I am still very new to this (playing six months or so) and I was wondering…all those jigs and reels go so way fast.
How do I ever learn to play them at proper speed?
Does anyone have some tips to share?
berti
hi berti, i’m a beginner myself, the only advice i can give is too practise very slowly, I know, it’s not so fun, and I don’t do it myself all the time either. but I guess it’s the best way to learn.
Speed will happen by itself as you get more comfortable with your instrument and the music you’re playing. It’s more important to work on rhythm, phrasing, and developing laserlike precision in your ornaments. If you’ve got all that, your playing will ROCK regardless of your tempo.
Berti,
Play them “SLOWLY!” Learn the rhythm of the tune first. Now, increase the speed.
Almost Every tune has a different speed (regardless of catagory:reels, jigs,slip-jigs,hornpipes,slow-reels). There are “NO” rules to finding how to enjoy playing them!! Personally, I prefere to play reels SLOWLY with a real groove! It’s just my style of playing.
P.S. I’m sending out some “instructional tapes” to several board members today. If you are really interested. Simply drop me the postage to ship the cassette to you.$5.00 (through my paypal). I could put some great beginner stuff on the tape for you. Your choice. Good luck Berti!-Talbert
Speed will happen by itself as you get more comfortable with your instrument and the music you’re playing.
I’ve been hearing that for going on 5 years… I am faster now than I was when I started but still can’t keep up on many tunes at many sessions.
I’m really starting to think that once you have a tune down, you need to practice getting up to speed. I suspect playing fast is a skill just like any other and needs to be practiced.
I really don’t do this at all currently, so I’m just theorizing, but I may pick a tune and over a week try to take it from slow to fast.
-Brett
I think you’ll have to decide whether you want to play them “so way fast” or at proper speed. The thing about playing fast is that you cannot do it before you have control and precision in your finger movements, which you cannot get without slowing down. So don’t go trying playing too fast too soon.
Yo, Talbert. I didn’t know new age music was supposed to be played fast.
Here’s the thing – if you can play a tune, but you can’t play it at the speed which it is normally played, then you don’t really have the tune down. You’ve learned the notes, but that’s only the first step.
I think the progression is something like this:
- Learn the notes.
- Learn to play those notes up to speed.
- Learn to play those notes up to speed with other people.
- Learn to start the tune (reliably, with a good rhythm, so that other people can recognize what you are playing).
- Learn to play the tune even when some other bozo is playing wrong notes.
- Learn to start the tune after some other tunes.
The exact order of the steps may vary. And if you’re learning by ear, there’s typically another step in there, which is sort of being able to mostly play the tune at speed, as long as someone else starts it and keeps it going. And also in there needs to be the process of learning where the tune can go, what little variations give it life.
So learning the notes is only the first step, and it can take months or even years to get to the point where you’re really good at the tune…
Use the metronome, Luke! (I mean, Berti!)
Use it slow…
Hi Bloomfield,
The truth is as much as I enjoy playing new-age music with my Low Whistle’s, I am very much grounded with jigs and reels! After all, everything that I have done so far comes from traditional music. If this is where it all stems from then it must be learned and understood FIRST in order to venture out on your own. I understand the music quite well.
New-Age music can ofcourse be played at “any” speed. However, I prefer to capture the emotions behind new-age rather than the speed. Overall, I do not like to play fast. I’m the Martyn Hayes type!
Thanks for your comment Bloomfield. By the way, I’v always enjoyed your comments on the board! - Talbert
I think many musical people just have a faster natural internal tempo than I do. I’ve had lessons before where I was trying to play a tune at a faster tempo (because I knew it well and could), and when I was finished my teacher said, “Nice! I like how you played it at a slower tempo.”
Enough to make your roll your eyes and sigh!
I am speeding up but at this rate I think I’ll have been playing about 10 years before I can consistently keep up at most sessions. That’s okay I guess…maybe it will be a good 40th birthday present in a few years.
-Brett
Foolish advice 
Get a midi programme like MidiNotate, or Tablature Karaoke etc.
Find the tune you want as a midi, by looking at the usual sites e.g. J C Tunefinder, Wandering Whistler or by googling.
Use the midi prog’ sto slow down the tune until you know it or can play through without mistakes, at ‘that’ speed you need to learn it at - maybe 50% normal speed.
Then add e.g. 10% then keep up, then another 10% etc, etc.
You’ll never be able to play a tune fast and accurately if yer can’t play it slowly and accurately, so IMO slow(er) and steady wins the race quicker if yer see wot I’m getting at.
HTH
Listen. Practice. Listen. Practice. Listen some more. Practice some more.
Cultivate a rhythmic, steady quality in your playing, and speed will take care of itself. If you can’t play it slow and steady, guess what, you can’t play it fast and steady, either!
I think it is bad to try to play fast! First of all the best and most respected sources in trad today - except Sligo fiddling - play slower not faster.
I recall some comments here about early Chieftains recordings being nicer, yeah I hear that too. The reason is the slower tempos.
I like the following settings for my own use - TW Harmonica Banjo Fiddle etc
Hornpipe - 67 or 76 or 89 or 94 BPM but each click takes two 1/8th notes.
Jig 75 thr 85 and I find that faster is too fast for me OC.; here one click takes three 1/8th notes.
