varius situations in Irish traditional tunes. The concept of the "single-bounce" ornament is by no means limited to playing Irish traditional music. The examples given here should provide the reader with ideas that can be incorporated in other types of music. The presentation here will concentrate on simple phrases that are typically found in the different types of Irish tunes. In the tune section of this site, the tune will first be provided without ornaments and then as it might be played with ornaments. By using simple phrases here, the reader can easily learn the phrase without the ornaments, and then concentrate on inserting the ornaments. The goal should be to be able to play the phrase repeatedly, putting the ornament in or out at will without changing the tempo, rhythm, or hammering pattern.

REELS: In reels, quarter notes are often used on the strong beats at the beginning of a phrase or at the end. Replacing the quarter note with a triplet is a convenient variation that maintains the desired emphasis. The following examples show several different ways of playing the opening phrase from "The Belles of Tipperary".

The first example simply replaces the quarter note either with a triplet on the same note or a bounce to the note above. I don't have a rule for when to use the note above or the note below on the bounce; it's just a matter of whichever feels better.

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The next example, from the B part of Father Kelly's No. 2, shows how a note from the original melody line can be incorporated into the ornament creating a variation by slight shift of the melody line:
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I tend not to use rolls very often, but the following is from a phrase in "The Curlew". Sometimes I will "roll" the G, and other times the F#; since the hammering pattern doesn't change, it doesn't matter whether which note, if either, is rolled.



As a final example, sometimes I will flick in an extra note at the beginning of a downward scale run to add a little lift as shown in the following example from Paddy Fahy's Reel:


JIGS: The most common place that I bounce in an extra note on jigs is off of the third note in a measure; this seems to add emphasis to the fourth note which is on the beat. This works very naturally since the third note is played with the lead hand. Usually I just bounce the same note, but sometimes I will use a different note. I'm more likely to do this in the 1st, 3rd, and 5th measures, but it really depends on the feel of the tune. The following is an example from the beginning of "The Blackthorn Stick":



Sometimes I will flick in an extra note off of the first note of a phrase much like the last example in the section on reels, except that it won't necessarily be on a scale run. This is illustrated in the following measure, which is also from "The Blackthorn Stick":



The example below shows how a roll could be applied to the first three notes:

Again it makes no difference to the playing pattern so these can be mixed and interchanged at will.

HORNPIPES: Hornpipes tend to have certain phrases that are repeated throughout the tune, and variations are used to break up the monotony. Adding triplets in various places is a natural way to do this because they fit well into the rhythm of hornpipes.

Hornpipes are often written as a series of combined dotted eighth note and sixteenth note. This serves to indicate that the first note is significantly longer than the second, but the notation does not really give quite the right timing. Rather than the first note being three times the length of the second note, it should be about twice as long. It would be more correct to write the two notes as a triplet with the first two notes tied together, or alternately, as a triplet with a rest in place of the second note. Thus, "untying" the second note and playing it or another note provides a natural triplet. (Note: Hornpipes are just as often written as all eighth notes; regardless of the notation, it is still understood that the first note of a pair is longer than the second.)

If the triplet is hammered in, the hammering pattern shifts to the opposite hand unless you add a second triplet to restore the original pattern. This requires some planning when trying to introduce triplets as variations. However, if the second note of the triplet is bounced in, the hammering pattern does not change. This allows the player to put a triplet in one time and take it out the next time or, even more interestingly, simple move the triplet to the next two notes of the melody line. Since the hammering patterns don't change with the addition of the triplets, the triplets can be mixed and matched at will, without having to plan ahead. This is shown in the following example from "Cronin's Hornpipe":
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Another monotonous part of hornpipes is that both the A and B parts generally have the same, fairly simple ending. Introducing triplets to the ending greatly increases the possibilities for variations. These are the endings that I use with "Cronin's Hornpipe": (Note: The other two eighth notes of the measure are pickup notes for the beginning.)

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Before closing, I would like to add that I do not use this method of adding notes to add grace notes in front of a note, i.e., bouncing off of the grace note into the melody note. The first note of a bounced pair will always be the louder of the two. If this method were used for gracing, the grace note would become the dominant note. More importantly, in my mind, if the graced melody note was meant to be on the beat, this would cause the rhythm to shift around and become jerky.

I have found that with practice, the ornaments become so natural, that they begin to float in and out without thinking. In this way I've achieved my goal of coloring the melody, and adding variations, in a way that does not control the melody, the rhythm, or my hammering patterns.

Again, I do not mean to imply that this is the only way, or the best way, to apply ornaments to playing the hammered dulcimer. It is just that these ornaments are the most natural for me, and have been complimented by judges at the All-Ireland competitions. Both Karen Ashbrook and David James are more comfortable than I am at changing lead hands from right to left as they play, and have developed their methods accordingly. In playing Irish music, the notes are not all the same length, even if they are all designated as eighth notes; This is, or will be, covered elsewhere at this site under Rhythms and Phrasing. I find it much easier to develop and maintain the rhythm and lift, especially at speed, if I keep the same lead hand throughout the tune.

I hope you find ornamentation and this approach of some use in your playing, and would like to hear your reactions, successes, or difficulties. Please feel free to contact me by email at cmoses@swri.edu or by telephone at (210)492-5748. I often include this as a workshop at festivals, so look me up or get me invited to the one near you.


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