Yeah, it would be messy and it would be very difficult.  There’s a much simpler way to achieve the desired goal, which is what I said a few minutes ago, which is:  the music is a guide.  It’s not a scientific literal depiction of how it’s played, and that goes for every style of music.  You interpret it based on your knowledge and understanding.  I mean there’s nothing about a dot that intrinsically shows that it makes the note longer.  You had to be taught that’s what the dot means.

Right.  So just like you have to be taught what the sounds are that go with different letters, and then you know that the different letters have different sounds depending on the context.  Right so there’s lots of knowledge that you apply to it because you’re a person.  That’s how we learn.  We don’t interpret things literally like a computer would.  

We have these expression rules that we can apply and one thing I’m going to add, many of you may have come across this idea of strong/weak so often what you’ll get shared from judges and teachers, you might hear 2/4 marches are about strong/weak.  What they’re trying to say is that the first beat in the bar should be strong, and the second beat in the bar should be weak.  Now that’s a guideline and that’s not how every single bar is going to go.  There are going to be times particularly from a drumming end, when we don’t hit this big strong accent.  In fact we might do the opposite and go for the upbeat rather than the downbeat.  So that’s something you guys would talk about strong/weak.

Some people think that makes it more confusing.  I think it’s not as accurate as to think that all your beats are strong.  Right.  That’s what the pulsing does when you talk about strong, I guess for drummers that could be loud.  You could have an accent there to make it strong.  But in the piping world, there’s no accenting, there’s only lengthening through pulsing.  

The way I try to play it,  (sorry, I just want to jump in, but what you just said is gold) that’s important to me, this is a breakthrough moment for pipers and drummers.  When we think, as drummers strong/weak, we think accent/no accent.  Whereas for you guys (pipers), that’s not the case.  This conversation is so important: Jori is saying we can’t have a louder note and a softer note as pipers, so it’s about lengthening.  When we understand that as drummers, that also tells us that we’re not going to go accent a soft note.  We don’t need to do that.  More importantly, we need to do make sure that we’re lengthening each of those down beats just the same way the pipers are.  We can add in an accent here when we want to, when it’s appropriate.  We can also shift that to the second beat, or the upbeat.  

To me that’s really crucial, what you just said. Thanks for sharing it.  What we have in common, where we overlap, is timing.  Right.  Bagpipers have timing, rhythm, tempo, dot cut, pulsing, that’s all related to timing.  Then we have the different melody notes and embellishments that we play on top of that.  You guys have the timing and dynamics. You don’t have different melody notes.  You just got the one note when you play your drum.  The crucial thing is to get the timing synced up in terms of the tempo, in terms of where you’re hitting.  If you’re emphasizing a downbeat or an offbeat, if you’re accenting or not accenting.  Just like we have to distinguish, as pipers, the melody notes are one dimension, but then the rhythm and the pulsing in the tempo are another dimension.

Right.  And you’ve got the accenting and the dynamic range that’s sort of independent.  Or it’s a separate dimension from the timing domain. So obviously it’s not random.  They’re synchronized if you’re doing it right.  You want to put the accents on the long notes, to accent certain beats.

Right.  Same thing with us.  Our certain embellishments tend to come on down beats to emphasize them.  So that’s really the key thing.  Some pipers will have very complex expression schemes that they claim to use, or that they claim are real.

(For example) “Oh well, in the first bar I go strong/weak, and in the second bar, I go weak/strong. Then there’s mediums and stuff.”

I actually don’t believe that’s an accurate way of describing how most people play. I’m not saying that no one plays like that, but I’m saying I don’t think that’s really how most people play.  The way I play, the way I teach, the way that I think most pipers play is we just try to keep a steady tempo.  We have a consistent rhythm expression in terms of our dot cut, and we’re doing a strong amount of pulsing, and we’re not fluctuating throughout the tune.  We’re not sometimes doing really heavy pulsing, and then less heavy pulsing, or really heavier, I just don’t think that’s desirable or even if it’s really possible.  It just seems too complicated.  If you listen to the best 2/4 march players, in my opinion they are very consistent with that strong heavy pulsed beat.  They’re in a groove. If you were able to come up with some complex varying expression scheme, I don’t think that would be desirable.