Again giving each click of the metronome two 1/8th notes, reels I begin at 95 BPM and work towards 148 BPM in steps. I often stick at 111 BPM then move to 124BPM then to 133BPM and so on. The secret OC is to work on intonation and accurate timing of relevant beats; for example, in a simple reel marks 3 and 7 get a wallop, ie the Upbeats like when you’d clap if listening.
So the lilt in Irtrad on TW is also about feet and breathing INSTEAD OF fingers. You might want to sit on a high stool with your feet just on the floor. With good solid shoes learn to tap on the downbeat and upbeat - while listening to a recording.
Then when you have the idea apply that to your blowing thusly, huff on the downbeat and upbeat. Feels like saying huh but not saying it while you blow.
Typical breathing phrase for me to begin a reel is a light blow then to a huff Feels like blow_huff blow_huff breathing space blow_huff - next bar and so on.
Practice, practice, practice . . .
I’m in the same boat - I’ve been playing whistle for about a year and a half, and there are still tunes I can’t play at anything approaching real (or reel ) speed, but I try to keep working on the basics and get my rhythm and ornamentation solid. However frustrating, speed does come with time - I have a long way to go, but I’m a better player now than I was even a few months back.
And not everyone plays the tunes at the same speed - I’ve heard recordings of hornpipes like “The Boys of Bluehill” played like a fast reel, but I think Micho Russell’s version, played at a relaxed pace with minimal ornamentation, sounds much better.
Another secret - if you’re still tonguing a lot, like most beginners, it’s a lot EASIER (and sounds better) to play the fast pieces with minimal tonguing. Better flow, and (much to my amazement) finger ornamentation is a lot easier to do at speed, once you’ve got your fingers used to the idea.
Not that I’m by any means an expert - I’d put myself somewhere in the advanced beginner/low intermediate level at best - but things that have helped me along the way.
First thing, get a metronome. Second thing, get a notebook and a pencil, and record your speed from day to day. On the concertina, I start my practice with scales, D G and sometimes A, played in jig and reel rhythm. I play them as quickly as I can play them steadily, against the metronome, and write down the speeds in a little notebook I always keep in my case (obsessive that I am, I actually made and bound the book myself, to fit neatly in this one cavity in my case.)
You shouldn’t play faster than you can play well. But if each day you keep track of the upper limit of your comfort zone, you’ll see a marked increase in you speed.
BTW, the metronome should be set to the number of beats per minute, not the number of eighth-notes or quarter-notes or whatnot. A reel typically has 2 beats per measure, so 120BPM is a measure per second. Ditto for a double jig: 120BPM is a measure per second, even tho it’s much harder to play a reel at 120 than a jig at 120!
Caj
Could you recommend a good brand or place to pick one up? I’ve seen the advice to get one in more than one place, but a quick google of ‘metronome’ turns up a range of features and brands beyond my ability to evaluate.
Thanks in advance!
There’s a metronome online which is fairly easy to use. It’s at http://www.metronomeonline.com/metronomeonline/Default.asp?bhcp=1
"BTW, the metronome should be set to the number of beats per minute, not the number of eighth-notes or quarter-notes or whatnot.
A reel typically has 2 beats per measure,
so 120BPM is a measure per second. Ditto for a double jig: 120BPM is a measure per second, even tho it’s much harder to play a reel at 120 than a jig at 120! "
There are two UP beats as well as …da dah tow DOWN beats per measure in C or 4/4 time.
you know those pint glasses you usually get Guiness in? fill them with coffee, really strong coffee. if that doesn’t work, soak your fingers and/or your tongue in espresso shots. 
ok, seriously, as has already been mentioned, practice, practice, practice. I’ll typically work on a tune at a slow to medium pace, working out phrases, ornaments and the overall feel of it. After working on it for awhile, I’ll speed it up little by little. I rarely use a metronome for whistle playing (probably because I get enough of the tick-tock-tick-tock in cello practice!), but it’s certainly useful, and seems to be good training for developing an inner sense of tempo (not to mention the old fashioned foot tapping/stamping method). Every now and then I’ll play a tune alot faster than I practice it, not worrying about mistakes too much, just to get the feel of playing at a fast tempo, especially the feeling of moving the fingers much more quickly. Then, I’ll go back to a slower tempo and work on the parts that need it. Something else to consider: playing the whistle (as with any instrument) is a physical activity, and I sometimes forget to pay as much attention as I should to the tension that sometimes builds up. I find this is especially true when playing low whistles–tension in the neck and mouth, as well as the fingers, so I try to be conscious of the degree of tension in my playing, as well as taking breaks if I’m playing for an extended period of time. Some of this carries over from cello playing, which of course is an altogether different instrument, but the principle of playing with the least amount of tension possible is certainly universal. Finally, breathing from the diaphragm is essential, even moreso when playing larger whistles. My $.02 anyway.
p.s. a mantra I used to hear from one of my former teachers: practice doesn’t make perfect, but the right kind of practice will get you closer.
I bought a Sabine Zipbeat metronome. I picked that one because it had a nice big jog dial to set the tempo (don’t want to press a little button 50 times) and a nice “tock” sound rather than a computer beep.
Other fancy electronic features I didn’t need, just a good metronome that’s easy to use. A Zipbeat costs 20 bucks, and you shouldn’t need to spend more than 25 bucks for a decent metronome.
Caj