I’ve now been playing for 3 months and I’ve made a recording of Sean Reid’s Favourite. No frills, no ornamentation (yet). Given all the expertise and experience of people on C&F (and with some trepidation on my part 
) I’d like to get some critical analysis and pointers for progress.
Can anyone recommend the best place to post my mp3 so it’s available for people to have a listen?
Clips & Snips Flute Page.
Thanks for that Sillydill - I’ll get it sorted this evening and post a link back here when it’s up on the site.
I submitted a tune about 10 days ago, but nothing seems to be happening on the site - last updated March 11?
Anybody know wassup?
Sorry about that - must have happened just as I was writing my last post 
I’d be delighted if anyone could be bothered to have a listen (I know it ain’t pretty!) and offer constructive criticism.
Thanks
G
For the stage you’re at, and given the approach you’re taking, I’d say the first thing to work on is breathing more “cleanly.” Your rhythm is pretty good most of the time, which is rare IMO but later on you get tripped up by breaths that take too long or are in awkward places.
Normally when one breathes when playing irish flute, they replace one note with a breath. You sometimes inhale for the length of two notes, which is OK if you like it (although I suspect it’s just a placeholder for you, for ornamentation or variation) because you come back in at the right time. However, there are times later on in the clip where you lose the rhythm because you haven’t finished inhaling in time to attack the next note at the right time.
I hope this helps. Recording yourself and listening critically is a very useful learning tool, and the fact that at 3 months your rhythm is not an absolute mess leads me to expect you’ll do well. We’ve all encountered people who have played for many years without sorting that out…
clarification… I don’t mean rhythm in the sense of making it sound like an irish reel, I mean in the overall evenness of the timing and tempo.
Are you playing this from sheet music? The reason I ask is because sheet music often puts reels in 4/4 time, which is incorrect. Reels are in cut time, which means you have two downbeats per measure, not four. When you count in four, it makes the reel very choppy, and it should flow. Your tone and rendering of the tune are fine, but the rhythm of the opening phrase is being played as
1----2------3---------4
bop/ba da/bop bop/bop
instead of
1----------2
bop bada/bopbopbop
The first rhythm, no matter how quickly played, will never sound Irish because the rhythm is wrong. What makes a reel sound like a reel is not the speed, but the flow. Sing the first example out loud while tapping your foot at a slow pace and gradually get faster and you will find that the choppyness never goes away. Now try the second example, and you will find that even at a relatively slow tempo, the phrase flows and sound like a reel.
Let me know what you think.
Cheers.
Thanks monkey587 and Cubitt. I’ve learned this by ear from an internet tutorial by ‘Brian The Flute’ - http://www.kaled.org.uk/flutelesson/Welcome.html (thanks Brian!) but I was tapping it out just now and I see what you mean. I’ll have a go tonight at correcting that.
Also good point about the breathing - I think I really need to work on tightening the embouchure and improving breath control. At the moment I kind of go through the tune pretty much lurching from breath to breath and having to gasp great lungfulls when I get the chance (hence the reason why some of the breaths are longer than they should be). I was with a friend of mine who plays flute the other day and he was showing me how long it’s possible to hold a note for - seemed like alchemy to me and utterly unattainable - he went on for ages! 
Any tips on how to improve that aspect of my playing would be very welcome, as I’m struggling for a way forward. My friend wasn’t able to help much other than to say that I should work on my breath control. by watching our ‘vapour trails’ on the blow hole I was also able to see that he creates a vapour wedge on the far side of the hole which is about 3mm wide, whereas mine covers the whole hole (about 8 mm?). Try as I might though I can’t get mine to go any smaller just yet.
Thanks for the help, G
I think the playing is remarkably good for only four months! Play on. You’ve got great rhythm and your tone is good as well. More power to you.
And please keep posting. I can’t wait to hear how well you play when you have some ornamentation down, which will present more breathing problems that, having been overcome, will make you a much better player. Good for you for posting.
I see you have posted on the Session site as well. If my memory serves me correctly, you played fiddle and then switched to flute due to strains??
If so, I suspect that getting the breathing to work better requires a little mind switch in that on the fiddle, one can obviously play notes continuously whereas on a wind instrument one has to work out places to drop notes and create breathing spaces. One can either look on this as a ‘bad thing’ or a ‘good thing’. I prefer the latter as this requirement forces one to vary the phrasing of the tune and when you get used to a tune, you can vary your breathing spots to vary the phrasing and give variety, emphasis the rhythm etc. If one plays the fiddle or box or whatever, there isn’t quite the same incentive, nay requirement. I started off playing box and still do a bit but I definitely found since taking up whistle and flute that I add a lot more variety to my phrasing now. Funnily when I pick up the box, it works backwards as well - perhaps there is benefit in switching backwards and forwards between different instruments and learning from each other.
Thanks for the great advice all - yes that’s correct - I have given up fiddle after quite a few years (though I hope to return to it in a year or two). And you’re right about the kind of innate desire to fire on with the tune. I can see that phrasing is going to take quite a bit of work.
Thanks again - hope I didn’t break protocol by posting here and The Session. 
Rhod
Now for some serious practice.