This music is very rhythmic and it’s very much about getting in a groove and getting some momentum.  We’re talking marching music, and we’re talking dance music.  This is very regular kind of rhythmic stuff which is not the case for all types of music.  But it’s certainly the case for piping music.

Absolutely. That’s important.  YouTube in particular has lots of options in terms of,  “Hey here’s how you play pipes or drums.”  But for those of you out there on a learning journey, which we all are to some degree, I want you to just challenge who you’re learning from when people have radically different approaches.  Whether it’s piping, drumming, violin, or whatever, I want you to question it.  Then through the filter of, “Hey success leaves clues.”   

So Jori and I, we would look to who are the best players.  And we’ve played alongside the best players.  We both played at the top level ourselves, but we continue to look at what they are doing.  (For example) Oh 99 of them are all doing that, we all kind of think that.  Okay that’s an accepted way of playing.  So if you’re learning from somebody that has a very radical view, just question it.  Then get out there and see what the majority of great players are doing.

I love alternative approaches, I love thinking outside the box.  But in this case, I think the simpler explanation and the simpler approach is the correct one.  We’re going for a groove, we’re going to hit some sort of rhythmic consistency. 

I think that’s the right approach.  Brilliant. So Jori, which tune type should we move to now?  Is that everything about 2/4 marches? 

We can go deeper of course, but let’s move on here.  Before we finish my conversation with James, I want to tell you about my BagpipeLessons.com Inner Circle.  If you like this video, you’ll love Inner Circle Membership.

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The MSR starts with the 2/4 march then goes to a strathspey.  Let’s go to strathspey, four quarter notes per bar.  The simplest form would be four quarter notes.  What’s different between a strathspey and a 4/4 march like Scotland the Brave?  Or one of these other 4/4 marches?  We know one of the things is that the strathspey is going to be way faster.

Right. When you’re playing in solo piping, you have a lot of leeway.  But we’re talking a 100 anyway.  Right.  From a band perspective, you’re probably looking anywhere from 100 to the very top end 130.  That will go for solo drumming as well. 130 is incredibly fast but you will see it.  Then solo piping around 100, to the top professionals, would probably be at a 120.

I mean don’t take these numbers as absolutes.  If you’re just getting into solo piping competitions, you have a lot of leeway to go on the slower end.  Everybody would much rather hear you play something slower and have you do a good job with it, than strive to meet some sort of tempo benchmark and have it be a disaster. 

What’s interesting about strathspeys, as compared to marches, is that we have no even pairs of eighth notes in a strathspey pipe tune.  Your pairs of notes are either going to be dot cut with a long note first that does not exist.  Or it’s going to be cut dot with the short note coming first.  The other rhythmic pattern is a triplet.  Sometimes it’s actually three even notes played in a beat.  It’s not that common to actually play it as three even notes.  In a lot of the old books, they would write it that way.  But we play the first two notes short, so it’s almost like two cut notes and a dot note.  It’s usually written as two sixteenths and an eighth.

Right.  So it’s like a short-short-long.  There’s another couple triplets: you could have the long note in the middle, but that’s extremely rare.  So the quarter note, your cut dot, and your triplet, that’s going to cover 99.5% of your strathspeys as far as the type goes.

From a drumming end, you’re going to see this: this a run of five, but you’ll see I put a three over the top.   So three groupings in the time of two.  It’s actually a subdivision of that triplet.  You may also see this: subdividing all of those eighth notes into three groups of sixteenth notes.  To get that digitally, that’s essentially what we’re going to be seeing.  You’ve got this at the top here, number one and you’ve got tata and you’ve got your tap and then triple that.  And then here we’ve got digital, and then six is digital, and then seven.  That’s me ending on the next downbeat over here.  So those are the key rhythmic options that you’ll see.

