Daily Fundamentals for Irish Flute

Irish Flute
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I have been a semi-professional trumpet player all my adult life. (pro, in that I usually get paid. Semi, because I’ve always had to rely on other ways to put food on my table) After more than fifty years of playing, there are still drills and exercises that I do almost daily to keep my embouchure and fingers, my body and mind in playing form.

Being relatively new to playing the Irish flute, and without the aid of a proper tutor, I am lacking that toolbox of routine studies that will help me in my development.

My question is this:

What are the essential routines in your daily playing? How do you keep up with fundamentals while also working on developing your repertoire?

What one thing do you do without fail every time you pick up your flute?

(If a trumpet player were to ask me these questions, it would be fairly simple, because as the term “daily” implies, these are things I do every time I pick up my horn.)

I asked Google AI this question, and seem to have gotten a reasonably accurate response. I’ll attach this in another post.

Thanks,

Tom, on Point Pelee, Canada

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As promised in my post, here is Google AI’s response to my prompt.

I did some small editing of the results and added a couple of thoughts of my own. The biggest change I made is to put listening first on the list. Most of this comes from the Carbony site (which I can’t access today for some reason) and The Session. (somehow Google bypassed C&F, which I consider egregious!)

Feel free to suggest improvements to Google’s suggestions. I’ve go no skin in the game, so you can be brutally honest.

Daily fundamentals for the Irish flute focus on building a strong, resonant tone, developing breath control, and mastering the specific ornamentation required for Irish traditional music. Regular practice of these basics—often recommended in short, daily sessions—helps build muscle memory and stamina.

Essential Daily Fundamentals:

Listen: It is highly recommended to learn by listening to recordings to understand the style, rhythm, and phrasing of the Irish tradition.

Long Notes (Tone Development): Practice holding notes for 6–10 seconds, focusing on a steady, even, and rich sound without vibrato. This builds lip muscles and improves tone consistency.

Breath Control and Dynamics: Exercises on the low D note, starting softly and increasing in volume, then decreasing back to soft while maintaining the same breath. This helps develop the stamina required for Irish music.

Embouchure Flexibility (Octave Jumps): Practice jumping between the low and high registers to gain control over the full range of the flute, aiming to get a “bright” but not thin top octave.

Harmonics: Play harmonics to warm up the lips and improve tone without placing strain on the hand muscles.

Scale Practice (Finger Dexterity): Focus on the key of D Major (the primary key for Irish flutes) to build accuracy, agility, and finger strength. Expand to neighbouring scales and modes.

Arpeggio Drills: In conjunction with scale patterns, arpeggios are a key part of traditional Irish Music. Practice arpeggios in various inversions.

Ornamentation Drills:

Cuts: Rapidly lifting and lowering a finger to break a note.

Strikes/Taps: Rapidly hitting and lifting an open hole to create a subtle percussive sound.

Rolls: Combining a cut and a tap on a single note.

Slow Tune Practice: Play familiar tunes at 1/4 speed to focus on tone, phrasing, and accurate fingering rather than speed.

Practice Tips:

Use a Mirror: Practice in front of a mirror to ensure correct posture and embouchure.

Relaxation: Keep the body, hands, and throat relaxed to avoid tension.

Consistency: Short, focused daily sessions are more effective than long, infrequent ones.

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What was the prompt - you have two questions in the OP?

It reads like a list of things that I should do more often but finding time for all of them every day would be tough. I’m not sure I could do enough long tones in a daily routine to get the most benefit from it. The mirror thing is also to hear yourself well. I think it’s mainly suggested for posture to beginners

How long did you spend on your equivalent trumpet routine?

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My prompt was “daily fundamentals for the Irish flute”.

The response seems pretty reasonable to me, and things that I would generally do in the course of a practice session, but it’s good to see it assembled on one page. I’ve got a handwritten sheet of trumpet drills on my music stand that I’ve used since 1976.

The trumpet is a very physically demanding instrument, * so 20 minutes of warmups are often spread over 30-40 minutes, with periods of rest mixed in. The routine covers most of the things listed above, less the ornamentation drills.

* not that the flute is not demanding, but poor practice habits on the trumpet run the real risk of muscle and embouchure damage.

