Hi everyone
I’ve been playing for a bit more than a year, have a few tunes that I can play passably at the local session and am picking up more by the day. I work from home which means I can find time during the day for quite a bit of practice - sometimes two or three hours a day. I realised after an hour or so practice today that I need to do something about “death grip”. I start off nice and loose with a few scales and the tunes I know but as I get deeper into learning new stuff my fingers seem to get tighter and tighter, my hands are like claws, my shoulders stiff and my jaw is clenched. This is weird. I am enjoying the process of learning so why is my body reacting like this? When I realise that I’ve reached this point I make a point of stopping to stretch and relax or make a cup of tea - but I’d like to know whether anyone has any hints to prevent this in the first place.
What comes to mind is this, stop before you settle into the “death grip”. Check before putting the whistle down that you were still holding it nice and relaxed. Figure out how long you can play and still be relaxed. Then see if you can expand that time. But stop as soon as death grip happens, preferably before. Perhaps you’ll figure out what it is that causes you to go into it. Then it’s a lot easier to work on not doing that.
Another thing that could work is to grab the whistle and put a death grip on it on purpose, start playing and while playing release the deathgrip, check every bit of you is relaxed before the tune’s finished.
Or perhaps it’s just a matter of needing more meditation.
As for working on new stuff, you are working on it ‘dirt slow’ when it’s brand new, yes? Makes you learn a lot quicker and gives you more time while playing to check if you’re still relaxed 
Thanks Zai - both suggestions sound helpful and I’ll give them a go. I do practise slowly. I try to get the tune down first then break down the phrases going over the bits I find tricky many times - but it’s hard to resist the temptation to bring it all together and try the tune with a bit of pace. I had the experience at a recent session of really flying - playing tunes I thought I barely knew but keeping up, hitting the right notes - even having the confidence to play at more volume that I might usually and trying variations. It was as if my left brain had completely shut down and it was all just fingers and intuition - lifted by the session god, according to my partner (who was really surprised having heard a great deal of me over these past months!) I’m sure it must happen a lot to experienced players but it was a first for me. I felt completely relaxed. I guess it’s impossible to relive that sense of ease with the instrument during practice but I’m hoping.
I’ve become quite obsessed with playing - I am hoping this is normal?
PS. these are my first posts to C&F although I’ve used the board a lot through the past year. Lots of very helpful info here.
Try going back to a tune that you know and can play in a relaxed manner. Get that loose feeling back, then work on the new, harder stuff.
It is, among this lot. 
This probably doesn’t help you much but I’m reminded of the bon mot someone once offered up: Stop gripping so hard; it’s already dead. 
I read this thread because of the perceived relationship between the topic and your nic. That’s all I’m saying.
I’d suggest playing standing up in front of an open window sans belt and underwear. The combination of psychological, legal, moral, and (depending on the temperature) medical reasons to keep your pants up should loosen your grip on that whistle.
I’d suggest playing standing up in front of an open window sans belt and underwear. The combination of psychological, legal, moral, and (depending on the temperature) medical reasons to keep your pants up should loosen your grip on that whistle
Wouldn’t work around here. Plenty of screening trees along the fenceline and anyway the neighbours are extremely forward thinking. He rides a unicycle down to the shops when not playing the shakuhachi. Perhaps I should ask him about dealing with ‘death grip’.
Last practice was better - perhaps just being conscious of the problem is enough.
It dawned on me one day that hand tension comes from the thumb and fingers being in opposition.
Take your thumbs off, and there’s no tension.
Luckily, standard Irish whistles have no thumbholes.
I used a neck strap on my Low D so that I could practice with both my thumbs off. It really helped.
At least for me, my hands seem to remember how relaxed or tense they are when I learned a particular passage, so that relaxed practice results in relaxed performance (usually).
Here’s a helpful video in case someone can’t quite visualize the thumb removal thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHp4D64mH8s
I am now very afraid of using a neck strap. 
An other visual aid regarding hand position.
