Another Half-holing dilemma

Irish Flute
1

Hello all, Looking for a bit of advice. I started playing tin whistle about a year and a half ago, and for the first six months or so, 0xx000 was my method for playing c natural. I then purchased a Sindt D, and struggled then with the 0xx000 c natural problems that those whistles often have, and after some encouragement (and discouragement) from fellow chiffers, i decided to bite the bullet and learn to half-hole. I became so used to half holing that it was (and is) difficult to play C with 0xx000 anymore.

About a month later i purchased a Tipple D flute (my first foray into flutes) and continued to half-hole c-natural, and though it felt a little uncomfortable half-holing the tipple, well, awkward, really, i continued to half hole.

Flash forward like eleven months, half-holing all the while, playing flute and whistle, still not liking something about half-holing c-natural on the flute, i get a Casey burns folk flute. It’s a bit of a change from the tipple, with smaller holes and a conical bore and basically smaller all the way around. Currently half-holing feels extremely awkward, and i have problems getting it so that the c-natural doesnt sound weak (a problem of my playing, not the flute, since at times i get it dead on and it sounds great…though those times are rare.) Casey recommends 0xxx0x for c-natural on the instructions (i think) and i’ve been toying around with that and find that i like the sound it produces, but it’s just a little awkward playing it that way when i’m used to half-holing.

So my dilemma is this— Do i forego half-holing for the flute and get used to 0xxx0x for c on the flute? If so, will it be possible to get used to both half-holing on the whistle and cross fingering on the flute?

Do i just forget half-holing and go to cross fingering? (i no longer h ave the sindt, great whistle but i didnt play it much, probably because it was my most expensive and i dint want to “mess it up or drop it” subconsciously) I still have a nice half hole on the whistle and it flows most naturally to me.

I guess my question is, what do you who are more experienced with the flute suggest for c-natural, (as in terms of what generally works better and sounds better. I’m tempted to ask "what does Matt Molloy use, or Kevin Crawford… What did paddy Carty use? but won’t) and does anyone have the experience to tell whether trying to both actually works in such a way that i could switch them out, eventually, at whim?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

2

try OXO XXX for the Burns

are you rolling your index finger toward the embouchure?

3

On my Burns I do the usual 0xx000 for low c and 0x0xxx for high c.
Since the holes are small, half holing is difficult and gives a strong tone not when you actually cover half of the hole, but rather only quarter of the hole. Try experimenting with different covering …
You should get a good tone without half-holing before you can get a rather nice tone when you half hole.

cheers.

4

it the C Natural thumb hole thread

5

Know both and apply as appropriate to your instruments.
Generally large tone holed instruments will be more responsive to half holing and and the small toneholed ones more to cross fingering.
This is intensified if the instrument wall is thinner or thicker respectively.

6

I don’t like doing one cross-fingering one flute/whistle one way and another one differently. I guess that’s why I only have two flutes.

7

yes, I guess if you’re into playing fast dance tunes in a standrad key its best to get to play it one way. However if you’re using various instruments to play different types of music then your kinesthetic memory can handle it and associate one technique to the trad and type of music being played on that instrument. What I mean by that is that after you play one type of thing for a while on a praticular instrument your hands automatically get to know how to do the best and needful on it.

I used to have a signature “every flute harbours a muse” but we could also say “every harbour auto pilots a flute”.
:slight_smile:

8

I too used to halfhole on whistle (and still do). When I took up flute, like you, I wasn’t happy and just switched to cross fingering C natural to get the stronger tone. It just takes practice and if you keep the whistle up, you should be able to do both without thinking about it. Now, I have a flute with a C natural key and that offers a third option to take into account!

9

Honestly, I’m not sure why this is such a perennial issue on flute and whistle. Learn both, use both. There’s more than one way to do almost everything in Irish music.

10

Right. knowing lots of options for C natural is all to the good.
ON both flute and whistle.

By all means learn to cross-finger, and you might as
well try out different ways. You get different timbres
and also different fingerings. That come in handy
in difficult passages, especially at speed
when the difference in tone is minimized.

Going really fast, by the way,
you can sometimes do 0X0 000.

Sooner or later whatever you practice will become
entirely natural.

