Teach Yourself Bagpipes by Lindsay Davidson

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Birls

There is no adequate manner to depict a birl diagrammatically. Every teacher has their own way to describe this embellishment. There are two birls in common use - a heavy birl and a light birl, and it is important to be competent at both.

In short, there are two actions in a birl. The heavy birl is best described as “Tap and Across”. This means tap your little finger down on Low ‘G’ and then pull it across the hole thus giving two strikes. Only move you little finger, and try your best to avoid any extra movements from other fingers (this may be difficult). Try to feel in your arm that you are controlling your little finger with two different muscles.

The light birl can be described as an upside down seven on the chanter - slide your little finger down across the hole and back up diagonally. 

A birl can be preceded by a High ‘G’ gracenote or not - the music will tell you this. Make both Low ‘A’s between the strikes the same length. This movement requires to be very fast.

Birls look like this in the music, and there is no indication if the 'upside down 7' or 'tap and across' are better chosen (this is a musical interpretation question).

birl 1

birl 2

birl 3

There is quite considerable variation in the execution of birls. If your teacher deviates from anything described above this does not automatically mean that something is wrong. However, these birls are used and recognised world-wide, whereas other styles may not be (yet?).

The artistry and musicality and thrill of a birl is when you can control and vary the rhythmical effect. This is marked in the exercises below.

For a demonstration of the upside down seven birl, please click below:

 


Exercise 1

birl exercise 1

Exercise 2

birl exercise 2

One thing to note....it takes several years for birls to fully mature....you will need patience!

When you can play these exercises smoothy and with control you are ready to deal with the 'other' features you need to know and also move on to beginner tunes

If you want to immediately start to drive your technique to a higher level you may wish to look at the exercises for stamina and dexterity.

Go back to the beginner index.

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