Jori, what about in terms of the expression?  How does that differ from what we do in our march?

There’s a lot of overlap.  I don’t know if we mentioned it, but in any dot cut style tune, it’s really important that you hold those dots and you make those cut notes really short.  I would say that is the primary thing that you want to focus on in your expression.  And making sure that the dots are long, and the short notes are really short.  From a technical point of view, that’s one of the biggest challenges that pipers have.  Cut those short notes short, especially when you get your tempos fast, and you’ve got doublings and all these other embellishments that are stuck in there.  The first thing that goes is the length of those short notes.  They get rounded out.  So we want to make those really short.  An additional thing we’re going to do in strathspeys is to bring out the first and third beat in each bar.  So the pulsing now takes place over the entire bar.  So instead of 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, it’s 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2.  So you’re really stretching out that first and third beat. 

If I was going to summarize how to properly play a strathspey in terms of expression: a very strong dot cut and then extra emphasis on the first and third beats by stretching out the dot of the first and third beat.  That’s what we call pulsing.  So lots of pulsing on 1 and 3 and lots of dot cut and then you’re good to go.  That sums it up!

I find in my experiences teaching for the last couple of decades that drummers and pipers will have varying thoughts on this.  So strong/weak medium/weak, you see it in a lot of theory books.  A lot of people talk about it.  But Jori and I have chatted at length about this.  To do a strong note versus a medium note on a bagpipe, it’s like, “What does that even mean?”  

When you look at what most people are doing, it is strong and then not strong, in terms of length.  We’re talking length, not accent here.  So if we did it as a drummer, and we just thought about the length, we would follow the bagpipers.  But if we think of our accenting, it’s actually easier for us to play, let’s say, 0 or 1 is weak, 10 is strong, 5 is medium.  We can do that for sure.  From a drumming point of view, if you want to do strong/weak medium/weak, or any variation, that’s cool, that’s possible.  But what you’re saying is, the first note of the bar in the third note of the bar, you hold, and you express each of those. 

That’s exactly right.  When you hear the terminology: strong/weak, medium/weak thrown around, and when you ask pipers, “What do you know about stress by expression,” that’s what they say.  If they know anything, that’s what they say.  What they mean is, pulsing strong on the first bar, first beat weak, which means no pulsing on the second beat medium.  So some pulsing on the third beat, but not as much as the first one.  The fourth one’s weak again. 

I think that most really good strathspey playing comes across when you really listen to it carefully.  That third beat is quite strong, and you can argue the fine details here, but I think if your approach is pulsing on 1 and 3, making them both equally strong, I think that’s a good starting point.

I just don’t know that you can really pull off a medium and a weak when you’re pulsing.  The length, the amount of pulsing on a beat, will affect the amount of pulsing on the following beat. Right.  So the stronger you make 1, the less weak that number 2 will be.  The same thing goes for 3 and 4.  I think it makes sense that it has to be strong/weak, strong/weak, but I’ve just gotten rid of that terminology entirely.  I say pulsing on 1 and 3 essentially.  That means if we look specifically at that bar, it’s the same rhythmic pattern four times. But they are not played identically.  You’re going to make the dotted note on the first beat, and the dotted note on the third beat longer.  Those are going to be 2.  They’re going to be slightly longer than the dotted notes on the second and fourth beat.  If you were to record it, someone who’s pulsing it properly, and rewind it and time it, and actually measure the lengths of those notes, that dotted note on 1 and 3 will be the longest notes of the bar.  Two and 4 will be slightly less long, and all those short notes will be the same.

You’re right, that’s a crucial bit there.  You want all those short notes to be the same. 

