If I don’t play every day it’s like starting over again. But the “noise” has been an issue, so, banished away I go to the furthest, loneliest places in the house to practice, paying no mind to the fact that they are saying I’m getting better. I just feel terrible about being such a bother.
I can’t play anything fast. I can’t play anything without mistakes. If I play something pretty well, then move on to learn something new, when I come back to the tune I could play well I can’t hardly play it at all anymore. Nothing sticks except the mistakes.
My embouchure sucks. My breathing sucks. I’m fat and my hair won’t behave.
When I play a tune I’m so happy to begin it, but so sad when it ends. Why can’t these tunes last forever, especially the good parts?
My wood flute is cracked. My plastic flute is, well, plastic. I feel so inadequate without some lusted-after flute.
Welcome to my pity party. It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to. Waahhhh
Diane, don’t be too hard on yourself. Simply allow yourself to slip into beginner’s mind, then everything that you play on the flute will be a great joy. I had the wonderful experience of playing with my 6-year-old granddaughter this afternoon. She made these horrible scratching sounds with my fiddle, my wife sang, and I picked out notes on the mandolin and pennywhistle. We made “music” together. As she was leaving, my granddaughter said, “Thank you for a wonderful afternoon”.
I am sorry you are having such a hard time playing the flute. Honestly, its not the easiest instrument to play. I have been listening to some of your sound samples and think your flute playing is very good. You know more tunes and are a better player than me! I know it’s hard when you listen to clips of people who blow out a tune with speed and ornaments and then they say there going to sell their flute to play the pipes? Honestly, my phrasing is terrible and I run out of breath all the time, but isnt it a great instrument? A joy to play even if you can’t keep your breath.
Isn’t it great when you have a “good day” on your flute? Other days I want to give up and sell my flute. When I pick up my flute I am always glad that didn’t sell it!
I play the whistle, accordion and flute and I sneak away all the time to practice! Even if I were a proficient player I doubt if my family would want to hear me play. Who can understand the complexities and draw of Irish music unless you play it? Honestly, it drives me crazy somtimes. But those strange rythms and melodies always draw me back!
Whenever I want a better instrument I am always met with resistance.
People who are not true musicians will never understand a quality instument. My wife plays the piano but she is not a real musician because she is not drawn to music and rarely plays it. I know that is judgemental but more of an observation. Don’t expect them to give you the instrument that you want. Save up and buy it for yourself and don’t be ashamed about it when you finally get it. “Oh, how much did you pay for that?” just say “don’t worry about it, it was worth every penny. I will probably play it for the rest of my life” That’s it, its a small price to pay for a life long endever! Sounds like you are already there!
actually, it sounds like you’re getting better. your ear always will develop faster than your playing. when your ear gets better, everything that used to sound ok now sounds bad. you will work harder to compensate for your more developed ear. after a while, your playing will surpass your ability to hear music, and you will think you rock, only for your ear to mature more and it all to start over again.
the fun thing is when you listen to music you used to think was boring it can often be very thrilling (like mike rafferty or mary macnamara). i dont very much enjoy it when i listen to a recording i used to love and find that now my ear thinks its just a bunch of noise without any soul.
I don’t know if this will help you or not, but my approach to learning an instrument that seems impossible (for me it was first the pipes and then the fiddle) is to keep saying to myself, “This is completely impossible! It can’t be done! No way! But I’m going to do it anyway.”
Then expectations are nice and low, but there is determination to keep at it. So I keep at it, and eventually one day I say to myself, “Aha! This isn’t impossible anymore.”
Find joy in the process.. the learning… and never, ever quit.
And also, relax. You may be trying too hard. Some things just take time. I like to think of time as vertical and horizontal. Sometimes playing 30 min every day for 16 days is better than 8 hours in one day. Some things take horizontal time in weeks and months, no matter how many hours we try and cram into just days.
I just listened to a track of yours and here’s what I heard:
–good developing tone
–good developing, steady rhythm
–good sense of the tune and the style
–ornaments properly played and placed.
In my estimation, this all adds up to being a strong developing flute player/musician.
I just recorded myself playing yesterday and am always sickened by something I do or don’t do. I know I’m my worst critic. I have very high expectations of myself, but here’s my conclusion about flute playing and art in general–we are all part of the hierarchical pyramid that makes up a particular art form we call Irish flute playing. We are all interconnected and we all are valuable because an apex flute player like Matt Molloy does not exist without all the rest of us. We may rise and fall in terms of technical and artistic accomplishments, most of us being somewhere in the bottom/middle, yet we are always of value to/in the artform. So congratulations–you are part of something great.
