Bill,
thanks for your post & clarification! I certainly didn’t mean it literally either. Sorry if I put words into your mouth carelessly. I just wanted to pass on the fact that many of the old teachers felt strongly about playing slowly in the beginning.
Dear Bill,
First of all, welcome to the C&F forums!
You have no doubt heard what I am about to write countless times, but your Clarke Tin Whistle text with accompaning audio recording is a wonderful tool. It must give you great satisfaction to know that you have enabled many people to experience the pleasure of learning how to use a musical instrument.
I’d also like to commend you on your writing style as it appears to relect your method of learning tinwhistle by utilizing an approach that is thoughtful and paced.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks to all of your help, my work on rolls is comin’ along quite nicely and I am more attuned to hearing them on recordings.
For what its worth, I have one suggestion that works for me. If your strike (the lower note) is sounding too prominent and distinct , try increasing air pressure just a touch more than previous amount on tip.For some reason it shortens the ornament note and gives you
that rolling bubbly sound that Joanie Madden has on her rolls. Its pretty dang cool.
As for speed, I think reels sound great slow. I think the only problem is that you might lost the overall sense of destination of big phrasing. Perhaps others of you have had the experience of playing a piece, then hearing a record and discovering that those artists are emphasizing different things; usually its because at the higher speeds, certain things stand out.
Its inevitable for younger players to want to go fast as well as impatient older ones. We are so influenced too by the recordings of larger groups. I am always aware that the addition of harmony instruments is recent in this music, and I think they have swayed and changed it and one consequence has been more speed and less-flexible tempos.
Who doesn;t want to share the excitement of Altan or Solas? So much energy but you can destroy the process of learning motor skills muscle training trying to get there. I learned from bitter experience on classical guitar these lessons. Speed is big there too!
Another thing that I learned (through a friend) from the Romeros. Slow down the metronome, play it ten times perfect, turn up the metronome a notch, play it ten times perfect and so on. If you mess up, start the count over. These guys have made their name on speed and technique. They actually practice scales together every morning when they’re all in town, or at least used to. Family support in a big way.
I am only recommending metronomes for passage work. They have an insidious effect on whole pieces. I’ll get flamed if I don;t say it.
And MY corollary to that is: It takes 100 times longer to EXTRACT an error than it does to implant it. So be really careful during those ten times. No slackin.’
Sounds unromantic or whatever but if you want to do something at any speed, these are some of the ways to get there.
Best wishes to all.
Weekenders, good points. I should practice more with a metronome than I do. For some reason though, when I set a metronome on a slow beat for reel (in cut time), I get really confused and can’t even seem to make out the beat. Doesn’t happen if I tap my foot at the same slow beat without the metronome. The problem goes away when I set the metronome to 4/4 time, but I don’t really like practicing reels that way because I am looking for the cut-time feel.
The “ten-times perfect” rule sounds like good advice to me, and I’ll try to be that patient. One strange thing though that I have noticed if I play something really slowly until I’ve got it down pat, and then bring it up in tempo, I encounter problems slowing back down. Happened to me on the Blarney Pilgrim recently. After bringing up the speed, I was losing the rhytm on the rolls and crans when slowing back down again. Odd. I want to be able to play well at whatever speed I please…
Bloomfield, I hadn’t much considered going backwards but if that’s happening, then Houston, we have a problem.
My idea when I wrote it would be to practice a single bar with |roll eighth note, four eighth notes| . That kind of small section, which happens a lot in reels.
I forgot to mention in last post but an almost magical thing happens from these practices. Sometimes when you have drilled in a technique at a slow speed, the fast thing happens almost inexplicably. The best example, once again from guitar playing is the rasqueado, the hand-roll that flamenco guys use. The way to achieve it is to stroke your fingers in a 5 notes to a beat pattern (pinky-anular-middle-pointer-pointer all down except up with the last pointer), super slowly and deliberately. At some point, your hand is suddenly doing this continuous wonderful thing. There is simply no other way to get it to happen. You can pound away all day (and I did for years) and never get the smooth roll.
I think this might be true for some tinwhistle effects as well [he said, trying desparately to deviate back on topic at Chiff & Fipple]. It’s workin for me with rolls. In some ways, its more of a challenge to roll slowly once you have attained a quicker one. You have to get the oscillation just right cause now you know how to do it without having to think out the dahblahblah.
I’m confusing myself, but I think I’m right!
On 2002-04-18 15:05, The Weekenders wrote:
…
I’m confusing myself, but I think I’m right!
Well, I must admit that what you write about flamenco guitar is clearer than what you write about rolls. 
[running & ducking]
My advice is to go back and read Brother Steve’s page (or Bill Ochs’ tutor on rolls) over and over. Practice for a week, re-read. I am doing it now and I am seeing and learning stuff every time.
/bloomfield
[ This Message was edited by: Bloomfield on 2002-04-18 15:48 ]
I know what I mean, honest!
Seriously, you get to a point where you have internalized something and the device that got you there is more distant and seemingly unnecessary especially if the device wasn’t that great a personal fit to begin with.
I have learned that some devices work well with some people but others less so and some, not at all. DahBlaBla, despite being pretty darn effective, might not suit some people. It only sorts of works for me. I know that;s true not because it didn’t help (it did a lot Bsteve) but because I find myself looking for a different way to characterize it to make it “mine.” . It could be as simple as a language difference. i hear it more breathy and round somehow. Its like the use of the consonant throws me just a bit. It’s pretty personal.