Let’s move on.  So really what is our standard time signature in an MSR: a traditional march, strathspey, and reel?  It would be common time or cut time, also known as 2/2.  That’s an interesting one because the 2 on the bottom means half note.  We usually don’t have half notes. What we end up having is four quarter notes where it’s instead of a quarter note on each beat.  We have 2 quarter notes on the first beat, 2 quarter notes on the second beat.  Another way to think about it is it’s just like 4/4, except instead of tapping our foot 4 times, we just tap it twice on the first and the third. 

What about tempo range there, so we think, solo piping.  On the high end it would probably be in the 80s for reels.  The low end might be even 60, somewhere in there.  It can always be slower if you’re in the entry level solo piping grades.  From a band or a solo drumming perspective, slow would be early 70s and then getting up into that brisk fast tempo.  At the top end you’re looking at high 80s.  Then our rhythmic groupings are going to be very similar to what we had in a 2/4 march.  So we could have four quarter notes.  Each one of those quarter notes could be… Actually we don’t get into the four note groupings really, we’re talking quarter notes and eighth note pairs. 

Right, but they’re in an MSR.  You are going to have dot cuts.  There are two styles of reels. Sometimes in medleys or in recitals, you’ll hear pipers playing round style reels.  I’m not sure where that comes from.  If that’s from the Irish side or what, but you do have that.  You could have dot cuts or cut dots and then when you mix them all up, you can get dot cut-cut dot, just like in the 2/4.  You can scramble them all up, but there’s really only three different rhythms:  quarter note dot cut or cut dot, but then once you mix them all up, you get lots of interesting combos. 

We can subdivide this.  Remember in our march we looked at the triplication?  Exactly the same thing here.  Just to write that out for you quickly, that will look like this….So we could play that when the pipers were playing,…  We often do that when we’re rolling.  Our rolls, very often are irregular groups and triplet-based.  That’s how we think when we’re playing those, and then expression.  Jori, what’s your take on expression there?

It’s like a march where you’re bringing out your beats.  I think because the tempos are faster and it’s a little bit more of an easy-going laid-back approach than a 2/4 march.  So I’m still looking at pulsing my two beats per bar, but maybe not quite as heavy as you would have in a 2/4 march.  Something like John Morrison.  If you’re playing it as a 2/4, be heavier, be slower, more pounding out those beats.  We’d be holding the first dotted note in each cluster. We still want to bring out two beats per bar.  I want to ask, if that second beat was a cut dot, where would you put the pulsing?  You put the pulsing on the dotted note.  Never pulse a cut note.  Pulse out on the long note.  The beat emphasis always goes on the long note portion of that beat.

One thing for those visual people out there, one thing that really helped me was a mentor who talked about 2/4 marches and had the downbeat here on the triangle and the upbeat was here.  So it had this very uplifting feel, whereas in a reel, more like an infinity loop.  You can see that when I get to the lower half, I’m actually moving through it with a little bit more momentum.  That reflects what you’re already saying in terms of holding beat 1 and beat 2.

Right, awesome.  Right, next tune type then.  We finished our MSR, now we’ve got our last two we’re going to talk about today which are hornpipes and jigs.  Hornpipe you know well James. How would you distinguish a hornpipe from a reel and a 2/4?  To me it lives somewhere close to those.  It’s in between a march, it’s not a march, but similar. It has a lot of overlap similar to a reel as well.  How would you describe it?

Through the march we have that agogic stress where we’re really leaning on that first beat.  We’re emphasizing it.  Whereas in a hornpipe, it’s a lighter-hearted, slightly more elevated tempo.  We don’t “sit on” and emphasize that beat as we would in a 2/4 march.  There’s a lot more lift in life. 

I think that’s right.  If you look at the rhythmic patterns, if you look at the rhythmic construction of a hornpipe, it’s going to be very similar to a march.  But the style of expression is slightly faster, not as heavy on the pulsing.  So just a little bit too heavy and slow and plodding.  If you took that hornpipe and played it in march style, same kind of rhythmic patterns, lots of dot cut.  If you’re going to play the dot cut style tune, there are also styles of hornpipes which are round.  We take out all the dot cuts we have, that is what we would call a dot cut hornpipe.

