The Bagpipe Society

Review: The Music of Liam O'Flynn - Joe Doyle

I first became aware of the Uilleann pipes as a teenager when I discovered a Planxty album. The piper was of course Liam O’Flynn and I was struck by the way his pipes seemed to produce a different gorgeous tone with each note he played. It was decades later, when I finally took up the instrument, that I realised the magic was actually in his fingers.

When I started down the long road into the Uilleann world, a very valuable learning aid for me was a book of transcriptions of Willie Clanceys’ playing, with all the ornamentation included. I learnt a lot from it and much of the ornamentation is still locked into my muscle memory. I may well be in the minority though, a good 50% of the players at my local session learn by ear, mainly from YouTube. Those that do read get their dots from thesession.org and Tune Pal.

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