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I don’t know whether this will be helpful, but I’ll share my thoughts and you can do with them as you wish.

Most of the Irish music instruction that I come across takes a tune based approach. Learning skills and complexities is integrated into the tunes. Sometimes it’s not even explicit, just here and there you maybe get some mention but other times you sort of have to steal the knowledge, to borrow the Japanese phrase.

I had background in playing the transverse metal flute before trying to learn Irish music specifically, so I am am a accustomed to the approach of scales and drills and long notes and arpeggios both as warm-ups and to develop technical proficiency. And I find some of that transfers well. I have a book of fundamentals developed for people who play classical flute, and I use exercises from thiswith my whistle work. All that to have said, I think I understand what you are asking for.

Suggest you take a look at the low whistle tutorials on the Kerry Whistles website. Phil Hardy has put together this resource for anyone who wants to access it, not just for the people who buy his whistles. And he says right in the tutorials that these are for learning about the whistle, they’re not for learning specific tunes. Which makes him different from everyone else I’ve seen out there.

Some of it is going to be different, of course, because whistles, but the low D whistle has the same notes as the Irish Flute.

I am enjoying working my way through the tutorials. There’s some really good exercises in there, valuable thoughts on breath control, and explanation of different ornamentations.

You may be well beyond what the tutorials cover, or you may be able to find some things in there that you can use to create a daily essentials routine.

Here’s something else that I use, for what it’s worth. This is a link to drones for people who are learning the violin. I use it sometimes to challenge myself to sustain a note for the duration of the drone, just for fun. Drones for Intonation Practice – LEARN TO PLAY THE VIOLIN FOR FREE!

I’d be interested in hearing what you eventually settle on for your daily essentials routine.

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Shannon Heaton actually posted a video somewhat recently titled “Practice With Me”. It might be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl9zIteu7rg

I should probably be more disciplined myself, but I only do exercises once I’ve identified that I’m struggling with something while trying to play a tune. For example, if my embouchure is giving me troubles I’ll take a break and do some harmonics. If I’m struggling with A or B rolls, I’ll take 5 minutes and just practice that for a bit. Etc.

I’m not sure if this is the best approach, but I really try to just focus on whatever I find fun (which is typically trying to learn new tunes) such that I maintain daily playing. I think daily playing itself has been the best ‘exercise’ I’ve been doing.

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I would also add that Grey Larsen’s book “The Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle” was a great way to learn about the formal mechanics of Irish flute playing. There is an exhaustive list of exercises (I really mean exhaustive). Once I became aware of the basic mechanics and was able to do the basic exercises, I pretty much shifted to learning tunes by ear in which I could listen to how these mechanics were used in practice.

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Thanks for your detailed reply.

My routine, as regards the trumpet, has a number of purposes. It acts as a daily reset, or boot from scratch for the musical parts of my body. It’s like starting on page one every day. I know what my first notes are supposed to sound and feel like. It is also a strong diagnostic tool. I can tell if I need to take it easy following a night of strenuous playing. I can tell if my embouchure is behaving properly. If all is good, I am ready for a regular day of playing. If things feel a little off, there are fall-back exercises I can do to remedy things before they become a problem. It’s best to start early in the day, because if I have to play in the evening, I need to have things sorted out before small problems become big problems.

To be clear, this did not happen overnight. It took many years of practice to become tuned to my instrument.

This is what I am trying to do with my flute playing. I am still trying to establish a consistent approach so that my efforts of the day are focused and productive. Things are improving in that regard, but there are still moments in the day (or whole days) where it feels like I am trying to whistle through a mouthful of crackers. On the trumpet these are the moments I would simply stop what I am currently doing, and go into diagnostic mode… a few notes that will quickly help identify the issue. And that’s what I don’t know with the flute. Right now, when my sound goes bye bye, I go back to long tones, but I still struggle to understand what was causing the problem.

I do have resources. Lots of video tutorials to follow. I condensed the transcript of Shannon Heaton’s Practice with me video down to a single page I can refer to while practicing. I’ve got the Grey Larson book, (sans the flute-specific chapter.) I ordered Conal O’Grada’s book, but Canada Post seems to have lost it.

