… perform with Solas as part of the Christmas Celtic Sojourn concert in Boston this weekend (it was a surprise birthday present to me from my family!).
Anyone notice that he plays whistle with reversed hands?
He plays flute “normally”, and guitar and banjo as well, but he played whistle most of the night, and with his right hand on top!
I can’t even compute the brain re-arranging that would require.
Perhaps that’s how he keeps flute-style and whistle-style separate and distinct, but I can’t even begin to imagine playing any wind instrument with my hands the “wrong” way.
I seem to recall from a long-ago class with Seamus at the Augusta Irish Week that he started the whistle at a young age, didn’t know any better, played with the wrong hand on top, and just never changed from that. Later he picked up the flute and learned it the right way from the start.
Given that Seamus plays other instruments (banjo and mandolin) at an extremely high standard (and rumors are that he plays or played the pipes as well, although I’ve never seen him play them or heard any recordings), and given that the flute and whistle are two totally different instruments that happen to share a common fingering, I wouldn’t think it would be all that hard for Seamus or any other good musician to keep straight the different hand positions on flute and whistle. Just as it’s obviously not hard for the many good pipers who are also flute or whistle players to keep straight the slightly different fingerings on those instruments. For ordinary mortals, YMMV.
The dude has won All-Ireland championships on four different instruments, so I’m certain he could play whistle with his toes if he decided he needed his hands to accompany himself.
I had the honor of taking a workshop with him, and found him very open and with no ego whatsoever. He showed me a technique he uses to sort of double cut notes that give a bubbly effect to his playing that I found remarkable. He acted like it was no big deal and simply a matter of relaxing the fingers.
