from Grey Larsen’s book. It’s kinda slow going. I’m tempted to play without much ornamentation until I have the fingerings by heart, then add them in a bit at a time. I’ve divided up practice sessions into time spent with the book, and time just playing. Is this a cop-out? Should I be learning it all at once? I have a hard time getting motivated if I don’t play any “just for fun.” I think that’s what stalled me out the first time I tried to do this, a couple of years ago. Or will I be developing bad habits that will be hard to break later?
I wouldn’t sweat the ornamentation too much at first. Get the basic tune down. Then add cuts and taps to avoid repeated notes. At this point you’re off and running. Add ornaments as you see fit.
How do you learn without ornamentation anyway if there’s 2 or 3 repeated notes? Dou you make them one long note (doesn’t always sound right), do you tongue them (that’s an ornament)?
That’s the way I learn. There’s no point (for me) if it’s not fun.
I find it much easier to learn the basic tune with little ornamentation and as it gets in to my fingers more thoroughly I’m able to speed up and add ornaments as I go.
I learned tonguing and legato tonguing when I learned to play the flute. I guess I didn’t think of that as ornamentation. I’m just finding that if I spend too much time thinking about cuts, there is no music. I’ve been sneaking them in a few at a time as I get more familiar with the tune.
I learned the basic tune and then added cuts and taps as needed. One day I noticed that I had added a roll on G. Then I added a roll on A. It comes to you eventually.
I used cuts, short and long rolls in a simple predetermined way to separate the notes (2 notes starting on beat = short roll, off beat = slur+cut, 3 notes = long roll). Then started to spice it up. It probably ingrained some bad technique.
Without re-hashing stuff that’s been gone over time and again here and elsewhere, or indeed that must be in Larsen’s book… you need to start thinking of the cuts, taps and even rolls not as “ornaments” in the mainstream classical way or even in the Baroque sense (though there are parallels to that), but as articulation, used (primarily) instead of (or as well as) tongue and other air-supply forms of articulation, and as rhythmic devices in a fundamentally legato playing style. It is therefore advisable to try to include at least the essential ones - particularly dividing repeated same-pitch notes, from the outset. You can always revert to tonguing them as a deliberate choice later. They mostly (not always!) are not “ornaments” in the sense of “embellishments”, extras, china ducks on the chimney-breast; rather they are (mostly) integral to basic playing technique - they separate notes and provide attack to notes.
There’s actually very little ornamentation in Irish reels and jigs, an ornament being by definition superfluous to the melody and added for decorative effect.
Cuts, pats, and rolls aren’t like that at all. They are intrinsic to the very melody, and constructing a way of playing a jig or reel on the whistle or pipes without them is an exercise in artifice, in my opinion.
Rolls are the rythmic engine that drives jigs and reels along their way. To remove them is to suck most of the drive out of the tunes.
I call cuts, pats, and rolls digital articulation (as opposed to lingual articulation).
Tunes need articulation and it’s idiomatic to use the fingers in addition to the tongue. (Not to say that it’s impossible to play a jig or reel without digital articulation; it just ain’t idiomatic.)
How I start beginners off oftentimes (the title to this thread is “learning ornamentation”) is to get them to think of jigs and reels as consisting of a constant underlying eighthnote pulse. So The Kesh Jig starts…
G G G G A B
A A A A B d
and I give the beginner a palette/repertoire of cuts and pats and I leave it up to them (at first) which they choose to articulate the repeated notes.
There are several “right” ways and endless “wrong” ways.
Paddy Keenan starts the tune
(cut) G (pat) G (pat) G (pat) G A B
which is not what most fluteplayers or whistlers would do but it’s quite idiomatic to the pipes.
Is it possible that at the root of the question here is learning by dots vs ear? If you look at the dots you must answer the question how do I separate these notes, or do I play them as one long note? If you try to mimic the sound you hear, well, there won’t be one long note will there?
Do whatever you can to create the “Irish accent” you hear in the music. How you do it will evolve as your skill improves and you have more options available to you. If you don’t hear the Irish accent, well, you probably have not listened to enough tunes! (Live tunes are best I think.)
That said, I think it’s good to warm up a bit, and then practice some of your newer articulations with the intent of using them more. Then launch into playing for fun, trying to use the newer approaches when you can.
Two or three times playing the exact same thing is kinda boring for listeners, so I try to use different articulations in some places each time thru. Maybe some alternate phrasing as well. It’s good fun. This might sound “wrong” to persons at a certain point in their journey. I can remember when I would ask “That’s nice, but how is it supposed to be played?” Which would result in tender, understanding smiles and the reply “The way you want it to sound.”
