I sent out 10 books last month of this exercise book. I ask that someone who received it please let me and/or the board know if it was worth it to you or not. If it is well received I’ll get a stock of them and continue to offer to sell them at cost + shipping.
I personally have found that doing these exercises religiously has improved my playing, but I also have the benefit of someone guiding me through and tutoring.
Yes, please do post reviews. I’m very interested.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Well, I didn’t get it from you, Ty, but I’ve been using that book for (I think) 9 months now, and it has definitely helped improve my playing. More than anything else, it has given my a framework for my practice sessions. I’m not talking about noodling around playing tunes off the top of my head, or learning new tunes, but about hard core practice to improve basic skills like breath control and finger dexterity.
If you’re looking for a book to put you on the fast track to IrTrad nirvana, this isn’t it. Though I don’t think there is a book for that, anyway. In fact, this book will do nothing to make your playing more Irish. There are no instructions or exercises for ornamentation in it. There are no tunes in it. There is no discusssion of rhythm as it pertains to IrTrad in this book.
I think a lot of people rush into learning ornamentation, anyway. There is a lot to be said for developing tone, breath control and finger dexterity and mastering the various scales and arpeggios before launching into a study of ornamentation. This book will help you with all of that. In fact, if you use this book, within a few months you will be light years ahead of your peers who rely on playing tunes to develop in those areas.
One of the most valuable things that has happened to me as a result of using this book is that my sight reading skills have improved. Not everyone thinks of this as an important skill, but since I play music in other genres and play other instruments, I do value this skill.
Many, if not all, of the strengths this book will build for you will translate to other wind instruments. So although it was written with fife players in mind, flute, whistle, pipe, oboe, clarinet, etc. players would benefit from its use.
In short, I think this book is an excellent tool for the advanced beginner to advanced student. For those trying to learn IrTrad, I would recommend starting with the Bill Ochs book, and add this book once you’ve mastered the fingering charts. The Ochs book will explain the ornaments, and give you some IrTrad tunes to work with. A healthy diet of recordings of the flute geezers, along with these two books, will give you a great foundation.
One final thing, from my perspective as a publishing and printing professional: this book is cheap ($10) and was produced accordingly. So don’t expect glossy paper, fancy artwork, or high quality printing. It’s a very workmanlike product, with only black ink (I suspect it was photocopied and not printed offset) and GBC (plastic comb) binding. Personally, I wish more music books were bound that way because they sit flat better.
I received the book about a month ago from Tyghress and while I haven’t used it much yet, I can give a little feedback.
This is a standard drill book, which is exactly what I was expecting when I ordered it. Since it’s written for fife, most of the exercises are playable on whistle, although a few do dip down to middle C. This book is written in standard musical notation and does not include fingerings (except for a fife chart at the beginning of the book), so one needs to be familiar with written music, at least in a rudimentary way, to use the book. I suppose one could put ABC below the notes, finger diagrams, etc. if necessary.
The exercises are designed with specific goals in mind: Tone Quality, Endurance, Finger Coordination. It also has a description of what standard you are seeking to achieve for a given exercise type. I would say working through these exercises would be very valuable for specific problems such as maintaining tempo (when used with a metronome), increasing speed while maintaining tempo, working on octave transitions and difficult note transitions, etc. So if you have trouble jumping from high E to high B, or from low A to high A, for example, there’s an exercise for you in here. It should also help to solve squeaking problems because believe me, you will have to work not to squeak on some of the exercises (the exercise “Maniacal High B’s” comes to mind…). Rolls, cuts, etc. are not covered at all, mostly standard finger exercises. You will discover hidden mental blocks if you work through the exercises, though, and this is one of the most valuable reasons for doing drills; they can reveal why you might be stumbling over a particular section of a tune you are working on. This book is very similar to drill books written for other instruments, although it doesn’t have any tunes which incorporate the drills, which I have always thought was a nice touch. Since the book is only about 22 pages long, there is room for expansion in that area, I would say.
I would say that this book would most benefit beginning and intermediate players. An advanced player might also benefit from some exercises if he/she had a specific problem, but I would expect that such a person probably would also know how to correct most problems already without a drill book (but I could be wrong). My conclusion is that, regardless of whether one “believes in” classical training, learning tunes by ear, etc., a player can improve his/her technique by using this book. Even the best jazz musicians know how to rip through arpeggios.
Robin
I’m interested, where can you get one?
Bill
Well, if Ty doesn’t have one to send you, you could get one here:
http://companyoffifeanddrum.org/store.html
It’s a reputable source, and a non-profit org. Not only have I done business with them, but I’m also a member.
tyghress -
i don’t know if i thanked you for the book. if not, thanks!
i am embarraseed that my review cannot be very profound. it’s an excellent book of exercises, but to review, you have to exercise – and that i haven’t.
i am now dabbling in irish flute and mandolin in addition to whistle - and have found that the exercises can be applied universally. tone, scales, rhythm, arpeggios, building speed, without losing song – what more can one ask for, except discipline?
cheers!
I’ve found the book helpful, especially for improving
my tone. But I confess I’m seduced by tunes.
And it seems to me that every tune is an
arpeggio or a drill which can be played slowly,
and treated like the drills in the book. And I’d
like to think that this
accomplishes some the same things.
But maybe that’s rationalization… What
do you all think?
I don’t do drills, at least not beyond practising rolls. I do everything by working on snatches of tunes, hopefully musical phrases. Don’t know if that is right or not, but I try to stay away from drills and etudes. In a former life that’s how I learned an instrument, and I never understood the music (my fault for sure, but there you have it).
Jim – maybe both is better than either/or. I’m interested in this book, too. I noticed when listening to L.E.M. in a workshop that his tone was immensely better and more controlled than that of even the experienced students.
I’ll wait a bit to see if tyghress has 'em before getting one elsewhere.
Tery
Tygh is in Ireland but should be back next week iirc.
But maybe that’s rationalization… What do you all think?
I have several volumes of studies for saxophone and for clarinet; some are straight arpeggios / scales / other patterns, and many are “melodies” which were concocted to incorporate some of these same patterns. Just running the patterns can be very helpful, but teachers have recognized for years that “tunes” are more likely to be practiced by some folks.
When I’m practicing, I’ll often create (or stumble upon) a pattern and run it enough times to make it part of my repertoire. A good compromise is to run scales / arpeggios as a “warm up” exercise, then procede to learning songs / tunes. This, of course, depends on how much time is available for practice.
In short, playing tunes at various speeds has much benefit, with the additional pleasures of playing melodic passages likely outweighing any relative lack of technical benefit.
Thanks. I do think the Bill Hart book is
very good, in fact. Just weakness of will
on my part. I’m slowly improving on
the flute, anyhow. We’re cutting a CD,
in fact, and I recorded ‘Endearing Young
Charms,’ yesterday. The technician added
‘ambience.’ So, that’s how to sound
like you can play!
This makes me speak up: I don’t think anything is gained when playing a musical instrument is done not for fun, but as an act of will-power. I’m not against drills, in fact, I make up my own, and there are days when my mind is just too full or too empty to handle the complexities of even a simple tune, so I only play patterns and scales over and over again.
I try to make them as musical as possible, and listen really hard to what I’m playing, to play slow and exact and train the fingers. When I rush through them, or force me to play them when I’m not in that patient empty-mind mood, I actually destroy the technique I’ve built up so far and they do more harm than good. I learn so much more and play so much better if I love what I’m playing.
But maybe it’s just me.
(Oh, and I don’t know the book at all. 
)