I am not sure I can give much advise with regards to practice time. Segments of 20 minutes to practice technique is probably right and effective enough. I can’t help thinking about all the players I know or knew once telling how they were mad for music, as you need to be, just sitting down and play for hours on end.
Micho Russell in an interview related how he and his brother sat at the bottom of the field around the house, sheltered behind a wall and play and play and play. And that is a recurring theme if you talk to great players. I know that when I was learning the pipes I sometimes played seven eight hours a day and that too is not unprecedented.
Anyhow, the listening advise is sound, immerse and absorb. And I would stress you want to immerse yourself in the playing of great players, not just any Joe Soap who posts to youtube. But between the listening and the playing you need to reach a place where you can inhabit the music, have a freedom to move within it, rather than rolling off strings of notes that you have memorised.
To emulate other whistleplayers, yes, to an extent, perhaps. I would suggest though to listen to fiddlers, pipers, concertinaplayers, box and what have you and listen to how they approach their music, find common themes and work from there.
One of my dead hobby horses to flog is the fact that the universal advice on this sort of forums seems to be ‘get a teacher’. Again, yes, to an extent. But in my mind the effect of this is that a large number of players sound ‘like they have been taught’. There’s a degree of homogenisation and conformity that I feel is not beneficial at all. Take a bit of teaching, if you must, go away work on what you were given. Mind you, I do know and appreciate a few teachers who seem to inspire and turn out great players. And inspire them to find their own voice.
When I listen to the old players (and I mean the generations before my own), they often had much more individual styles. They played music ‘as they heard it’, picking up bits from various players they came across along the way. Their playing was infused with their life experiences, who they met, what they picked up along the way etc., eventually forming a style. And a recognisable style/sound is a good thing. Last week I was at the laptop, the television on in the next room, I heard a fluteplayer starting ‘The woman of the house’ and before the first phrase was over, I knew who it was (Jillian O’Malley, I think it was on on Ceol ón gCré). That is a good thing. A recognisable own voice, personality.
Mary Bergin’s tutorials are unsurpassed, no doubt about that. But do you really want copy them to the note to end up sounding like another Mary Bergin? Her playing is infused with the influences of players she heard, some of them easy to identify. As I said, that is a good thing. And taking from her playing and advice is a good thing too but you can’t emulate her story slavishly, it would be fake. You need to take in your own influences and experiences, you really do, to make a great player.
On that note, I heard two of the finest pipers/whistle players we have on different occasions in the past week. Both playing very different to eachother and both playing also very different from Mary Bergin. And that’s a good thing. Variety, more ways to skin that particular cat or various routes to get to Rome or wherever you want to go.
How’s that for random thoughts on the early Sunday morning?