Mccluskeyarundell > Leon > Music
Leon plays two pipes
Playing the Playing the Pipe and Tabor together
You will probably find it easier to learn a tune on the pipe first , before trying to play the pipe and tabor together.
The better you know the tune, the easier it will be to get the two instruments to work together.
The pipe is held in the left hand, and the drumstick in the right.
To start with, try to match the tune with the simplest possible beat - one beat of the tabor per bar. You will probably find it easier to start with one instrument, and then bring in the other:
* Either start with a drum beat, and start playing the whistle once the drum beat feels steady, or start playing the tune and then introduce the drum.
You don't even need a tabor to practice this. You can practice by tapping your hand on your leg, in time with the tune.
My first attempts went fine, but only until I started playing the tabor! With practice, I eventually managed to get my two hands to synchronise.
Once your two hands can play together, you can start experimenting with rhythmic variations to make the music more interesting.
Drumming is not my strong point (but I'm working on it!), so for now I'll confine my advice here to some basics for dance music.
First, my experience with playing folk dancing has taught me that dancers will tolerate wrong notes, but they much prefer musicians who keep a steady beat.
This is especially so for morris dancers. Just imagine what could happen in a stick dance if the dancers got their clashing sticks out of sequence!
So, for dancing especially, the drum is your lead instrument. This may seem strange if, like me, you think that the penny whistle is the best instrument in the group. But the simple fact is that if a penny whistle goes out of time the rhythm section will ignore it. If the drum goes out of time, the other musicians have little choice but to follow it.
As a taborer, you have a particular responsibility to keep the beat.
Secondly, the drum can give the dancers advance warning of a new part of the dance. You can do this by introducing a rhythmic variation in the last bar of a section of music. For example, you could syncopate that bar. I like to indicate the last bar by playing a couple of notes on my cowbells. A wood block or cymbal would do equally well, or you could play a couple of notes on the side of the drum rather than on the skin.
This page was last updated on 7 April 2006