One of my customers informed me of the existence of this new DVD produced by Brian McCoy. Since this is a question that sometimes arises on the flute forum, I decided to pass on the link to the DVD page and also the website for Brian’s band, “The Kells Band”
Brian and the Kells play every year at the Dublin (Ohio) Irish festival - highly recommended! He also does mini-workshops at the event.
Pat
On the first post of this thread I mentioned Brian McCoy’s new DVD “Irish Muisc on the Classical Flute”. Well, I ordered it and had a listen for myself. Without getting into detail about the contents of the DVD, my general impression is very positive. Brian explains what it takes to play in the Irish style and how to do it, with good visual presentation of the flute fingerings for all of the topics discussed as well as printable sheet music. In terms of tone and style, Brian certainly makes the Boehm classical flute sound like a traditional wooden Irish flute, in my opnion. I recommend Brian’s DVD to others who may be interested in this subject.
Hi there everyone, I saw this thread on the DVD I produced and wanted to thank everyone for their comments. I hope it’s okay to explain a few things, and offer some background too.
A little about my background (okay you can skip this part, lol), I acquired the love of Irish music from my parents who come from Ireland. I play ITM on flute, whistle and pipes and I’m in a band called The Kells. We play locally like most bands, doing pub gigs, weddings, etc. We also perform and been asked to teach workshops at various festivals: Milwaukee, Indy, Dublin, St. Louis Tionol, etc. You may have heard us play as you enter Michael Burke’s website, and on many of his audio samples.
Here’s a little background on why I decided to make an instructional DVD. It was Grey Larsen and Sir James Galway who both suggested to me on separate occasions that I should write a book. What’s a guy to say, “no”? Well, instead of a book, off I started the year long process of producing a DVD because I thought a DVD might help others more. In a follow-up meeting with Sir James, I was pleased to hear him say that it was the best information he’s seen on the subject. He then asked me to present it at the National Flute Association Convention in NYC’s Times Square where I was pleased to see that it was met with much interest.
I’ve had many good and favorable comments from the many people who bought the DVD, and from NFA convention attendees, and from Sir James Galway himself. In fact, my website provider liked the site so much, that they featured it as an example of a good site in their latest web ad. Just for fun, if anyone would like to check it out, it’s under the “What people are saying” section at this link: http://creativity.ecommerce.com/public/ix_copywriter_final/dspmain.html
Well, I want to thank everyone for allowing me to give some background and information regarding the DVD. Thanks again for all your comments, and it’s an honor to be mentioned on C&F indeed. Please let anyone you know that has a classical flute, that there is something out there specifically tailored for them to learn ITM, if they think they might be interested in a DVD of it’s kind.
Thanks,
Brian McCoy
www.dvd.kellsband.com
www.kellsband.com
Paddy Carty didn’t play Bohem system.
Brian’s style is certainly traditional (great playing btw), but please don’t tell me his tone is like he’s playing a wooden conical flute…
True, but in terms of the kind of sound his Radcliff system would have been inclined to make… it had a Bohm bore (“parabolic” head and cylinder body) and Bohm’s large, acoustically correctly placed tone-holes, all covered by platter keys… and using the type of mechanism Bohm adopted, just with somewhat different keying and linkages so that the system of fingering was a bit more like Simple System. There is no structural reason why a wooden Radcliff (or Carte 1851, 1867 or Guards) model flute would sound noticeably different to a similar Bohm system flute, nor indeed why a metal flute in any of those designs would sound different to any other, but any of them would sound different to a conoid Simple System. Carty’s sound was, of course, his own, and distinctly Irish in style, yet I think one can hear in his recordings that he is playing a Bohm bore rather than a conoid one.
I think it is of relevance and interest to this thread and the other one about Brian McCoy’s bumf that Calum Stewart is now playing a Bohm bore 8-key Simple System Rudall Carte body with a modern head joint, as detailed in his current thread: http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=75711&start=0. It will be interesting to see what folk make of his sound on that in due course.
Jem,
BTW, I have studio recordings of Billy Clifford playing the same tunes on both Radcliff and Wooden Boehm flutes (such as the track on Wooden Flute Obsession vol. 2), and the tone is remarkably the same. The only reason we went with the Boehm on that track was the mechanism was better maintained than the Radcliff.
Thanks Kevin - as one might expect, then, though one would need also to compare the same player on a conoid 8-key as well for a fuller picture…
I had the privilege of getting some private blind comparison clips from Calum of his playing on the cylindrical RC&Co, his conoid Holmes McNaughton and the conoid Olwells he had commissioned (and recently sold) when he was evaluating his options and making up his mind what he would stick with - sent to me primarily to comment on generally to see if my opinion matched Calum’s own, to give an objective outside opinion on what he sounded best on/could get most out of, but also to see if I could distinguish which was which without being told… Of course he sounded like himself (and fabulous) on all of them, and I sometimes got the conoid/cylindrical thing wrong, sometimes right - it’s not that easy - I think I got a 2:1 “right” score in the end… though that wasn’t really the point.
Probably worth highlighting the fact that the toneholes on the Radcliffe as played by Paddy Carty are large - similar in size to the modern “silver flute”, while the toneholes on the simple system Rudall Carte body you mention above are similar in size to those on a Pratten. That has a very significant effect on the tone (and obviously other characteristics) these flutes have, despite the fact they both have Boehm type bores. The smaller toneholes make the simple system Rudall Carte type more difficult to distinguish from the conical bored flutes for a listener. Of course the player can tell they’re different right away.
Garry
Good points, Garry.