Howdy,
I’ve been playing for about 6 months and so far loath to sit and do finger exercises. I’ve mainly been learning tunes so I can finally sit in on slow sessions. Now that my fingers are starting to do some of their own thing, aside from lessons, what types of warm up and practice do you all do ( breath and finger)? And how the heck does one start rolls and cranns without so much…well, difficulty. :roll:
Thank you kindly
Jenn
I don’t do a lot of warmup…mainly I play some runs to get the fingers limber, and then play several tunes that I know well. I usually start with airs and work up to faster tunes as my hands warm up. If I have a new tune I’m working on, I’ll work in bits of that between bits of tunes I already know.
I also take time to warm up my whistles, since I’m usually either playing an Eflsong (copper) or Busman (wood).
Redwolf
What I do for warmup may not apply to session players because I perform solo. I find it extremely helpful to play the first few notes of each tune, on each whistle (if there is more than one). Sometimes I find a place to do this away from the crowd. Sometimes I will do the air whistle technique, blowing over instead of into the fipple so there is a soft, barely audible sound.
Get Bill Ochs’ The Clarke Tinwhistle and go through the ornament section page by page, exercise by exercise, following along with the CD. Bill teaches ornaments in a terrific, gradual way and plays them slowly so you can really hear what’s going on. Expect this to take a bit of time to gradually sink into your brain and fingers.
I’m probably the only one you’ll find, but I do a few minutes of exercises nearly every day. A few 5 note scales, a few more 3 note scales, D A and G broken chords, and this thing that reminds me of a seesaw:
D F# E G F# A G B A Cnat B d Cnat e d f# e g f# a g b and then the same pattern back down through the two scales. Then I do the whole thing as triplets: DEF# EF#G F#GA…and back down.
If I’m feeling particlarly needy, I do fifteen minutes of this sort of thing.
Unlike Tyghress, I don’t do exercises every day but I do them occasionally. I practice exercises I learnt for saxophone and guitar mainy but they are standard for any instrument. I play scales and arpeggios. I play exercises like the one Tyghress outlined. Also I play scales in a jumpy way: up two steps down one or down two steps up one. This way you get practice at all the interval jumps you’ll play regularly in tunes. I do this on minor as well as major scales and chords, ie, in all the keys you can play with reasonable ease on a whistle. The reason I don’t make this a regular part of my practice regimen is first that it is boring but mainly becasue you don’t actually have to learn 11 rather different feeling patterns as you do on a fully chromatic instrument so it isn’t as central to learning as it would be on, say, saxophone.
For rolls and crans any systematic approach to ornamentation should work although you might want to change if you find you aren’t getting it after practice or it’s still sounding wrong after lots of practice. I used Cathal McConnell’s tutorial. The approach is to not even think of trying a roll or cran until you can play a cut and a tap properly; ie, so fast that the sound you get is a blip with just a hint of pitch rather than a clearly articulated note. Cuts aren’t particularly hard; they just need work. Taps are a bit harder. McConnell recommends trilling between the tapped note and the note you are using to ornament, F# if you are tapping G. At first you’ll get an unsteady trill, then a steady one. Keep speeding up now until you get the blip sound you are looking for. Now occasionally intersperse cuts with the A finger as you trill and relax … you’re now playing G rolls, or at least the elements. Then practice until you are getting the rhythm right.