Above all, I am not impatient. I am willing to take the time to learn things in the right way, and let improvement follow.

Thanks for the input so far.

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That approach is perfectly fine. It is focused, short, and with clear objectives.

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Thank you. I feel like this conversation is helping me to focus on something that I felt was missing in my whistlelearning journey.

I think the importance of listening was discussed earlier in the thread. Matt Malloy has an album out, called back to the island, which I think lends itself to deep, analytical attention in both technique and expression. Going to the well.

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Here is an exercise I’ve found useful. It’s from “Method for the One-Keyed Flute” by Janice Dockendorff Boland, a good tutorial for the Baroque flute. It seems very simple, but it has a way of revealing what intervals may be challenging to you.

1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 8 5 3 1

Start at low D

D E F# G A G F# E D d A F# D

Then move it up to the next note

E F# G A B A G F# E e B G E

continue on until you end up a octave higher than where you started (remember this is for Baroque flute).

The exercise can be done in different keys. E, A, G, C, F and however far you want to push it. In other keys you have to jump an octave down in the middle of the exercise. (For the Baroque flute, you would probably assume your highest note is G in the 3rd octave.)

What I get out of this is that it exposes certain intervals that are weak, and that need more work. Just playing tunes, you may not encounter these intervals, and not realize that they are problematic.

There probably other exercise patterns that are even better at revealing awkward intervals, but this is a good simple one.

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Okay, let me ask this:

Suppose you pick up your flute in the morning, and it sounds like there’s a sock in your instrument. (I’m not saying this happened this morning, but…)

What’s your next step?

What’s your diagnostic/remedy process? What part of your routine helps you avoid this, or when it does happen, fix it quickly?

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Aside for the many practice tutorials from baroque or silver flute…

I put effort into areas where I tend to have difficulties, in particular arpeggios and pedals that cross the octave transition. Maybe a tune or two with issues in that area.

The single most beneficial warm-up for me is to play in the third register. That focuses my embouchure and helps me zero in on the sweet spot. Scales are fine, but I take a couple of D-tunes and move them up a 4th or so. “Charlie Mulvihill” in G goes up to high E. “The Coachman’s Whip” an octave higher goes up to high G.

Once my high notes are dialed in, my low D works so much better.

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I have been enjoying this thread, in part because I am also a trumpet player. An amateur, but I’ve played trumpet on and off for 40+ years, whereas I’ve only been at the flute for a couple. Take this with a grain of salt since I am a relative beginner at flute, but when I find myself “off” on the flute, I like to work with the middle of the lower octave in front of a mirror. The mirror serves as good check on whether I’m setting my embouchure up correctly, including whether I’m blowing directly over the embouchure hole. I suspect I make micro-adjustments without conscious thought when I can see myself in the mirror. I will play long tones in the G-A-B range and then will head down to low D. I like to roll the flute backwards and forwards a bit and just experiment until I’ve really locked in tone that I like. Once I have done that, I will try octave jumps from low D to middle D; low E to middle E (or what I think of as high E since I don’t play into the third octave), etc…by only (mostly) focusing and tightening my embouchure rather than blowing harder. This approach works for me in terms of diagnosing and correcting a feeling that my tone and embouchure are off.

As regards the general question about warming up, I do tend to follow a trumpet/band-like approach when I first sit down insofar as I like to warm up with long tones and scales and arpeggios. Long tones first, then long tones with octave jumps as described above. Then I’ll do scales, up and down two octaves in D with arpeggios following the scale, followed by one octave of G with an arpeggio following. After that, I might play a couple slow airs well within my range.

Then I will get down to whatever tune I am working on, but like to listen to it first as prep to make sure I am locking in the timing and feel internally before working on the tune. I also use the transcribe app to slow down recordings that my teacher has given me. I’ll play along with them at a slow tempo and will gradually increase the speed over the course of a week or so.

I also like to isolate and work on any ornamentation in the tune independently. My teacher suggested the following approach. As an example say you have a sequence of A cA F (as in A, cut A, F). To practice the cut A, do the following: Play the cut A by itself 10 times. Then play A followed by cut A 10 times. Then play A followed by cut A followed by F 10 times. Helps to build up the muscle memory. I’ll treat this like an exercise and will play all the ornamentation from a tune in isolation before incorporating into the tune – cuts, pats, rolls, etc..

