challenging tunes

Irish Flute
1

Hello,

I know this is a question without an absolute answer, but what do you consider real challenging tunes for the flute?

Of course playing fast and well is always challenging and even some simple tunes can have difficulties unsuspected for some type or ornamentations. But, globally speaking, which were to you the tunes that were the most difficult to master?

Right now, I cannot even approach “The Mason’s Apron”, it’s totally out of my league, but I would love to hear other people’s opinions

Cheers

Andre’

2

The use of keys is always challenging, it takes time to master it…

3

an instant way of making something difficult, if you are playing it from sheet, is to take any of the many tunes in D key signature and play them on a higher Eb flute and change the notation accordingly but instead of transposing to Eb key signature you transpose it to D# key signature which is the same thing but harder to read.

this is definitely not an absolute answer, it is not even apparently properly relative to
another topic.

4

They are all challenging tunes… even the simple ones.

Especially the simple ones.

:party:



Don’t worry about it.

There is no race to get “good”.

I think most folks eventually find they will never be good “enough”.

Watch out for those that do. :smiley:

The more you learn the more there is to know.

Speed is not as important as good playing.

So enjoy the tunes on the way and speed will come with time and practice.


If you want a finger twister though give The Mathematician a whack.

5

Nah, that’s an easy one, even kids can play it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMoJK_aH3I8
:puppyeyes:

6

Here a few random tunes/ideas that come to my mind:

  • The Contradiction (in A major of course)
  • Popcorn behaviour (you need F, Eb, Bb and G# keys)
  • Independence Hornpipe (skip as few notes for breathing as possible, get the timing right)
  • Tripping Downstairs (you have to transpose in a nice way if you don’t want to tear the tune apart)
  • any A minor jig/reel transposed to G minor
  • any G major jig/reel transposed to F major
  • and D major/minor (!) jig/reel transposed to C major/minor (!)..makes most sense if you’ve got the low C#/C keys
7

:imp: reels :swear:

8

The Mason’s Apron is not that hard unless you try to play it in A, which is the preferred key for fiddlers, I find.

As popular tunes go, I’ve always found The Gravel Walk tough. Most particularly, the third part. The fingering is very awkward for me.

9

Playing A major tunes in G is cheating. I can forgive Mr. Molloy though, his version of Mason’s Apron sounds hard enough even if in G…
A difficult one on flute is In Memory Of Coleman.

10

Anything at all in C#.

11

OK, I’m going to hold you to that this coming Sunday. Just you and me and The Mathematician, pal, flute and whistle, mano a mano. Why does the expression “two man train wreck” come to mind?

:laughing:

12

I absolutely sodding hate playing Drowsy Maggie.
Dunno why.

13

Head on train wreck or two man wrecking team. :smiley:

14

:thumbsup: That one tripped me up for years. Just played it recently and found that it doesn’t anymore, but I still DESPISE that tune.

As for the others, off the top of my head … Many Gm reels. Things that go way below the bar line or have weird intervals. The Blue Angel (aka the King’s Fancy, I think?). The Swedish Jig (Arthur Darley’s jig). The Humors of Scarriff. The Four Mile Stone (another Arthur Darley tune) can be a rough ride. The Broken Pledge. Never Was Piping So Gay (and some of its other Reavy -composed pals). Bunker Hill. (Basically, all those spiky fiddle tunes!)

Others are just physically demanding on me, like the Matt Peoples’ reels and The Oak Tree and, for some reason, the danged Gooseberry Bush – which is a pity since it’s a great tune and there’s nothing inherently evil about it. I just find it tiring. (I find Drowsy Maggie tiring, too. That hemiola thing or whatever it is)

I find Mason’s Apron and Foxhunter’s in A a fair bit of work, too; seems to depend on the day and the banjo player’s caffeine level. Oh, and Frank’s Reel or Siobhan O’Donnell’s are other A bruisers at the end of a long set. Sad, since they’re all the good barn-burners! I guess I’m getting old.

15

I love playing Matt Malloy’s slow version of Drowsy Maggie. I play that much more than the fast version. Have you heard it?

16

Most of the time when I hear Drowsy Maggie being played it seems as if it is a race to the end. I like to play it slower so you can put in the ornamentation and maybe add variations. I don’t think the people who race through it are enjoying the tune. My current hard tune is the b part to Dick Sherlocks. Probably the hardest tune I can play right now is The Cloudy Morning. I dunno - they’re all hard to play well. Some days harder than others. Sure are fun though on any day.

Deisman

17

I don’t know any tunes that I can play as well as I want to… Even going back to the very first tunes (polkas: Peg Ryan’s, Stitches, Newmarket) that I learnt in my first ITM weekend workshop/session held by some visiting Galwegians in our local Irish pub. Back before I had a simple system flute…

That said, I am still struggling with the Hurricane on the wooden keyless flute. But no one will play it with me around here anyway so…

And Drowsy Maggie is (was) a much abused tune round here - one of the first I and my friends learnt and immediately tried to play too fast - not helped by paino accordion and fiddle players playing the pedal note pairs at the start as single two note chords so their poor wee fingers didn’t need to move so fast. Every session would have us play this steadily accelerating until the inevitable train crash… Maybe the time has come to dig it out again and see if anyone is ready to try playing it sensibly now?

18

“Paino” accordion should of course be “Piano” but I find the typo too appropriate to just edit the original post to fix it… :poke:

19

You could give this Brendan Ring cracker a whirl - more tricky to remember the various parts than the actual playing. There’s a youtube clip in the tune comments… http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/10199

20

I’ve been trying to play the Ballivanich Reel up to speed it seems like forever. Also tried to learn the Humours of Scarriff for a half hour or so once and gave up. I find the Ingonish Jig damn hard to play also, and I want to play it properly since Ingonish is my home town!