About playing it rounded, so if we played it right, we would simply take out these dots and cuts, right?

Mm-hmm. I think for a cut-style horn pipe, at the upper end it would be maybe 85, and at the lower end it might be 60, somewhere in there.  A thing to consider is the difference in tempo between that dot cut style and the round style.  It seems that when you play a round style hornpipe, you have to bring the tempo up a little bit so that it feels and sounds good.  There’s something about when you add the dot cut.  It gives it some life and some bounce and some vitality, even when the tempo is down.  But once you get rid of those dot cuts, you’ve got to crank it up a little bit.  That’s something to consider.  

I think 90 beats per minute that I’ve put in, that’s more for those rounded tunes, playing a dot cut hornpipe.  But 19 may sound a little unusual, particularly for some dancers doing the sailor’s hornpipe.  But certainly not from a band performance standpoint and expression-wise.  Did we touch on that yet?

I don’t think we did yet.  Just plenty of dot cut and keep that consistent throughout.  I like to do a little bit of pulsing there.  Not too much–to be lighter than a 2/4 march, but a little bit of pulsing. 

It’s like taking the 2/4 principle and just relaxing a little bit on it.  Crank up your tempo and just relax on the pulsing.  That’s right. 

Then jig, let’s stick with 6/8 jig for now.  There’s also 9/8 and 12.  But if we just stick with 6, it’s most common I would say.  So 6 eighth notes per bar, clustered in groups of 3, so you’re going to see 2 groups of 3 eighth notes.  That’s the foundational building block of a jig.  You could combine those two first 2/8 notes and that gives you a quarter note.  Then you’d have an eighth note hanging on its own.  You could also combine all three of those notes together and have a dotted quarter note.

On that second line there, where you have the eighth note going first, that is very rare to see. It is very rare.  Remember, we talked about in 2/4s when you had the groups of three, usually the eighth note comes first.  That’s just because the long note usually comes on the downbeat. 

That’s also the principle on the jig.  I would say that eighth note coming first is sort of like one in every ten thousand.  It’s really rare. It could happen (if you) want to write a tune with it.   Go for it!   It’s a little bit of a syncopated feel, but it’s (an) almost unheard-of tempo.  So this is where we get to really crank our tempos up.  At the high level we’re talking maybe up to 120 for solo pipers and then slowing it down to say 85 or something like that.

I was playing a recital years ago, and I felt like I was playing really fast.  Then I came off and I had recorded it and I wasn’t backed and I was playing like 144 or something.  I don’t know how I played that fast.  I mean, I couldn’t do it now.  I think it’s a combination of adrenaline and sweat and I was like, “thank goodness I was not accompanying you.”  That would have been disastrous for me.

What we’re looking at here: there’s no dot cuts, right?  So the name of the game in a jig for pipers is keep it even.  Keep those eighth notes even.  Some pipers like to talk about pulsing a tiny bit on that first eighth note.  That’s a very advanced technique and you can do that, but it’s really subtle.  For most of us, what you’re focusing on is: play the right notes, get all your technique in there, and aim for a very steady, even smooth delivery of eighth notes.  That’s what you’re going for and in a pipe band situation, that’s some of the most exciting music we play.  We get these jigs cranking, and the drummers and the pipers are in sync ,and you’re just in this groove and just cranking it out!  It’s great!

Yeah, absolutely!  And that’s for people who are new to it and going, “I can’t tell the difference between my strathspey and my jig.”  In the strathspey you’re hearing lots of the dots and cuts. You’re hearing them everywhere.  Whereas in a jig, you won’t hear that, right?

