From fyffer, in a different thread. I’m kind of anal about wanting things to be organized, so I took the liberty of starting a new thread:
I’m working through the Larsen book as well, and based on comments from other flute/whistle players, as well as my own ears, just beware that Grey’s method is not “THE” way to ornament, it is “A” way to ornament on the flute and whistle.
He does, however, often indicate that what he is presenting may not be a common way to do something, and for that I give him a thumbs-up.
And for anyone else interested in the book, I recommend getting it on Amazon for cheaper ($26.37 at Amazon, vs. $39.95 on his site).
Hi, Chris – Thanks for that information - it is good to know. One thing that I especially like about the Larsen book is that it does seem to speak the same language that I do. This might be a detriment for other people, though, so I should explain. My background is classical, and his approach to explaining things matches that pretty well. I had a teacher for a few months once, but her background was traditional. She was wonderful, but there were a lot of questions that I couldn’t ask in a way that she could understand, and a lot of explanations that she couldn’t give in a way that I could understand. The Larsen book actually addresses and answers some of the same questions I had back then. some time with the book, I think I might actually be good enough to be able to go back to the teacher, speak her language better, and learn a lot.
Does anyone else have some good books or other ways to learn that work especially well for them? I’d especially be interested in hearing what aspects of the method work well and what don’t.
I have the Larsen book. I haven;t gone into the meat of it yet, which is his lessons on ornamentation, but I have found value in the book already.
Larsen provides a lot of useful background info on the history of Irish music. The section on eminent players is very interesting as well, and the tune transcriptions are worthwhile.
I hate the Larsen book. It is excessively windy, I can’t figure out what he’s talking about most of the time, and I think it is ridiculous to provide recorded examples for flute playing on a concertina. I have just ordered the Vallely book and cassette per the above recommendation, and will give that a try.
I sold mine and while I didn’t hate it I agree with djm’s comments. I felt it would be a great book for someone who already played the flute and wanted to learn the I trad style or for some one very proficient at playing from written music. The transciptions were worthless to me as I don’t read music and don’t intend to learn to read music than by any method other than osmosis. The embouchure advice I had already gotten from C&F and the various wood flute sites.Ornamentation was covered for me well enough in whistle tutors I already own. It did have interesting info on past and present players.I felt it had alot of fluff and filler( and alot of pictures of the same thing on several pages) and was dissapointed there weren’t any complete recorded songs at a learning speed and performance speed,a method great for learning by ear . I intend to buy Skip Healys Have Ye this One? CDs
The Seamus Egan flute dvd I think is pretty good, though it doesn’t cover
the very beginning areas too much. There’s a lot of interesting
information packed into it, including I think a really important point about
working on tone as the key to everything else. I seem to remember that
some of the things he does are not verbally explained, but you can see
and hear it so you can learn it.
I also came across the LE McCullough whistle video (Homespun tapes),
though a bit late in the game, and I like it a lot. It’s very succinct - you
have to stop the video often to work on it. But I like that and it covers
most everything. Now I know this is a whistle video but the basic points
are all there and I use it from time to time for the flute when I have a
question to look up. If it comes out on dvd it would even be better.
The Lark in the morning video I tried before anything else but didn’t like.
The pace is very slow and as a beginner I found it annoying enough to
not want to use it.
But I would definitely go for the visual and aural teaching aids over a
book any day.
I bought the Larsen book a while ago (from Amazon) and tried working with it for a while but I find it a bit heavy going - and that was just simple ornamentation - so now I tend to just dip into it when I want to learn something specific. The musical notation is ok for me - so a few nice tunes in there.
On the whole I find it better just to play what I can as much as I can and whenever I can with others who are better than me - to watch and listen to as well. I think this improves my playing better than any study book and multitudinous views about technique!!
Sarah
