Regulator Playing Poll

[Calum]

Isn't this the same technique called tipping? If not, what's the difference?

Cheers,
Calum

[djm]

Tipping is tight stacatto playing of one note.

e.g. d d d, e e e, f# f# f#

Backstitching is playing short patterns, usually descending, of three to five notes.

e.g. d C# B d, C# B A C#, B A G B, A

Hope that helps,

djm

[piperben]

Alan your eye disturbs me greatly . you have a very small pupil. is that a reed makers complaint?
Regarding regulators. I play the ones that are sort of in tune.

[Cayden]

Backstitching is playing short patterns, usually descending, of three to five notes.

e.g. d C# B d, C# B A C#, B A G B, A

Hope that helps,

djm

That's not back stitching

backstitching add CA to lower hand notes and GF to upper hand notes to make triplets, in the Harvest Home you get all these ecA fcA gcA thingies instead of the eA fA gA fA movements. In jigs you'd get gcAg fcAf ecAe and dGFd cGFc BGFB AGFA sort of movements, it's dead simple really.
And it will drive anybody up the wall if you use it too often, playing the second part of the Dublin reel as eA (3BcA (3ecA (3fcA eA (3BcA is good for taking the piss but is it music?

[djm]

Peter, the description I got for backstitching comes from my teacher. I don't care much for it, but agree it is one of those tools to be learned and kept in a box somewhere in case its needed.

good for taking the piss but is it music?

Clearly, you are a big Andy Conroy fan!

djm

[Seanie]

Hello

I would agree with Peter's description of back stitching all right. As a technique it should be used very sparingly (Pat Mitchell uses it on the Sailor's Bonnet to good effect on his LP).

Andy Conroy would have had quite a varied career as a musician, having been part of the Leo Rowsome quartet and dueting with both James Morrison in the US of A and with John Kelly in Ireland. Andy was also a very accomplished flute player.

Andy's style of piping was a personal choice and he was extremely good at legato playing. The regulators too held no mystery for Andy.

A lot of the time Andy did what he did just to get up people's noses. He would imitate pipping noises by making a spitting noise during a particular tight piece.

Personally I thought that Andy, playing extremely tightly, was fairly unmusical but that does not mean that Andy could not play musically. He could and did on many occasions.

Regards

John

[Cayden]

There's good humour in some bits of Andy's music alright and I really appreciate his tongue in cheek. It is sometimes said the really tight playing was his pension project, to see how far he could stretch it. Anyone familiar with his playing that way would be surprised at the 78 rpm he did during the 50s wit ha trio in the States, lovely flowing open playing, completely different from his later party pieces.

Bill Ochs came to visit me two weeks a go and he had some great stories of time spent with Andy and how much he learned from him.

DJM, it may be what your teacher but you have a habit of blurting out things that have no basis in the factual world and this is another one of them.

Another thing, it is often said 'back stitching' is a thing of the US pipers that was lost in Ireland. At least that was said when i first learned it in 1982 or so. I have heard recordings of leo Rowsome [Kevin Rietman. check the oireachtas 1964 tape] where he used the cA stitch in the Ace and Deuce. Clearly the ornament was still hanging about in Ireland at that time.

[Seanie]

Hello

Yes Peter, I really admire the sense of humour and fun that the older musicians could inject into their music.. I was playing in a session in the Fleadh Nua in Ennis in the early eighties when Paddy Keenan started to play the Harvest Home in the way that it has been described above. Of course we dutifully left down our instruments to defer to Paddy's playing, all that is except old Eamonn Coyne (Mick's father) who continued to play along with Paddy. Eamonn played the tune dead straight (almost as if he was playing in the ceili band) and when that tune was over launched straight into The Boys of Bluehill and then a third similar hornpipe. He didn't give a sh*t who was playing or what they were doing with the tune.

While maybe not as technically proficient as other fiddlers, Eamonn was great fun to play with. His sense of humour was very like Junior's.

Regards

John

[Rick]

I heard you could also stick in the aca triplet coming from the 2nd octave notes and that's backstitching as well.
so Eaca F#aca, etc Instead of Ecac, F#cac, etc.

Not that i care much for it.

[Cayden]

I heard you could also stick in the aca triplet coming from the 2nd octave notes and that's backstitching as well.
so Eaca F#aca, etc Instead of Ecac, F#cac, etc.

Not that i care much for it.

I don't see that fit anywhere unless you mean in the Harvest Home the eA (3AAA played as eA (3AcA as touhey does [personally i would prefer the way Ennis would have done it eA (3BcA so you won't have to do two staccato As] but really you're using the triplet in the usual way i.e. replacing an A roll and I wouldn't call that backstitching.

Judging by the comments I understand it's fairlu un-PC to like backstitching. Richard O Meally playing the harvest Home on Double chanter with the low bass reg in full flight is as close as any piper ever got to sounding like a Teddy Bear's picnicand I always think it's a charming sort of sound. Used sparingly I find stitches very effective little ornaments and I like to use them every now and again, both in a serious way as well as little piss takers.

[djm]

you have a habit of blurting out things that have no basis in the factual world and this is another one of them.

Peter, I wait to see if any know-it-alls like you will answer a question, and if you do not, and if I believe I have an anwser, I will give it, in hopes of helping a fellow piper. As far as I know, terms like "backstitching"are all slang or jargon, and their interpretation is not set in stone, so that what you believe to be true may be what you learned in your neck of the woods, but may not be what is passed along elsewhere.

If you are going to set yourself up as the final arbiter of all things piping, it would be helpful if you were the first to answer a question instead of the last, and then only to snipe with superiority.

Have a nice day,

djm

[Cayden]

OOoh touchy. There's pretty much a consensus on what is 'backstitching'. the word was pretty much introduced to the piping world at large in the Touhey book by pat mitchell and Jackie Small. The book has a detailed description of what is the technique. Really, this is basic stuff, starting piper's literature. Set yourself up with the basic library and read the stuff and make some sense of it.

[Rick]

I don't see that fit anywhere unless you mean in the Harvest Home the eA (3AAA played as eA (3AcA as touhey does [personally i would prefer the way Ennis would have done it eA (3BcA so you won't have to do two staccato As] but really you're using the triplet in the usual way i.e. replacing an A roll and I wouldn't call that backstitching.

Judging by the comments I understand it's fairlu un-PC to like backstitching. Richard O Meally playing the harvest Home on Double chanter with the low bass reg in full flight is as close as any piper ever got to sounding like a Teddy Bear's picnicand I always think it's a charming sort of sound. Used sparingly I find stitches very effective little ornaments and I like to use them every now and again, both in a serious way as well as little piss takers.

Well.., i don't know my backstitching from my frontstitching so, i was just wondering about if that was considered backstitching as well as a lot of people seems to have different ideas on what it actually is.

As far as using it goes, i think sofar i have only heard it being used "properly" (for my ears that is) 2 times.
I find it takes the "swing" out of tunes more often than not.
It's happilly hopping along and then all of a sudden it sounds like a gallon of coffee is starting to kick in..

[Lorenzo]

...any know-it-alls like you

Sure you don't have that backwards?

I know...backstitching is when you start a "thread" with all the answers, and on down the line end up with the right questions. No, wait...that's "backtracking." psssst..I didn't say that. Whoops. that's "backpedaling."

That sound clip of Keenan playing the Harvest Home doesn't sound exactly like backstitching, but it may include some of that, or something similar.