I’m finding Grey Larsen’s cuts confusing. I have to stop all the time and try to figure out what which fingers I’ve got where and then which one I’m supposed to lift for which combination I’m about to play. All this thinking is getting in the way of the music. Does it ever sink in? Seems like the whistle tutorials do cuts easier, but now I can’t do them either way it seems.
just let it go naturally, i never think about ornamentation, i just let it flow, and they will come without even trying.
{bad advice omitted}
hang in there, keep working and you’ll get it.
Grey Larsen’s book is a fantastic resource. He has done a fine job of charting a course through the ornamentation techniques that work for him.
That said, your challenge is to find the ways that work for you.
His book is a great resource when you look at it as him giving you an idea of one possible way it can be done.
At the end of the day, what fingers you cut with has to be determined by what produces the sound that you like on the flute that you actually play.
Just my $.02.
–James
Here’s what Eamon Cotter has to say to a beginning player. You can read the interview complete on Brad Hurley’s site: http://www.firescribble.net/flute/cotter.html
We trust what Eamonn Cotter has to say because we know what he sounds like. If you don’t know what he sounds like you’re missing a wonderful player.
I’m not wild about Gray Larsen, either as a player or as a flute-tutor-writer. Your ornamentation shouldn’t be hit or miss, or treated casually. But don’t become compulsive, either. First get the tune and play it so it’s pretty. Then listen to the ornaments of accomplished players. Try to copy some of what they are doing. I don’t think you can get this from a book. I don’t know of any accomplished traditional player who has learned much technique from a book - though it’s interesting to read Quantz, et. al.
Q: Would you provide a few general tips for beginning players?
A: To get a good tone you need a tight embouchure. You need to practice tone separately from everything else. Play long notes, and keep adjusting your embouchure until you get a nice tone. Record yourself, play your jig or reel and listen back and you’ll soon know whether you’ve got a good tone or not. The flute is one of the few instruments where you have total control over the quality of the tone of the instrument. You could be given a Rudall and Rose but if you haven’t got a good embouchure the tone will be lousy. Every aspect of Irish music should be practiced separately. > To play reels for an hour or two in the evening isn’t going to make a good flute player; you have to practice each aspect of flute playing. >
If you come from a classical flute to a wooden flute, I find people are used to playing with more restraint. The wooden flute is a completely different instrument: it needs to be played with more energy, it doesn’t respond as easily as the Boehm system metal flute, and you just need more power, you have to drive it out a bit more.
With ornamentation, practice that on its own. > Make sure you have the right fingering and the right technique first, and practice slowly and build your speed up. Put very few rolls in jigs, because when you put a roll in a jig it takes up half a bar – and you’re losing a lot of the basic tune. In a lot of ways it’s a question of taste. Cranning, well, it’s advisable to stay away from it in a lot of ways: it’s very hit and miss, it’s a piping ornament really and it’s very hard. It can work out fine at the back of the stage, but when you go out to perform it – you know… And that’s a common feature with that ornamentation. I think in recordings… I’m sure there’s some editing done to get in the cranning – it just doesn’t work out when you want it to work.
That particular interview is a very good one, recommended reading, thanks cocusflute. I have read thru it several times over the years, good advice to be had.
I have found that the simplest things do seem to work best. I actually do my cuts the way Gray Larson has suggested, only because that seemed to make the most sense to me… I don’t use them to excess though, when I play.
Listen to Paddy Carty ~ he has a very lyrical style, but doesn’t fill in with a bunch of ornaments. When Kevin Crawford plays with fiddlers on In Good Company, he actually seems to stay in the background a bit, doesn’t blow anybody out of the water with his crans and rolls, but he can sure use them when he wants to.
I think the best thing to do at a beginners stage of the game is to learn the tune straight up with a good solid tone and rythmn, and then as you get more practiced, start adding the various ornaments, tastefully.
