Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Steve_freereeder]

2) John Kirkpatrick's "twiddle" ornaments, at least in this tune, are simply adding the next button up on the row and then going back to the note, sometimes as a triplet, and sometimes just so fast it becomes just a sort of grace note "zing". So for example, when playing a pulled A on the G row, he will play A-C-A. When played at speed, these actually sound a lot more complex and sophisticated than they are!

Cutting a note with the note above and back again (d-e-d) is an ornament called an upper mordent, using the note below (c-B-c) is a lower mordent. The picture shows how these mordents would be written in a piece of sheet music...

Edit:

I prefer to think in terms of ARTICULATION rather than ORNAMENTATION.

Not really. These cuts, twiddles, mordents - whatever you like to call them - are definitely ornaments. They do just as the name suggests: add that extra little something to a note in the melody. Similarly with turns, rolls, trills, etc.

Articulation is all about how you string notes together to make phrases or sections of phrases. On a wind instrument it would be about tonguing separate notes or else slurring notes together just tonging the first one. On a bowed string instrument, it would be about how you use the bow - e.g. to join a series of notes together in a single bow direction to give a smooth legato phrase or, by contrast, using the separate bow directions to give clear separated notes. On a melodeon the similar analogy would be using a single bellows direction to join a series of notes - cross-rowing if required - or waggling the bellows to give a more separated, chopped up, melody.

Edited to add:
You can of course use ornaments to articulate a string of notes into phrases. Some traditions of bagpipe playing do this, where ornaments ('grace notes') divide up the phrases, simply because an open fingering bagpipe chanter cannot otherwise separate the notes.

Perhaps this is the sort of thing you were meaning? Apologies if I misunderstood your original statement. 

[Jesse Smith]

Jesse made the point that a twiddle, might be to the adjacent second  and back (eg, ABA), or it might be to the third (eg, AcA).

Well, the "twiddle" to the major second I was referring to is when you're playing the pull E on the G row and go up to the next button (F#) and back.

The other extreme on the G row is going from D to the next button (G), a fourth.

[Stiamh]

There is truth to the "ornamentation is not ornamentation, it's articulation" idea, particularly as regards Irish music, but it's not the whole story.

Yes, "ornamentation" often has a rhythmic function. Some of it may be essential for that reason. But much of it is not. The fact that there are players with wonderful rhythm who don't use much of it is clear evidence (in my mind) that it often has a, well, ornamental function as well.

[Stiamh]

Jackie Daly sometimes chooses other buttons than the adjacent one for one of these here twiddle things, for harmonic reasons. For example, to fit in with a Bm chord he will often "cut" the note B with the f# a 5th above rather than the obvious c# a tone above (this on a C#/D box). There are a few other possibilities for choices of this sort, but not that many.

[Tone Dumb Greg]

Jesse made the point that a twiddle, might be to the adjacent second  and back (eg, ABA), or it might be to the third (eg, AcA).

Well, the "twiddle" to the major second I was referring to is when you're playing the pull E on the G row and go up to the next button (F#) and back.

Sure, but I use the AcA twiddle a lot. I don't actually care much what it's called, except that having a label for something allows you to talk about it to others without confusing them too much. If I call something a mordant t would be nice if it is one, rather than a budoobly,or something. At the end of the day it's all jargon, really, but, as an engineer, I know that jargon is a hell of a useful tool for talking to others involved in the same occupation, or pastime.