Sunday 22 June 2014

Another London Improved

 Just won another piccolo marked London Improved D, this one with an Ivory head.

 The last one I did up was a great piccolo for Irish music with a solid low range.

  I'm hoping this one shapes up the same.




Friday 6 June 2014

ITMA and Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band


The Irish Traditional Music Archive has recently put up a whole sluagh of piccolo recordings from Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band.

The piccolo is featured prominently on loads of these recordings. I think there were a few piccolo players over the years including Murty Rabbet and Owen Frain.

Some of the playing features a strong vibrato which was popular on piccolo recordings of other styles of music at the time. I read that this strong breath vibrato became popular because early recording techniques could not capture a more subtle vibrato. I don't know about this claim as it was disparaging its further use today by classical players of today.


Here is the link