Recently I had the great pleasure of taking a private whistle lesson with Bill Ochs in New York. Pleasure, that is, if you consider facing your dirtly little whistle secrets pleasurable. The short and long of it is: my rolls stink. (That was a pun, in case you didn’t notice.)
Bill is a great guy and terrific teacher and the experience couldn’t have been nicer. Now, several therapy sessions later, I am willing to share with you some of the great pointers he gave me. All this has my gloss on it and don’t go crying to Bill if they laugh at you in Doolin should you be reckless enough to take any of the following well-meaning and uninformed advice to heart.
The first and most important thing is to slow down. Surprise, surprise. Bill told me anecdotes of how the old teachers, like Martin Mulvilhil (iirc) who taught Eileen Ivers, would beat their pupils if they played fast. If you’re like me, you’ve heard this a million times and ignored it just as often. Why I mention it again is that it matters for learning rolls. Every place that I’ve seen discusses rolls as “three notes separated by a cut and a tap”. I used to treat that as interesting and extraneous historical background information and set out to learn The Roll as a single ornament. I didn’t think of it as three notes, but as one roll. That means that I was only able to produce something resemling a roll at a certain speed, flicking the propper fingers in the propper sequence.
And yes, it also said everywhere that you have to do it slowly before you bring your rolls up to speed. I tried. But I guess the three minutes of doing a roll slowly wasn’t quite enough. (Public confession is such a liberating experience.)
Thinking about Bill’s lessons and their obvious resemblance to Brother Steve’s Dah-Blah-Blah method, I realize now that I really have to play note-cut-note-tap-note. It is the only way that I ever will get rhythm to my rolls. I have slowed down, boy, have I slowed down. I mean, forget Feelin’ Groovy, I am practically counting eigth-notes on the jigs and making sure I hear each one on the beat with only blips between them. (This incidentally also addresses my problem of making the tap part sound too long, like a note stuck in there.)
So I am cleaning up my rolls. The B-roll is hard, but G and A are coming along. Playing the B-part of the Blarney Pilgrim, which has a B-roll quickly followed by a G-roll, it is a delight to notice the difference and to feel the rhythm on the G-roll. The whole ornament feels slower, more solid, more satisfying.
Here is another great piece of advice from Bill: If you are rolling over, relearning those pesky things, do it in a new tune. I miss-learned my rolls with the poor Kesh Jig and it is ten times harder for me now to play a correct A-roll in the Kesh than it is in Banish Misfortune or other tunes I am learning these days. (I am going back to playing the Kesh sans rolls, as a fix, btw.) So turn a fresh page, learn a new tune and go note-cut-note-tap-note. Sloooowly.
I have vowed to reform my evil ways. Already I have glimpsed the light. I have started to play tunes in which rolls drive the rhythm rather than tear little holes in the rhythm. As a further remedial measure I have decided to work on my taps (grace notes below the note), something I never did much because I was happy to slur-tongue-tongue on the typical jig patterns like GEE BEE | GEE etc. Now I am learning Scatter the Mud and I am tapping away, never once tonguing. (Never use a tap on the beat. A note that’s on the beat should be cut.)
The great thing about the lesson with Bill was that although what I report here is all technical, it was really about the music. It was about Irish Traditional Music, and we spent a long time talking about what is good to listen to (if there is interest, I’ll repeat some of his recommendations here). He stressed the importance of going back to older, purer stuff. (Thanks, Peter L, for helping me along that road!)
Bill also stressed the importance of lilting/singing the tunes. You will not go much wrong if you try to play the tune on the whistle as you would lilt it. And, incidentally, it will slow you down to a healthy satisfying pace. This was great to hear for me, because I like to sing/lilt tunes I learn (in private).
I guess reading this must be a bit like listening to someone telling you that taking a cold shower every morning is great and actually quite enjoyable once you get used to it. But I can begin to feel the pay-off. It’s something of a struggle, yet I am sure it beats learning the fiddle. And I am remembering what Bill Ochs also told me: Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. So I’d rather do it right, and slowly. Welcome to the wonderful world of Irish Traditional cold showers.
/bloomfield
[ This Message was edited by: Bloomfield on 2002-04-10 17:34 ]
