Flute advice from John Creaven

Irish Flute
1

I just came across this advice on an old tape of a flute lesson with John Creaven. It’s something we all know of course, but it is useful to be reminded from time to time.

“Listening to good music is half the battle. If you can’t play, if you don’t have the time to play, if you can put music on when you’re working. I us’n’t be able to listen to music when I was studying, but some people can. … I’d say every chance you get, listen to it. Because then, that way, the phrasing, everything will go in, like, the tunes — you’ll end up playing the tunes without ever having sat down and tried to work it out.”

2

Good advice!
Master East Indian Musician Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma said this to me: “…the most important tool of the musician is the mind. The second is his ears. Only by using them together you can learn much from simply listening, before playing a single note. Practice without such forethought and listening is little more than making sounds, not making music.”
Chad

3

And I LOVE the word “us’n’t”!

4

I found the practice of listening to the music at every possible chance useful to a point, especially when I was starting out and totally clueless about Irish music. However I reached a point where I was listening but not hearing and taking the going ons of the music for granted. Lots of beautiful details in the music were just not registering.

Then it just happened that there was a period of time where I could not listen to much music at all. When I did get to listen I was suprised at all the detail in the music I was oblivious to, in the recordings I thought I was familiar with. Since then I’ve cut down on passive listening and its worked better for me. I listen less but when I do I find its more meaningful. It has also helped me appreciate the going ons in my life more as cliche as it sounds, to be more aware of whatever I’m doing (be it waiting for the bus or typing some report) without having a need to fill the background with sound.

5

The mind . . . when I paint, I spend more time thinking about it than I have brush in hand. And I SELL them; they’re good.

A very good friend was a drum teacher. He would have his students put a black dot in the middle of the drum. They would practice hitting that dot - if they missed, they had to wait 60 seconds to try again. He turned out some of the best drummers in the area.

6

Wow. I love that.

7

I’d up the time-out to 4 hours.
:wink:

8

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

4 Days!

9

I’ve played in bands where the drummers took long time-outs… I don’t remember seeing black dots on their drum heads. :confused:

10

I used to think this guy I knew who listened to only Irish music was out of his mind. And even when I started my occasional lessons with John Skelton and one of the first things he said was “Listen, listen, all the time listen” (I remember at that point he was listening to Frankie Gavin’s “Fierce Traditional” – and wow, what a great recommendation that turned out to be), I thought “Good Lord, I’ll kill myself if I have to hear all this deedly-dee that sounds all the same all the time!”

But I decided to commit myself and give it a try; I mean, I certainly wasn’t making much progress the way I was doing it. :astonished: :laughing:

So I started listening and listening and …

Now, I’m ALL about osmosis. Lately I’ve been amazed by how many times I go to sessions and though I may never have played a tune before I’ve heard it enough from my constant listening that I can pick it out pretty well – probably about 80% of the tune – by the third time through. I’ve had more than a few people, including much, much, MUCH better players than me, tell me “Wow, you have a lot of tunes!” Of course, I always answer with the truth, which is that I don’t have ANY as well as I should. :frowning:

But anyway, now I’m starting to pick up more nuances and phrasing too – and maybe even a bit of style! Whoo-hoo! – and transfer it to my own playing.

I don’t know anything about any of the cool mainstream or alternative bands out there anymore alas, but I attribute much, much, much of my playing progress to the near-constant listening I’ve been doing the last 3-4 years.

And hey, now I actually enjoy it. I sit around and nerd out and go “Wow! That was so cool how Ivan Goff put that roll on the G instead of of the A!”

Oh, dear. I’ve become that guy. :laughing: