| Crossing sounds crossing noises, catch noises, etc. |
| Crossing sounds are aguably one of the biggest differences between a poor or decent piper and a good piper (it takes more than fixing crossing sounds to be a great piper...if I ever get there, I'll let you know what that secret is :-) ). First, for those who don't know, what exactly is a "crossing sound?" It's that extra little sound that you get when changing between two notes, usually shifting between the top and bottom hands and usually it is a "low" note (Low A or Low G). You can say you're "improvising" or that you did it on purpose, but whatever your rationalization, it doesn't make it good piping and you just have to work it out. There are countless exercises out there for overcoming crossing sounds so I probably won't post any here. What I will do for you is try to explain the best way I know to clean them up, and provide some video samples to demonstrate what I'm talking about. I hope that's enough, but if not, let me know and we'll see if there's something else I can do for you. First... What causes crossing sounds? Crossing sounds are caused when you open or close a finger (or fingers) too soon or late. The classic example is the D-E crossing. Going up... Moving from D up to E, if you close your D fingers (index, middle and ring on the right hand) before opening the E finger (ring finger on the left hand), you will create a crossing sound. Usually this will be a Low G sound, but sometimes it can be a C, if you close your D finger (right hand index finger) first. Going down... Moving from E to D, if you close your E finger before opening your D fingers, you will, at best, pick up a Low A crossing sound, and possibly follow that with a little run of notes if you don't open all three D fingers at the same time. How do I fix a crossing sound problem? Going up... Using the example from above, the key is to lift the E finger slightly before closing the D fingers. This principle (lift the destination finger(s) before closing the others) applies to all note changes moving up the scale, including gracenotes (where the gracenote comes first). You don't want to lift it too far in advance when you're actually piping (and hopefully you can move them at basically the same time), but for initial practice it is good to exagerate the motion considerably until you get comfortable with it--that way, you hopefully won't go back to old habits so easily when you gradually speed it back up. Going down... Again, from the above example, you want to lift the D fingers slightly before closing the E finger. Again, this applies in all situations when moving down the scale--always lift the destination finger(s) first. However, in the case of gracenotes, you still want to lift the gracenote finger first, and then close it at the same time as the finger(s) you are leaving. **Check my videos page to see the crossing sounds and a slowed-down demo of the gracenote motion** |