And PLEASE!!! PLEASE don’t go to a session and think that you play better if you don’t know the tunes at all… (although I’m sure you were kidding when you said that)
M
(playing 5 years and no hard evidence to back up my advice ~ BEWARE!)
Nicely said, WD, and what a game it is!
I am just following / regurgitating cocusflute’s advice, and listening a LOT to good CDs, and Mr Clarkson, and the flute geezers…! Hopefully some of it is sinking in! 
M
It’s hard to tell how the tune is supposed to go without ornaments as nobody plays them straight.
It kinda sounds like all the tunes are played pretty straight at the session I’ve gone to. But mostly they are fiddles and guitars so it’s hard for me to tell what the heck they’re doing.
What I meant when I said it seemed better I don’t learn anything at all was that I am a sheet-music person from my ancient history. (I can’t really sight-read, much to my abusive piano teacher’s consternation – I have to hear the tune also.)
But the other night, trying to play along purely by ear, with no access to any music, it seemed kind of magical. I couldn’t hardly do it, but I actually had better success than with the tunes I did know how to play from music.
It was as if, playing unknown-to-me tunes purely by ear I was touching the music with my skin rather than trying to feel it through a sheet. If that makes any sense.
There’s no real hard advice here as evidenced by method books recommending ornaments either near the outset (e.g., Geraldine Cotter) or in the later learning stages. I feel that the approach and when to start learning ornaments is not all that critical; it really depends on one’s motivation and aptitude – most folks will find there is a long break in period anyway. Get a clear idea of how it’s supposed to sound, when to use them, and strive for that. Repeat and persevere. Even after playing ornaments for years when it all seemed like second nature, I found that there was still room for improvement and new ways to use them.
It’s not so much the ornaments that are hard, it’s that Grey Larsen’s way seems a little complicated to me. The whistle tutorials had you use your G finger or your B finger and that about covered it. Not too hard.
Now there’s like 10 pages or so of details, like for if it’s a step down or a step up or more than one step down or up, use this finger here, use that finger there, if you don’t do it this way it’ll sound bad, don’t get hoodwinked by the way most people do it. Oh god, I’ve been doing it like most people. I’ve been hoodwinked!
It’s a lot of pressure and a lot of confusion. I don’t want to do it wrong, but now I can’t seem to do it “right” because it’s like, well, sheesh I can hardly tell which is my right or left hand most days, let alone which finger is labeled T1 or B3 (is it just me or does the finger labeled “1” seem more like a “2”?) Oh sure, if I think about it maybe I can figure it out, but by then I’ve lost the tune.
Oh well, I guess it’s just me that this method seems so complicated. Maybe I’ll get it someday.
my 2cents. also as a beginning dabbler in flute. but from my esperience on fiddle, I can say that when beginning, one must keep it simple. My advice is to work on cuts, but simply. When I was first learning them on the fiddle, I only cut on notes of the same pitch that fell across the beat. And I always cut with the same finger. Made things pretty simple. Not necessarily easy, but simple.
Transferring that logic to flute, I am trying to use the same fingers to cut as much as possible. This means the B and G fingers. This leaves me more mental faculties to work on my tone, which I think is more important at the beginning. That being said, I think the basis of all ornamentation is the cut, and the sooner learned the better.
However you decide to proceed, good luck!
Sadly, although I too can read music, I have just never been able to sight read and play music “cold” at the kind of speed I would like to be able to, and this despite many years of practise, slowly, yes, but fast, no.
Maybe you could remind yourself that your Irish flute is, after all, a diatonic instrument, with a fundamental tuning in the key of D, and so to put two sharps on a piece of manuscript paper, and have at it that way. Like, find the tonic of the tune, and then work it out from there. Just a thought…
Most instructional materials move way, way, way too fast for the average person. A technique is introduced, then you’re given a couple of tunes at most to perfect that technique. After that point, the book (or writer thereof) seems to expect you to have it perfected. Most authors leave out tons of information that is essential. Or just a couple of key pieces. I think it’s nigh on impossible in most books to proceed from page to page and get where you want to go without some other type of instruction.