11

Or, whatever seems natural is what you stick with. :wink:

I agree that there’s every reason to learn both half-holing and cross-fingering. There’s also every reason to learn to lip notes into tune – if you like OXX OOO rather than OXO XXX (I know I certainly do), then learn to play it in tune on your flute.

There are some tunes I play both on a traverso and a Sweet 1-key. Not many, just O’Carolan tunes. The Fnats and Bflats need to be cross-fingered on the traverso and half-holed on the Sweet. It’s actually a lot of fun because the flutes are so damn different. The whole complexion of a tune changes – one flute quiet and refined, the other with volume and a bit of attitude. The whole style of playing is just instinctively different, from articulation to phrasing.

So, yeah, learn to cross-finger the Cnat.

12

thanks chas,

that wasn’t as funny as what I came up with
but at least it can be said here!

13

Thanks for the responses… i guess like a year ago i’m going to have to go ahead and try to be able to do both. Sorry took so long to respond, couldn’t get back on the site yesterday for some reason :slight_smile:

14

In answer to your famous musicians question, all the players you mentioned in your original post would find the best C-natural fingering for whatever flute you handed them. Then they would figure out all the other workable C-natural fingerings so that they could vary the timbre and pitch of the note at will. The “right” way to finger C-natural depends on the instrument and how you want the note to sound.

I know it seems weird to fiddle with a fingering, or to think of them as non-absolute, but adjusting fingerings to the instrument is an integral part of playing woodwinds. Irish players don’t use the third octave much, or we would be much more accustomed to fishing for fingerings. You practically make stuff up in the clarinet third register. There are dozens of fingerings and some work on one horn and are disastrous on another.

So, keep at it. If OxxxOx sounds best on your flute, that’s the one you want to learn…for now. :wink:

15

I find it’s true what they say about playing each instrument the way it wants to be played. Once I’d leaned a tune by ear that is. (There’s that gosh darn learn/play by ear again!) I’m a relative newcomer to ITM and to the whistle and flute as well. I can recall when I learned tunes as lists of fingerings. Get off track and it was all over. Had to start again. No way could I pick out a tune from just hearing it, even slowed down. What? change a fingering? Horrors!

Then I worked at tunes by ear and guess what? A lot of the stuff that didn’t make sense before made sense. Like the alternate fingering thing. Like the do your own ornamentation thing. Like the let’s do it G this time instead of D thing. When the music is playing in my head I find it’s not hard to do whatever it takes to get it to come out. My subconscious is playing the tune while my conscious mind is thinking things like “that sounded a tad sharp, next time thru I’ll try adding another finger to it.” Or “Is this the second or third time thru?” Talk about alternate fingerings, it’s even sorta easy to pick up my tenor banjo and do a reasonable job on a tune I’ve not played on it before. It’s not about the fingerings, it’s about the sound. It’s about listening, or maybe hearing. Much like singing is more about hearing the song and hearing yourself and doing whatever it takes to bring the two together. I dislike playing the tunes I learned early on with the list approach because they seem to come from a different place in my mind.

Someday your flute might have a C nat key, and the cross fingerings will be there too. Both will work, but for some tunes the cross fingering is the way to go and for others that key will be real handy. It just depends on what you need your fingers to do before and after it. And to some extent on how important it is that it really be a C nat.

So I’d say do whatever you have to do at the moment, but work on learning and playing tunes by ear. I think that’s the way to be freed from thinking about specific fingerings for specific notes.

Anyone with me on this?

16

Cross Finger V half holing
MAJORITY VIEW SO FAR
(excerpts in chrono. order):-













17

Wait, what? We all agree? (Looks out window for blue moons and flying pigs.)

18

At a workshop a couple of years ago at Boxwood, Kevin Crawford taught us a tune which used a lot of C naturals. Before venturing off to work through the tune, he circled the floor and listened to everyone play a variety of cross-fingered C nats on their instruments, identifying the most in-tune note of the various cross-fingered options. I don’t believe anyone used half-holing. Point being, find the best option for the particular instrument in question.
Arbo

19

Your agreable conclusion does no appear to follow from your story.
Are you sure you’re not Irish?

20

Thanks for all the wonderful responses. Both it is! Now on to getting my brain and fingers to work both ways in conjunction :slight_smile: