Playing the banana

Whistle
1

Okay. I’ve got the sheet music, I’ve got the CD, and more whistles than you can shake a stick at (My name is Gary…and I…I have…WhOA!).

I listen, I read, I play. Listen-read-play. Pretty soon (maybe 4 days or so) I can ditch the ‘read’. So it’s listen-play. play. play-play-play. Read (something didn’t sound right). Okay. Listen-play-listen-play. Pretty soon, I can play the tune rather jolly well (in my own humble opinion). No ornamentation, just the ‘basic’ tune as written and played on the CD.

Then comes the moment when I think it’s to time Listen AND play. At the same time.

Abject disaster. I may as well be trying to play a banana. Within about 3 notes, the whole thing goes to ratspit. I wait patiently for a repeat…here it comes…join in…and bl**dy three or four notes later I’ve got a banana in my mouth again.

The sickening thing is, when I’m playing solo it sounds great (well, good. You know what I mean). After a week, the fingers have remembered the tune really well and I can play it largo, at the same tempo as the recording, or even crank up the speed to quickissimo-ish. The fingers know where to go.

But as soon as I try to play along with the CD… ratspit. I used to play rhythm guitar (20 years ago, dammit). In a band! Live gigs and all. The guitar never turned into a banana.

But here’s the astonishing thing… If I bung the CD from LE McCullough’s Complete Irish Tinwhistle Tutor on and play along with his solo whistle, all’s well and good. If I go back to the CD which has fiddle, pipes, whistles, bhodran et al on there…it’s banana time.

Is there something wrong with my brain or my ears or wot?

There is isn’t there. I’m doomed…

2

Can you sing along with the CD?

Sonja

(Take your time. Don’t give up.)

3

Uhm…not tried it with this particular CD (110 Irish Session tunes). But I can certainly sing along with other stuff.

4

I’m asking because I usually need to be able to sing a tune before I can really play it, and I go back to the singing/lilting stage whenever I have a problem with a tune or a part of it. Playing an instrument is just like singing anyway, only that you use your fingers.

Sonja

5

Im sure everyone has had the same problem at some time, It is probably better to try playing with other musicians. Playing with others you can have some input into tempo etc. and I am sure you pick up on other little signals that keep it all together. Of course when playing with a CD you have the advantage of being able to turn down the volume so you can hear yourself (often a problem when playing with stacks of fiddles/pipes/boxes).

Of course the only real advice is to keep practicing, and when you have done that…do it some more :slight_smile:

Good luck!

6

Try using the amazing slowdowner software to slow the tune down a bit. Then slowly bring it up to speed. You can find a trial version on most download sites.
Keep whistling.

Ron

7

One of the hurdles of whistle learning I had was being able to play the tune and also listening to what the other people were playing at the same time.

I didn’t discover the trouble until I tried to play live with someone else.

I never got up to L. E.'s tempo on his tutor tape, BTW.

The tune has to really lie under the fingers and be completely automatic (when learning the whistle/music) until you “learn how to learn” on the whistle.

It was close to 7 years for me to get where I could “jam” with some other Irish musicians.

8

Then I’m trying to run before I can walk, I think! I’m nowhere near confident enough at this stage to play with or for anyone else I fear, and my repertoire is threadbare…I try to learn a tune a week, but it’s slow going and there are only about half a dozen that I think sound any ‘good’ (not including the usual chrimbo carols and Amazing Grace in a funky New Orleans Jazz kinda way to warm the whistle up!).

It’s just intensely irritating that I can play a particular tune at the same tempo as the CD, but when I try to “play along” it immediately falls apart!

More practice I think. Note to self: accept that it’s going to take a loooong time. Takes 12 years before a bottle of Cragganmore is fit for company!

9

I think I got my first whistle in the late 70’s early 80’s and I was about 40 at the time with very little formal music training (one year of piano at age 35). That has to slow me down quite a bit.

I don’t know if my piano teacher ever figured out that I just propped the music up and played by ear.. sort of like my brother first learned to read (he couldn’t read if you hid the picture on the page)

I don’t think my fingers could learn a tune a week. My ears would do it, but my fingers are slow learners… My ears know tons of tunes, but most won’t pop out of the whistle until I have worked on them a few months.

At first, I learned a tune in 3 stages, straight, bare bones, then re-learn with ornaments, and finally re-learn with variations. Now, once a tune starts clicking on the whistle, it occasionally comes out with ornaments and variations automatically. Of course, the ears knew the tune for years…

At the piping schools I have been to, the advice was that it is much better to have just a few tunes down very well than knowing lots of tunes but playing them sloppily.

Never learn a tune you are going to get tired of…

10

Not 12 years - no way. Maybe an analogy will help, from the perspective of acting. A lot of people approach acting by mastering the monologue. They work and work at their monologues, and it is their monologue that eventuially gets them a real part in a real play or movie. So then they get their lines for the play, and they practice and practice them till they know them cold, cold cold. Backwards and forwards. They feel confident and ready to be a star. Then comes the first readthrough, and ohhhhhh boy… what a different world. All of a sudden, there are all these different voices - and different minds pushing into the performance, each with its own baggage and ideas and intent. And all of a sudden, the play is becomeing something other than what you had made it out to be in your head.

While performing monologues has its challenges, it is not, by a long shot, the same as perfroming with an ensemble. To do “scenework”, you of course must know your lines absolutely down pat - so well that they can stream out unconsciously. But that is only half the battle. Learning to work with an enseble involves learning to let go of yourself. You need to expand your sense of self to include the group, so that the group becomes a part of you and you it. (Sorry this sounds so new-agey. It’s not like that at all.) It takes practice just like anything else, and you shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t come “naturally”. Why should it? In this modern world, technology has allowed us to become more shut off from others than ever, even those closest to us. We’re not as communal as we once were as a species. So give it some time.

Still, I think you should really try to find a live group you can play with. The immediacy of the other players, the eye contact, and the millions of other subconscius communications will help you pick up on the correct state of mind more readily. Even if you suck! In fact, it’s kind of fun to suck, because it takes the pressure off :slight_smile: There’s a certain freedom in sucking. And then, before you know it, you start to suck less. And then one day, you don’t suck.

So all I am thinking is, it’s a new skill, and whether it’s whistling, acting, acrobatics, or football, it’s the same dynamic. But boy is it worth learning…

I’ve had this experience in acting. I hope it helps!

Adam :party:

11

Adamm,

Wow! You nailed it right on the head. I’ve never thought of that analogy, but you’re right.

As I was reading you’re post I was recalling the Human Machine exersize from my acting classes. Everyone is being intergrated itno one amorphic machine. Each person being added to the machine is doing something different, sometimes augmenting someone else’s action, sometime adding a completely new element, but all of it creating a whole.

I find there is a point where playing as part of a group becomes 99% confidence in knowing the tune and knowing that if you make a mistake, it doesn’t throw you off for rest of the tune, “I meant to do that :blush: !”

My difficulty is taking the tune and being able to change my thinking for being note-for-note-unornamented as I strive to be with my fife and drum corp, to learing cuts and rolls. I never realized ther was formal way of diong these ornamentaitons until just recently. My task is now unlearn bad habits and start learning the proper way of ornamenting tunes.

Gary- You’re not alone out there/here! Good Luck!