I guess what I’m saying, is that your feeling of frustration and lack of progress is not abnormal in any way and even to be expected.
For what it’s worth, anyway.
i do my cuts the regular way. it works better, i think.
oh, and before anyone says “there is no regular way to do it,” i’ll say what my uncle says: “stop reading the internet so much.”
Its not really that “overly” complicated.
But this isn’t a simple thing you are trying to learn you know.
You got years ahead of you so take it easy mate.
I dunno, his book seems rather well thought out to me.
But then again, I already read music and that doesw help. In fact I think he says so in the book.
A basic observation of watching others play… other than Grey’s idea of generally cutting the note just above on rolls, instead of say, always cutting with T1 whatever, the general concepts he has of making all those twiddly bits seems pretty universal to me.
You can’t fudge a solid tap/strike or a cut.
Its all a matter of how much practice you put in.
Do the lessons until you can replicate what you hear on the disks.
I’m sure others may come in here and say “Oh that Grey… yadda yadda”
Don’t give up on Grey’s book.
I keep comming back to it and finding things I missed or misunderstood the times around (its quite dog eared now)
There is tons of good stuff in there.
Oh, my advice… and it will make some of the purests scream… learn to read music.
It won’t kill you or ruin your ability to play ITM.
You’ll have noticed Gray used all of this new notation for ornaments. It comes in handy when you eventually transcribe something by ear.
Get a grip, Diane!!! You are doing great!
There are lots-o-aspects of playing music. If you get frustrated with one, work on something else for a while… tunes, memorization, rhythm, tone, tone,tone.. etc.
You just got your flute, I doubt if anyone on this site leaned cuts (etc.) from scratch in a month. geez… 
Keep in mind that the better the tone, the crisper the ornaments will be, so I believe that tone is also a vital part of ornamentation.
I have Grey’s book, but have not really gotten into it yet. What I read on his web site made sense to me. Especially about how the ornament is often an attack at the beginning of the note and not really a separate note.
Having said that, I also have June McCormack’s book/CD “Fliuit”. She has ornament exercises in the beginning of the book which I have found helpful. One thing I did do was take the CD’s 15 (very short) oramentation tracks and modify their presentation. I took a program called Audacity and spliced them all together (also 3 times through each) and now have a CD with about 12 minutes of slow-ish ornament practice.
Take care,
John
Oh… and Diane, just for the record…
My Irish flute playing sucks. I am a beginner, but am enjoying the process.
I do have fairly extensive experience with Bulgarian Kaval (endblown shepherd’s flute). The Bulgarian ornaments are more complicated, but many of the basics things (cuts, taps, slides) are present in both.
…john
I’ve got Grey’s Book, and like you I’m pretty much a beginner on flute (6 months) though not to the music. The explanation of cuts in Grey’s book (and don’t even talk to me about rolls!) sounds complicated but that’s because Grey is trying to ‘dot every i and cross every t’. If you read it carefully and try out what he says you’ll find that it actually isn’t that complicated really.
Imagine if you were trying to explain all the steps required to make a simple cup of coffee, from filling the kettle, to getting the mug, to adding the cream etc. It would take some doing and would look way complicated to someone who’d never done it before. But once you’ve made coffee a few times you don’t have to think about it any more and it’s easy (not that I’m suggesting that cuts are quite that easy!).
I think Grey’s book is telling you how to make coffee in great detail 
But get beyond the mechanics and the detailed examples and it ain’t so hard. I made a one page summary for my notebook.
Hi…I’ve just ordered Grey’s book, and I’m preparing myself for a very long, in depth, “go-over-it-49-times-before-you-understand-it”, read!! 
I’m looking forward to it, in a perverse kind of way! 480 pages! Ouch! 
Cass.