Band: North Atlantic Drift (with Aerialists)
Location: Toronto: Tranzac Club, Main Call
Date: 2022-04-23
North Atlantic Drift is a traditional folk (or “trad”) Celtic band, drawing on Eastern Canadian, Scottish and Irish music traditions. The band has three players, playing primarily guitar or mandoline, fiddle and bagpipes, and plays improvisations on both folk melodies, as well as some pieces written by the members.
As I have been thinking about improvisation through my partimento studies, I was very interested to see if I could understand how the improvisation was done, in terms of the basic structure of the pieces, and how much the musicians relied on the reactions of the other players.
For many of the pieces, a single player would begin by laying down the melody, which (I believe) is often well-known by other trad players. This might be repeated a few times before the other musicians joined in, and as far as I could tell, it would usually be repeated with a variety of embellishments, but would rarely break the form (for example, I do not recall any times where a player’s solo would radically break from the theme). It seems similar to the way Jazz standards might be played, but without as rich a harmonic structure.
In therms of timing, I noticed that the fiddle player seemed to lead and after the piece had been played through, he would signal with a nod that they were ready to come to a close. Throughout, rhythm was kept by each player strongly (and at times) audibly stamping their feet.
I do find that folk music is more accessible than some other forms of popular music, in that it doesn’t seem was necessary to have had prior experience hearing the music to be able to enjoy it in a live setting. The repetition and simplicity of structure makes each piece quite familiar by the time it is at an end. (And the manner of introduction of the melody for each piece does allow the listener to become familiar with it before more complex variations are developed.)
The piper played both Uilleann pipes, and Scottish border pipes. In contrast to the more familiar Highland bagpipes, both of these used a bellows controlled by the elbow to draw in air and were held on a lap. Neither produces the volume of highland pipes, and had both fewer and shorter drones. (Uilleann pipes additionally have a device controlled by the bellows arm that allows dynamic starting or stopping some of the drones from sounding while playing.)
As a follow-up, I would like to understand better how the bagpipe works, especially with respect to the choice of keys for other players. If the drones are fixed, does that not limit to keys featuring the drone note as tonic (or perhaps dominant)? Perhaps the piper can only play with the chanter if the drones are not suitable for the key? There is some additional capabilities of the Uilleann pipes to play chords, as well, I believe.