First of all,it always astounds me how it’ll often take months before the positive effects of a lesson or workshop is realized. I attended the last Piper’s Gathering and a Bill Ochs workshop. I’ve known Bill for quite a while and he harped on, er, whistled on, a couple tunes that he used many years ago in classes and which I never took entirely to heart - Old Comrades and Nora Criona (single jigs or marches). Well, I started playing them and realized several things. First, I love the tunes and found them fairly easy to get into my inner brain (a scary place). Second, the more I played them, the better I got at playing other “more difficult” tunes, like The Templehouse Jig (Michael Coleman). I then realized that in these relatively simple tunes were all the elements that aided best in learning the music - especially ornamentation (cuts and taps and rolls) in both octaves, and a necessary attempt at establishing places to breathe (shortened quarter notes) throughout the tunes without breaking the lilting rhythms. See, Bill always knew that these are not only lovely tunes, but wonderful teaching/learning tunes.
So two points. First, how many of you actually practive ornaments like up and down scales or prefer to do it in the context of tunes or riffs from tunes, or both?
Second, people at times ask for good beginner tunes - well here you go Old Comrades and Nora Criona. When you’ve progressed a bit, try Brother Gildas’ Jig and The Legacy Jig. There’s a rousing rendition of the latter by Joannie Madden, Song of The Irish Whistle CD.
Philo
When I was beginning, I practiced cuts, taps, and rolls in scales up and down. I didn’t find those exercises the least bit helpful, and dull as all get-out to boot. I finally got them in the context of tunes. They first sunk in Banish Misfortune and Morrison’s jig, which to this day I still find a fun and instructive set to play. The first reels I was taught in a lesson were from the first Planxty album, Junior Crehan’s Favorite (The Knotted Cord)/Corney is Coming. They’re instructive reels: you need to provide constant movement and breathe in rhythm by dropping notes (musical breaths).
Practice the ornamentation exercises from Grey Larsen’s book. These make me do ornamentation things that I wouldn’t ordinarily do so that I can add them to my “bag of trix”. Things as (deceptively) simple as cutting when going from a note to a lower note. Or short rolls. It helps point out where you’re weak and you can get better.
Practice ornamentation on tunes. The purpose of this is two-fold: of course to learn how to do ornaments in the context of playing a tune, but also to help develop your style and to learn where to tastefully insert the ornaments.
So I like to practice over-ornamenting the tunes. I usually pick a type of ornament (long rolls, for example) and insert one everywhere it could possibly be inserted in a tune, which makes the tune frankly grotesque. (Of course, you still try to play it with good rhythm, tone, lift, all that good stuff.) But the point is that playing rolls is not all that easy for me, and if I can play a tune with way too many rolls in it, it’s easier to play a more tasteful version with less rolls. So when I play it for real, with hopefully decent style and taste (which I try to get by listening to lots of good players), I’m playing it with less ornamentation then I’m used to and it’s physically easier.