Also, playing the tune at different speeds permits/requires different articulations. Reels at a ceili sometimes go so quick that places I normally roll just get a toot and I’m on to the next thing. The point being, get the tune in your head, and then create a manifestation to suit the moment when you play it. Sometimes there will be a lot of articulation, sometimes not so much. But the tune should always be the tune.
I agree that “ornamentation” is a poor choice of words to describe something integral to celtic whistle music. I’m just finding that playing page after page of exercises is not the best way for me to learn. I’ve been enjoying “Brother Steve’s Tin Whistle Pages” immensely. Thank you to the kind person who suggested them to me. He simplifies things, explaining them in non-intimidating ways. I can listen to a clip, read about the technique, and practice it with actual music. Then I go to other songs and try to apply what I’ve learned. I probably still tongue more than I should, but that is changing the more I practice sounding like the examples I’m listening to. I also recently acquired some music CDs just to listen and soak it in. Live Irish music isn’t easy to come by around here. There’s a woman I know who would be an excellent teacher. I’m hoping to contact her after the first of the year and arrange some lessons.
Sounds like you’ve “got it”, Deb, and are on the right course. Agreed that arid technical exercises aren’t very satisfying or all that helpful, often, though as in any field of music they do have their uses. Practicing techniques in “real” contexts is always preferable (look at what all the classical “Tune-a-Day” type books always do!) - and indeed you will find as your tune repertory grows, it will of course introduce new technical challenges piecemeal. It probably would be sensible, given your background, to really try totally to eschew tonguing for a while and use finger articulations exclusively until they/the style become(s) ingrained and natural to you. But I think you already know that.
Rather than nitpicking on the semantics of the word “ornamentation” and “embellishment” it may be better to understand that if something is INTEGRAL to a thing it need not be learned separately!
ITM is not the only trad where melody is played with rhythmic articulation that some describe as ornamented. Rhythmic articulation sculpts spaces in the music in pretty definite ways and if you play like that long enough your body will spontaneously begin to to do the things you like to call pops, rolls, cuts, taps in your tradition, within the “gaps”.
Once, and only once, that begins to happen spontaneoulsy, should one then practice them as discrete components of articulation for the purpose of refining them. If one learns them before the spontaneous articulation is experienced one’s performance will always sound contrived and painful as these things will sound like ADD ONS and not INTEGRAL.
This is why I like hotblack’s and ronkiley’s response the most so far.
The only thing I would add is that you actually don’t have to use cuts, rolls and so forth to articulate your notes; there’s nothing actually wrong with mostly using tonguing. Most people seem to eventually settle down to a balance that suits them well.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with alternating “proper learning” and playing for fun and amusement - if you don’t enjoy it you’re so much less likely to stick with it.
To answer your final question in the OP, you aren’t practicing bad habits by avoiding rolls. You may be limiting yourself, but not enforcing anything bad I don’t think. Just as important as seeing where a roll can fit in a tune is seeing what options you have besides playing a roll. Taking again the example of the Kesh, it is absolutely possible to play the first phrase without rolls or tonguing. A couple simple possibilities are:
GEG GAB
or
GAG GAB
Don’t focus on the rolls as the end-all-be-all of the music. While they are integral to the music as others have suggested, they are one of several possible ways of articulating a phrase, and not necessarily the “right” way.
If you’re playing tunes slowly (as you should be) then you should have the ability to practice decently executed rolls without too much trouble (getting them up to speed is going to take a bit of practice). Try changing it up as suggested in my example above so that it’s not such a workout for your fingers (i.e., play variations rather than trying to hit the roll every time) and it will begin to feel more and more natural. You’ll also have the tune better if you don’t focus on playing the same notes every time through. When I began learning rolls, I just found a tune that I really enjoyed playing and slowly worked the rolls into it here and there as I suggested above.
Make sure your hands stay relaxed when practicing. If you’re tense, take a break and come back to it. Practicing when tense is a recipe for bad habits.
Finally getting it. It helped to completely quit tonguing (except for the first note after a breath) for awhile. And to view the cuts and taps as blips that start a note instead of the tongue. Instead of “optional,” I now know how necessary they are. I’ve been listening to lots of Irish whistle and flute playing, noticing that you don’t necessarily notice the cuts and taps, they are just there. And the music would be wrong without them. The elusive roll is still somewhere on the horizon.
Had I to do it over again, I would have called this thread “Learning Articulation.” I will add in starting phrases with the breath. I’m just trying to break old classical flute habits. Thanks for all the suggestions. This forum is very helpful!
