Advice requested: How much should I be practicing?

Whistle
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I don’t live anywhere they have sessions, I’m not aware of any Irish ensembles anywhere near me, and I don’t even live somewhere busking is feasible. My only goal is to become “properly good” at playing the whistle, for its own sake. Perhaps those other things will happen someday, but for now, I don’t have a clear bar I’m trying to hit.

While I am finding the whistle tremendously fun to play, I’m also working a lot of overtime and my free time is pretty limited most days. I’ve been shooting for roughly an hour a day, if I can get it, but in order to help optimize my time, I’m eager to hear the advice of the experienced players here (whom I wanted to call ‘the wizened and wise’ but someone might take offense :wink:

I saw a line somewhere from Mary Bergin saying that short practice periods throughout the day are much better than one long practice session. Is that the case?

How long should I aim for in terms of daily practice? Do I want to break it up into smaller periods that I spread across the day? How should I structure my practice? Is there anything you wished you’d practiced more as you were getting started, or glad that you gave special attention to?

Full disclosure, I sing opera, I’ve been pretty good on the piano, and I’m the president of a local community choir. Asking because asking is a great way to learn things you didn’t expect.

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I’m no expert here and would love to be “properly good” at any of the instruments that I play, but one truism (truth?) that I have heard over and over from a variety of sources is that consistent, daily practice is far better than lengthy occasional practice sessions. Consistency being key to developing muscle memory. One guitar teacher opined that the minimum viable practice session was roughly 15 mins a day. Far better to practice 15 min, seven days a week than 2 hours every weekend and nothing during the week. Not sure about Mary Bergin’s advice, but might combat fatigue (mental and physical) if you are practicing a lot. And I would not question Mary Bergin!

It’s also important to focus on the parts of your playing that need improvement. It’s easy, especially when playing on your own – as I most frequently do – to play the things that are easy and that you enjoy rather than the things that are hard. But it’s practicing the hard stuff that gets you better. If you stumble on a phrase in a song or on an ornamentation like a cut or pat, isolate that spot. Play it slowly. Note by note. over and over. 10-20 times each session (or more). Then integrate it back into the piece.

I could go on with more random thoughts, but I’m sure you will get plenty of other advice! One last thought: one of my teachers says practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. You can make a poor technique or passage permanent through practice if you are not careful to practice well!

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Bear in mind that “practice makes permanent”. With that in mind, you must make sure that your practice is not simply reinforcing bad habits.

My take away from this truism is that frequent listening, to good players, is probably more important than practicing. Try to develop a critical ear for the essence of good ITM, and good ITM whistle playing, and then periodically record yourself and try to make an honest assessment about whether you are getting closer. Painful as that is, I think its a useful way to keep yourself honest when you don’t have regular contact with a good teacher.

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Practice some boring scales and focus on timing! I also suggest playing “Joyful Joyful” in the key G to learn half holing and cross finger! When going up your finger is already on the hole to roll your finger back to hit the C. When coming back down I find it easier to find the holes to cross finger the C.

It’s just like typing a keyboard. Muscle memory.

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Thanks, that’s something I haven’t been doing, even though it’s a good practice for opera as well. But one question, if I may. Should I try to find renditions of whatever I’m practicing? Or just whatever ITM I come across and enjoy? Mix of both, maybe?

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I think the single best thing you could do is to get Mary Bergin’s tutorials, which come with audio CDs for all the individual techniques and exercises, and for the tunes that incorporate them (of which there are many!). This gives you the specific sounds to try to imitate and a very thorough grounding of how Mary Bergin uses specific techniques in the music itself. There is a vast amount of information in each of the tutorials, enough to last a few years of serious work. So I’d recommend getting started on the first one and then getting the second and third later.

It is also good to listen to recordings, both of whistlers and ITM in general on other instruments, and you will absorb it over time, but there is a huge gulf between how the top players play and what you are capable of doing initially, as a new player. There is so much going on, and at such a speed, that its difficult to hear initially, and overwhelming depressing once you can hear it.

The nice thing about Mary’s tutorials is that they help bridge this gap in a way that is very rigorous and leads to a good understanding of what she does, and why. When you use this as a guide to your practice, you start to sound authentic from the outset.