My dad used to do the thumb trick when we were kids. Creepy - but nowhere near as disturbing as the repeating finger hand thing.
You can reduce hand tension by using a neck strap, but by no means will it eliminate hand tension…
You can have PLENTY of hand tension without the thumb being involved in the process.
http://www.johnranck.net/studio/clinic/practice_corner/relaxed_hands.html
“…playing with relaxed hands should not be our goal, because not only is it is an unrealistic goal, it is an impossible goal.”
“…our goal should be utilizing the right amount of tension and isolating tension where it is needed, not eliminating it, which is impossible.”
So I’ve been paying more attention to my practising habits and have found that I get tense when I’m learning new phrases and making lots of mistakes. It’s a mix of frustration and exasperation that tightens everything up. When I get to this point I’m now just putting the whistle down and taking the time to do something else. It means my practises are much shorter… 
If you’re making lots of mistakes in new phrases that can only mean you’re working on them at too fast a pace. Esp. the first go is real important. You won’t believe how fast your fingers learn. If you get it wrong the first time, it’ll take a long time then to get it right. If you get it right the first time, you’ll ‘have it’. It may still take a little while before it’s solid, but nowhere near as long as it’d take if you get it wrong the first time. So even if you have to play it at a speed of one note per second, do that. If you’re learning by ear and making tons of mistakes, then you’ve not listened often enough. You have to be able to sing/hum it first before trying it on your instrument. Or at least be able to accurately hear it in your head.
It might also help you to warm up with some scales (regular scales, scales with ornaments, scales going two up one down two up and so on, then three up two down three up etc., and whatever else you can think of that might be handy, and do those in different phrasings). Just a couple of minutes at the start of each practice session. And through all that stay alert of the death grip setting in.
Instead putting the whistle down you could try putting it down for just a minute, then do a little warmup run again, and then just play some tunes you know well. Then back to the new stuff.
That’s all useful advice Zai. Thanks. I do start with scales and arpeggios, which I enjoy playing. Whilst I can read music, I am learning by ear and I don’t generally try to play tunes until I have them well in my head. If I wake up humming a tune, I know I’ll be able to get the basics down that day fairly quickly. But sometimes there’s more than a bit of trial and error involved in landing on the right notes when I start learning the tune, and sometimes I only find out that I’ve misheard a note or phrase after I’ve tried to play it myself and realised that it sounds off. It was a revelation when I discovered the dec#A run. I’d been playing something quite different because my brain had consistently led me to expect some predictable English country dance tune phrase (which was what I was playing). I just simply hadn’t heard it properly but didn’t know I hadn’t heard it properly. My partner finally pointed out to me that I wasn’t playing the correct notes. Shades of Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns…
I sometimes misjudge the intervals (even when I think I know a tune quite well) and land on the wrong note, and the articulation and ornamentation frequently sounds rubbish - but surely everyone must do this/think this when they are just starting off with this pesky instrument. A beguilingly simple instrument, you think when first picking up the whistle. NOT.
I could play all my tunes through first time with 100 per cent accuracy if I went to the dots - but then it never sticks. Yah boo sucks to adult learning.
What’s that? Can you give an example?
That’s not like the famous decCG run, it is? 
It’s in the B part of the version of Wicklow Hornpipe we play in our session (I hope!). Sitting here with my trusty Meg I also realise that nailing the geC# (also in the B) gave me even more grief. Now I can’t imagine why I couldn’t hear it. And I know now that it’s an oft-heard pattern. This is the bit I like about the tunes - once you’ve mastered a pattern you start to hear it in other tunes.
Can you name a tune with the run you’ve mentioned pls.
I played outside today sitting near water. No death grip. Very calming and meditative. I didn’t rush the tunes. The swans seemed to appreciate them.
I guess you’re using the term “run” to mean simply consecutive notes in the tune - a figure - not the more usual sense of a pattern of ascending or descending scale or chord tones, such as a (3Bcd run. Gotcha.
Oh, sure, decCG is from the popular “Close Encounters of the Third Kind Spacedance”.