The Craft of Pibroch: playing with the pattern 11O1 OO1O

How this course works – its structure, dynamics, origins, and intentions. Forming the group – introducing each other and establishing how everyone will be heard and encouraged, working at their appropriate edge.

Introducing the pattern 11O1 OO1O and Colin Campbell’s “canntaireachd” notation through two pieces:

1. MacLean of Coll’s Galley (https://pibroch.net/ps11)
2. Cha till mi tuille (https://pibroch.net/ps57) 

Each has multiple settings, revealing what is fixed and what is fluid. This zone of creative play means that beginners and professionals can work on the same piece and be equally stretched. According to your skill, you will use smaller or larger technical vocabularies and greater or lesser degrees of freedom beyond what’s on the page or in the videos.

Homework assignment 1. Pick which piece to work on and be ready next session to play one or two cycles in the sharing section.

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

Sessions 2–6 will follow the same format:

1. Singing (5 mins) – picking up the idiom in the time-honoured, whole-body way, without the distraction of the instrument. This will incorporate finger counting and expressive gestures that aid invention and recall. 
2. Sharing (60 mins) – everyone plays something! By noticing the gap between what we are able to do, and something that’s a little bit beyond us, everyone’s level rises. 
3. Expanding (10 mins) – introducing new material, highlighting what’s important and answering any questions.

The singing and expanding sections will focus on options interpreting MacLean of Coll’s Galley (https://pibroch.net/ps11). Either piece can be presented in the sharing and we look forward to hearing a wide variety of translations. Keep it simple, nothing is too easy. Be on top of your game to build confidence in the form.

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

In the sharing, all participants will play two or three cycles of 11O1 OO1O. Either respond to the feedback received last session or present another piece: there are four to choose from in the video library. The cycles can be from anywhere in the piece, you don’t have to start at the beginning.

The singing and expanding will focus on options interpreting Cha till mi tuille, using its Scottish Gaelic lyrics to inform our understanding of the pibroch notations (https://pibroch.net/ps57). These present intriguing questions and the Gaelic word rhythms provide compelling answers.

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

In the singing, we will continue reading from Colin Campbell’s score of Cha till mi tuille, discovering three ways that pibroch builds in intensity. The sharing will focus on how to practise techniques, finding ease and reliability under duress, overcoming obstacles, fear, and self-limiting beliefs.

In the expanding, we will introduce a way of crafting new pibrochs from music you already know. Any two phrases can be turned into a pibroch! Barnaby and Bill will explain how they adapted Kaniad y Gwynn Bibydd from Robert ap Huw’s MS (1613) for this year’s Piping Live! festival in Glasgow. The third piece in the video library, this includes options for gut-strung and wire-strung harps, as well as extensions raising the energy level with more advanced techniques.

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

The singing will introduce the fourth and final piece in the video library: MacLeod’s Lament (https://pibroch.net/ps135). Reading from Colin Campbell’s score of the “Taolive” (an t-saorludh, the noble energy), we will discover one of the ways in which the pattern 11O1 OO1O is conventionally elaborated.

The sharing will focus on the craft of pulse elasticity: how to be slack before building tension, how to tighten the pulse little by little working towards a climax, and how to come down softly from testing peaks. Listen to Bill’s performances of Port Mòr y Gwynn Bibydd and MacLeod’s Lament in the video library to become familiar with a quintessential quality beyond the page, as translated for harp by the tutors. These orally-transmitted subtleties of timecraft were absorbed by Barnaby from his teachers, particularly from Donald MacPherson (1922–2012) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Macpherson_(piper).

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

In this final session, we will let go of wrong beliefs about modes in the face of glorious evidence, exploring time-honoured ways of:

— changing taste within pieces;
— crafting distinctive tonalities;
— generating intensity, bitterness, and sweetness; and
— moving listeners with little sensory shocks.

You will gain confidence in how to choose a pibroch, reading from Barnaby’s map of the classical repertoire. This is a handout with synopses of tonality and structure, names in English, and links to the 843 settings, 367 Gaelic titles, and 314 pibrochs that emerged from invisibility between 1741 and 1854. Yours to explore, applying what you learned in this course.

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]