Of course, different players have different styles, employ different techniques, and each has their own interpretation of tunes, but I think you’ll be in a much better position to understand those when you’ve worked your way through Mary’s tutorials that shed light on what she does and how she does it. There is no single right way, of course, but there are plenty of ways to play that won’t sound authentic, and its easy to slip into bad habits.

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I’ve actually just gotten my copy of the first tutorial. I was planning on diving in tomorrow. Glad to hear the good review, and I’ll make sure not to skim any of it. I’ll give it the rigor it deserves, since you mention how valuable it is.

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You’ll find that she doesn’t give you hard and fast formulas. And initially, it might seem somewhat arbitrary which notes she chooses to emphasis, especially with tonguing. However, as you get further into the tunes you will start to see some patterns and it will begin to make more sense. Then if you end up exploring ITM on other instruments and study how, where and when they emphasize notes, you’ll be able to see some commonality. There are patterns and heuristic rules that underly it, but I don’t think you can just skip ahead and substitute a couple of simple rules for what you learn through this kind of immersive approach. Just try to go through it with an open mind and some patience, and enjoy the journey.

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Practicing schedules having been fully addressed I thought I might suggest what to practice :slight_smile:

I used to do a lot of teaching (private students, workshops at festivals and music camps) and a common thing I would have to get people to overcome is tonguing.

“Legit” musicians, fluent sightreaders, interpret the plain notes of standard written Irish Traditional Dance Music to mean that each note should be tongued. So I would hand out music with “ties” indicating legato playing, which helped them.

With some people the tonguing habit was very hard to break. With a couple people the only way I was able to get them to not tongue was to have them play while holding their tongue against the roof of their mouth. This created an “aha!” moment for them- they had no idea until then that they were tonguing every note.

Why do I think it’s essential to start out absolutely legato? Because tonguing the beginning of notes is a crutch which disguises both sloppy fingering and poor instruments.

Say, for a basic example, you’re going from G to B

xxx|ooo

xoo|ooo

but you’re inadvertently putting an A in between

xxx|ooo

xxo|ooo

xoo|ooo

which I can detect by watching your fingers, but isn’t heard because you’re tonging and the whistle is silent during the inserted wrong note.

Playing legato reveals all.

It gets harder to avoid inserting extra notes the more fingers are involved, say going from D to B

xxx|xxx

xoo|ooo

With instruments, I’m evaluating a pile of Low Ds right now and some have such stiff intransigent high notes that the worst, High B, can only be sounded by tonguing. IHMO such instruments are unsuitable for ITDM.

Also these “classical” players were in the habit of sneaking in breaths between eighth-notes, and had to be shown that in ITDM you create a breathing-spot by leaving out an eighth-note in a certain idiomatic way.

Because almost no written-out ITDM is arranged for specific instruments whistle-players must learn to be their own arrangers.

Or you can avoid the sheet music issues by learning entirely by ear. When I had beginning private students I gave them the option of going the sheet-music route or the traditional ear route (which many “classical” people are familiar with, the Suzuki Method).

The traditional Irish pedagogy is for beginners to learn through tunes. They generally start with jigs, then work up to reels. Since the vast majority of session time is spent playing jigs and reels this makes sense.

Non-trad “legit” pedagogy is for beginners, and seasoned players, to play exercises. Since at a gig your music stand often has a piece that you’ve never seen or heard before and you’re sightreading it cold it’s not much use practicing tunes, rather, you’re practicing skills that enable you to play anything placed on your music stand.

I’m in the middle. I think exercises are very useful for building breath-control on whistle or flute, say

D E D F# D G D A D B D c D d D e D f# D g D a D b (every note on-pitch, and absolutely no tonguing!)

Going legato from Bottom D to High B and back means having a whistle than can do it, and really knowing how to blow that whistle.

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BTW I’ve not seen the Mary Bergin tutor.

What fingerings does she give? Generic Boehm-flute based whistle fingerings, or the way she fingers?

When I started playing Irish flute and whistle I watched people’s fingers and did what they did. I didn’t have fingering charts, there was no internet.

There’s a variety of “anchor finger” approaches. The guys I saw were doing this

xxx|xxx

xxx|xxo

xxx|xoo

xxx|oox

xxo|oox

xoo|oox

in other words a bottom-hand ring finger anchor. Mary Bergin does that.