I’m just finding my way through (though with the help of a teacher), so the above is less systematic and more ad-hoc based on my experiences. Looking forward to trying some of the other suggested approaches in this thread as well.

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My first thought is that you practice like a brass player! :joy::trumpet:

I find it very helpful to isolate technical problems and work on them out of context from the tune itself. (Provided, of course that I immediately return to the tune with my freshly practiced chops.)

Ten-times repetition is very conservative. I used to tell my own students that sometimes you don’t get things the first 500 times you try them. I remember when preparing for my grad recital practicing hours on a single interval (G slurred up to Eb… pianissimo) that seemed determined to break me. Now it’s part of my daily routine.

Technique - scales, arpeggios, articulations, etc., are something of a clearly defined challenge. If I don’t have them now, there’s a fairly straightforward path to resolving the difficulties.

My biggest challenge is developing a consistent embouchure that I can rely on from day to day. I have read so many descriptions, and watched so many tutorials… The concepts and terminology are just too abstract and ambiguous for me.

I know that I’m being impatient with my progress. I am improving, but it’s slow, with too many back steps along the way. I forget that it took me three months to get my first satisfactory sound on the trumpet.

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I read somewhere (I think in Hammy Hamilton’s Fluteplayer’s Handbook) that it takes a couple of years to develop a consistent embouchure, which I find both discouraging and encouraging at the same time. He also says its not uncommon to pick up the flute on some days and find that your embouchure has mysteriously packed up and left.

In a similar vein, some days I wonder whether I even know how to hold the flute correctly. Finding that sweet spot where the flute is held firmly but without unnecessary tension and where the fingers have freedom to move with ease is still a challenge for me. I tend to get some wobble at the embouchure and unnecessary tension in the left hand thumb.

Similar to your take on the embouchure, I’ve read a ton on the proper way to hold the flute, but that has yet to fully transfer into practice.

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That’s my experience in a nutshell.

Not to keep harping on the trumpet (now there’s an image!) Dizzy Gillespie famously said,

“Some days you get up and put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty good and you win. Some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins".

He also said something to the effect that some days you open up your trumpet case, and the horn says, “You think you’re going to play me?”

The struggle is real.

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Back over 45 years ago when I was first trying to teach myself how to play Irish flute (I was only playing bagpipes at that time, no flute experience) I was always impressed by the great tone of good Boehm fluteplayers I knew. They could pick up my Irish flute and instantly get a booming Bottom D, powerful low notes, and beautiful clear high notes.

Realising that they knew things I didn’t, I went to an ordinary sheet-music shop and looked through the flute books that were tutorials and exercises.

There was one called something like “Building Tone on the Flute”. I looked through the book and realised the entire book was variations on the same exercise on various notes.

Using this exercise proved to be extremely helpful for my tone, and in my fluteplaying days it was how I started my daily practice sessions.

I found out that the most beneficial and economical thing was to just do this exercise on Bottom D for several minutes. Somehow only doing Bottom D also dialed in my high notes.

This is it: Play Bottom D as softly as possible, then steadily increase the volume until it’s as loud as you can make it without it breaking, then steadily decrease the volume back to a whisper, all on one breath.

The critical thing is to keep the note D precisely on pitch the entire time. Not having Perfect Pitch I used an electronic tuner, keeping the needle straight up the whole time.

Oftentimes this would be the only thing I’d do before playing (whether practice, or a gig).

For practice at home I’d also do this one, starting on Bottom D, played fairly slowly and entirely legato NO tonguing, and again keeping needle straight up on the tuner:

D E D F# D G D A D B D c D d D e D f# D g D a D b

As you see both of these exercises are aimed at increasing the flexibility of your embouchure.

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Some exercises along the same lines from J-M Veillon https://berkenhage.be/nieuweberkenhagesite/muziek/exercises.mp3 I think he was demonstrating at a workshop so we have to work out for ourselves what the notes are.

There are some more here: https://berkenhage.be/nieuweberkenhagesite/media.html

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These are great!

Thanks