Teach Yourself Bagpipes by Lindsay Davidsonbringing quality 'piping instruction to you for free
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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. 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). 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.
Exercise 1 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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