From another viewpoint, it’s too bad we can’t have a handicap system in Irish flute playing like they do in golf…“you get 2 chunked notes and one speed up per tune”…
Being a novice flute player myself, I know what you are going through.
I think sometimes we try to reach too many different goals at the same time.
There are times to settle down and assess.
Grasp and notice every improvement you make (there have to be some, regarding your good recordings), eventually write them down on a booklet.
Actually I also found regular recordings of the same song at different periods of time to give me a good indication of how much I improved (or not!). It also helps you to have a distant look (or listening) at your playing and see what should be your priorities to work on.
When I compare to some experienced player’s recordings on this board, I feel like I am never going to make it…
But actually that is exactly what I thought when I started the whistle one year ago. Some tunes then seemed out of reach, both in terms of complexity and speed. Now, for some of them, I am really getting closer.
Two weeks ago, while I was struggling to hold/grip/whatever my flute in order not to put it at stake each time I unseal a hole, I suddenly found a comfortable way to balance it and now I can seriously start playing (only slow airs that I know). But still, when I concentrate on the good tone, I cannot play fast, and if I concentrate on the fingering, my embouchure slips away… But everything is going to fit… someday.
Improvements often come in a sudden way. You just have to be patient.
I don’t know for how long you have been playing the flute now (it doesn’t seem to be that long since I tracked down your posts), but I find your recordings very good, far better than mines…
Remember you’re more than likely trying to do two things at once: (1) learn the flute (2) learn the music and how it goes. Both take time, as much time as you have - years & years. All adult beginners and I too have been down this route, have this issue.. if we had taken it up as a child we wouldn’t have great expectations of ourselves in our pre and early teens. But of course, it doesn’t matter if start out at ten years old and put in 10 years or start at 40 yrs and put in 10 years - you’ve still got to put in the time and that’s mainly what there is to it at the end of the day.
You have terrific potential. I’ve listened to your clips. You’re obviously musical, have good rhythm and really want this. Frankly, that’s all you need.
What kind of hardware are you working with?
Patience and optimism will get you far.
I remember lots of times the first couple of years I was playing that I felt like I had plateaued, then one day I’d pick the thing up and something new clicked and my playing took a leap. This happened several times and continues to happen. Be patient and enjoy. It will come.
Also, learning to relax. The embouchure is a very small but very relaxed opening. Tension kills tone. Rob Greenways discussion of embouchure and breathing really helped me. Here’s that: http://www.geocities.com/feadanach/
learning to really open up my throat. When I came to the realization that the embouchure is much more than the lips and started focusing on what my mouth and throat were doing my tone improved dramatically.
I’m a middle school music teacher and many adults I meet who begin studies on an instrument bring “kids’ expectations” into the mix- they think about forced practice, weekly lessons, recitals, pressure to perform in a group, etc.
Few of us on this site will ever earn a nickel playing the flute.
So, what’s left is the best- go sit under a tree on a nice day and play your flute for your dog. That’s what I do. (and your clips sound fine to me)
I often feel like this. I’m glad to read it’s not just me! Sometimes it will take me a good 30 minutes of playing just to get my embouchure going to get a decent sound out of the thing. Someone said earlier that sometimes it’s better to play for 30 minutes a day than trying to cram a long practice session into one day. I think it’s true! If I’m having a hard time and getting too frustrated I’ll just put the flute down, go do something else and then come back to it later, maybe not until the next day or a couple days later.
Don’t be discouraged and keep plugging along, you’ll come out of it!
Thank you for pitying me. I know if I keep at it I will improve. I was just having a bad day. You know how it is. You are doing so well and then all of a sudden it’s like, “how do you play this thing again?”
I have such a hard time going from A or B to C and every tune has a little section that if I ever flubbed it up in the past and learned to master it, if I don’t play the tune for a while and come back to it, it’s the flubbed up part I remember, not the mastery.
I should record new clips as those are getting old. I know I am better than that now. Most of those are within a couple of months of starting. I’m a couple more months down the line now. I guess I’ve had my flute since May. (I use Garage Band and record into my laptop directly, then use iTunes to convert them to mp3.)
I use Fliuit and a Fiddle book by Matt Cranitch to learn. The Fliuit book has been invaluable for seeing where to breathe and how to do ornaments. Matt’s book has a lot of good, fun, bouncy tunes in it, but fiddlers never take a breath!