Right.  If you wanted to figure out what type of tune you’re hearing, well if it’s a pibroch or a slow air, you can pretty much determine that based on the tempo.  Then if you want to figure out what it is from what’s remaining, does it feel like about the tempo of a marching tune?  Or does it feel faster than that?  If it’s faster, then it’s going to be one of our dance tunes. Right away you can identify (a) jig because you’re going to hear 1-2-3, 1-2-3.  If you hear that, you know you’re in jig town.

Right.  So that’s the jig.  If it’s not a jig, and you’re into hornpipe or reel, it gets a little bit trickier. But you ought to be able to figure out the jig.  So keep it even, keep it smooth, and you’re golden.

I love it.  So guys, that is an overview of our key tune types.  Hopefully there are some key takeaways.  If you’ve got any questions, I’ll certainly jump in and check out (the comments) what you’re writing, and maybe (learn) some challenges you’re having also. 

Don’t forget to hit subscribe. We’ve got Facebook communities and other communities where we serve pipers and drummers just like yourself.  I know that Jori has created an amazing Inner Circle.  Jori, can you just take a moment to give us an overview of what the Inner Circle is about?

Yeah, so I started BagpipeLessons.com in 1999 with the idea to give anybody anywhere in the world access to good information to learn the pipes.  A few years ago I wanted to do something in addition to the downloads that I had in my shop.  I want to do something interactive.  So I created the BagpipeLessons.com Inner Circle (members-only group).  There’s a few things that you get on that: you get weekly live group classes with me and we cover all kinds of topics, tunes, expression, technique, reeds, memorization, learning tips, playing in a band, you name it. We cover these topics live, and if you can’t join live, you can watch them on replay.  We have a private Facebook group, you can watch them there also.  We do our live classes on Zoom.  We have a members-only website where you get access to recordings of all the live sessions.  And we have hundreds, literally hundreds of lessons on every piping topic imaginable.  We bring in world champion guest instructors as well.  So that’s my Inner Circle and you can check it out at BagpipeLessons.com/membership.  I would love to have you.  We have pipers from around the world of all abilities.  So even if you’re just starting out, we have people like you that join our classes.  As you progress, there will be more and more content that you can access.  

Thank you Jori, and for everyone that’s watching, a couple of things: if you’ve learned something valuable today, please do us a favor and share this video with someone that might benefit from it.  (Such as) someone in your band that’s been talking about “this is how we play this tune, I think this is how we should express it, put it out there.”

Jori and I are not saying, “Hey, this is the only way to think about it.”  But from our experience of playing at the top and teaching (between us 40 plus years), we know that this is a really solid way to approach each tune type, and very well accepted at all grade levels, both solo piping and band.

I’ll pop the links below for my Youtube channel and Jori’s Youtube channel.  There’s so much free content in there, so please subscribe to those.  I’ll also put a link into my free Facebook group: Pipeline Drumming on Tap.  You can come in there and check it out.  I’ve also got the pipe band drumming Inner Circle, you can go and check that out at PipelineDrummingInnerCircle.com.  It’s very similar to yours (Jori’s) where I go live twice a week.   One is a practical session with sticks in hand, the other is a Q&A or a live composition.  I then bring in world champion guest instructors.  In your private members area, there are hundreds of tutorials and previous replays.

I just want to say a huge “Thank You.”  Jori, that was phenomenal.  I absolutely enjoyed that and it’s nice to actually sit down with you.  We’ve talked about this informally when we’re teaching at workshops, but it’s nice to actually formalize this and put it out there for other people.

Great James.  I think this is really cool, let’s do it again!  There’s so much that we could talk about, that would be really fun to discuss.  I love getting into it.  Thanks, let’s do it.  Thanks man.

Thanks for watching, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and the little bell to be notified when I post new stuff here on the BagpipeLessons.com Youtube channel.  Be sure to visit BagpipeLessons.com/membership to watch and download some more videos and lessons like this one and learn more about my Inner Circle.

Thanks.