Participated in a workshop by Kevin Crawford yesterday preceding a house concert by Kevin and Cillian Vallely.
Although there were two dozen for the house concert, there were only a handful of us for the workshop, and none with flutes or pipes (which Cillian would have taught) but high and low whistles only.
Most of the time was spent on rhythm: jigs and then reels, demonstrated with Máire Rua and The Drunken Landlady.
A bit of practice of two consecutive D-rolls, used in a variation of the Drunken Landlady Kevin favors.
Kevin told me I needed to keep the bottom two fingers of both hands down to get a good C-natural on the Generation D. Lower fingers of the top hand was fine on the Susato low D. Kevin says he rarely half-holes the C-nat (unlike Mary Bergin), probably because cross-fingering is so useful in flute-playing.
Other points from the workshop:
Importance of being able to hum or otherwise produce the tune before trying to play.
Don’t over-ornament. Kevin says he did this himself when younger. Recommends listening to Martin Hayes on fiddle as a model for this.
Kevin plays a Susato high-D whistle, though he used others (in various keys) during the concert.
Playing in sessions can lead to bad habits, especially wrt rhythm. If you have good rhythm, try to get the others to adjust to you rather than vice versa (yes, easier said than done).
Definitely worth it. Once again, I’m surprised there weren’t more participants. I’d never been to a house concert before and the workshop was a major reason why I went this time.