Mary Bergin Tin Whistle

This works perfectly on Irish flute and traditional High Whistles, but then Low D Whistles were invented! And with many of those

xoo|oox

for High B can make High B sound harsh or difficult or impossible to sound.

So I had to get in the habit of leaving my anchor finger off for high passages in the 2nd octave.

There’s a completely different approach which is to use the lower-hand little finger as anchor. Some players leave it down fulltime, other players have the little finger off for E and maybe F# but put it down for the other notes.

I think of this as Boehm-flute fingering though many great Trad players including Matt Molloy use it.

Matt Molloy & Donal Lunny Bucks of Oranmore

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This is really interesting and I had not picked up on this from Volume 1 of Mary Bergins book. Looking at the book now, I see she says “The little fingers are not used at all” though it is possible she is talking about for hole covering however when she shows a photo of playing C sharp she does not use her pinky for balance. She actually says “Your two thumbs and your lips are holding the whistle in place”. No mention of needing the pinky.

I only use my right hand pinky when playing the C sharp note. I actually in my head thought I used the right hand pinky for balance on more notes but this doesn’t appear to be the case. Maybe I did a wee while ago but I have only been playing the whistle a couple of years I am still a complete beginner in my head.

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These long replies are tremendously helpful. Much appreciated. I’ve actually been playing straight legato most of the time, and after reading a long discussion on tonguing in this forum yesterday, I realized I still can’t distinctly hear when tonguing is being used. Which was interesting by itself. Hopefully the Bergin tutorial can start setting my straight.

I also haven’t settled on how I want to hold the whistle. I mostly don’t anchor at all, using my lips and thumbs. But some whistles in my little collection have a head shape that makes that tricky, and I think I’ve been doing oox|ooo when I need it. Is that a bad idea?

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She’s right she doesn’t use her little fingers at all.

But she uses a variety of anchor fingers, just like the “old guys” I was watching back in the 1970s.

In that clip Mary Bergin Tin Whistle

slow it down and watch her fingers at 00:29

When she goes from G to her usual B c# d open triplet she puts ALL THREE lower-hand fingers down.

xxx|oox (G with Finger 6 anchor)

xoo|xxx (B with Fingers 4, 5, 6 anchors)

ooo|xxx (c# ditto)

oxx|xxx (d, I believe she uses Open d in these triplets)

Then at 00:30 she’s playing B e e d B A using fingers 4 and 5 as anchors

xoo|xxo (B)

xxx|xxo (e e)

xxx|xxx (d, you can clearly see she’s using Closed d)

xoo|xxo (B, during which she lifts Fingers 4 and 5 in preparation for playing A)

xxo|oox (A, you can see Finger 6 going back on the whistle)

Then continuing into 00:30 during the passage B G G d B G she keeps the Finger 6 down

xoo|oox (B)

xxx|oox (G G)

xxx|xxx (d, Closed d)

xoo|oox (B)

xxx|oox (G)

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I struggled for ages to understand the difference between blowing and tonguing. I understand legato fine but read instructions for tonguing where you had to touch the back of your teeth with your tongue which I could not do without it all going wrong.

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Actually just today, studying that Mary Begin clip, did I realise that she uses these anchor fingers

ooo|xxo

which I’ve always used, due to them being part of the playing of my first influences.

I did a video years ago discussing these and other anchor fingerings (I get no money from YouTube) (128) Irish whistle alternate and anchor fingerings - YouTube

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Interesting, that’s how “T” and “D” are done in Spanish, what’s called a Dental Stop.

In English for “T” and “D” the tip of the tongue touches a bit further back, on the Alveolar Ridge, the gum line just back of the upper teeth.

If you’re a native English speaker I’d just go with your normal “T” for tonguing.

(“T” and “D” have the same point of articulation, but “T” is voiceless and “D” is voiced.)

For double-tonguing usually people alternate “T” and “K”.

(Or sometimes they say “D” and “G”. “K” and “G” have the same point of articulation, only “K” is voiceless and “G” is voiced.)

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Mr Gumby I wonder what passage, what context that particular fingering was part of.

Because all these alternate fingering are due to context, what notes are alternating with what notes, or what the last note was or the next note will be.

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Ofcourse they are, but it only goes to show fingering charts etc aren’t absolutes but mere guidelines that can vary depending on context..

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Thanks for the video link. I have actually watched your videos on YouTube quite a few times so nice to put a name to a face so to speak.