Musicians are so attuned to sound that they can hear the tiniest consonant inflectional differences among people. That’s why we’re often good mimics of accents. The same talent applies in the way we characterize things internally I think.
I think you hinted at this in the first post of this thread (trying to distinquish notes amongst the metaphor). Music technique teachers who are devoted to their students are always looking for some way to make it work. I have been a Lil League coach for the last three years. When working with the little guys, the 6 year-olds, you can’t believe how many ways I have tried to get a kid to throw correctly. Every analogy, trick I could muster to help trigger muscle skill development in a quick, effective way. Not far off from music technique at all.
Cheers.
Has eveybody gone mad! Since when did whistle music become somthing taught by the vienna school of classical music! Most of these tunes, Irish,Scotttish, English, French etc were ‘written’ by people who could not write, poorly educated, diseased, poor. They were not written for precise recital but to put a bit of pleasure back into some of there loved ones lives. No tune, be it the simple Kesh or some other made up toon need be played twice the same but as long as it puts a smile on the face or gets the feet tappin’ what the hey. Come on down folk, its the penny whistle were talking about here, not the London Phil!!!
Its those awful Americans!!!They jack up everything.You ought to hear our bluegrass guys wailing away. Some of em sound like machines! They seem folksy but there a technical side to that too. Funny thing is, their tradition traces right back to Ulster…
Aw, we’re just talking about a technique and isolating it. My guess is that ever since people started having things like All-Ireland whistlers and making records the ante gets raised and people look for ways to do it better. I happen to be a middle-age guy trying hard to get good at something that people who I admire have done since they were kids and I’m using the tools I learned elsewhere and trying to share them with others. Sorry if its wreckin’ it for ya! Avoid my posts. With enough flames like yours, I’ll just lurk and shutup, I don’t mind (comments, negative or positive, welcome). I have learned a great deal in a very short time and had there been such forums when I was younger, I would be a better musician today because of them. Others in the Forum talk technique, I joined in.
You of all people Billymac ought to know about folk getting technical. Look at Scottish Pipe Band drummers. I have never heard anything so precise as the snare drumming they do. They are living proof that white people have rhythm, something which is often contested here in the States. We have the Caledonian games annually (for the past 150 yrs) in Pleasanton and I go to the finals. The music simultaneously stirs my heart but also represents a ton of technique.The snares sound like rifleshot and it goes on and on all day in 100 degree heat.The best groups put me in kind of a mental spot where time slows down, hair stands on end and strong emotions are stirred..They are standing on TOP of technique and achieving musical magic with a bunch of bagpipes and drums, playing simple 10 note range folksongs. So you can have both is my point. Listening to some of the best whistlers reminds me that this humble instrument can go that way too.
When I read and contribute to this Forum, I am well aware that this is a new direction that the whistle has gone. $300 whistles? Books, records, printed music? Can’t get much farther from the bog, I’m afraid. The one that kills me is chiff. Am I the only person that thinks “chiff” is the result of a $10 Generation because nobody ever bothered to make a whistle as good as a silver flute? And it is codified and built into fancy-pants whistles? We are so attracted by what came before that it is part of the sound of the whole style!!!
When I listen on record to decidedly non-fancy old fellas in some pub over in Laban country, the damn rolls are close to perfect from arthritic fingers! At some point in time, somebody made great effort to get it right.
Its all in good fun Billymac. Sorry to have offended you with the purple prose! Thanks for perspective. It did get pretty fancy! We all want to be true to ourselves.I am laughing at my wordy tendencies and your reaction and hope you can too.
[ This Message was edited by: The Weekenders on 2002-04-19 01:46 ]
Sorry I don’t have much to add to this thread except thanks for all the great advice! Bro. Steve’s website has been really instructional(and I’m waiting for the crans section still; any idea when that might get put on?) Dah-blah-blah method makes rolls understandable as long as you take it slow.
I liked the comment about being able to hear each note;same as my GHB teacher says for doublings and throws on the pipes; you must be able to hear EVERY note, even though for just a millisecond. (Don’t know about the rest of you, but when I hear the term GHB, I don’t think of drugs!! Or at least, I didn’t use to)
The comment about practise makes permanent (but not necessarily perfect)is also a good one to keep in mind! Anytime one of the old hands learns something new and lets us new people know about it helps a lot! Thanks again!
My humble opinion: Technique has its place, but it’s a means, not an end. Technique is learned in order the better and more effectively to convey meaning and emotion ( hopefully something other than revulsion 
)to others.
It is only necessary to glance at the reams of bad poetry written by adolescents to realize that unskilled and undisciplined emotion equals disaster. Someone once wrote that “truth is in the nuances.” That being true, the same can be said for beauty. The learning of technique is the learning of nuance.
Lest anyone fuss too much, I wrote some of that bad poetry myself.
I made the mistake of trying to write a poem to my then wife and she had the gall to let other people see it.
I know I have absolutely no talent in poetry and boy, was I embarrassed.
Thanks for the post, Bloom.
You mentioned that your tap tends to go to long. With me it’s the cut. I always hear Daaaaa Baa Daaaaa Blaaaahh when I play it. Almost like four notes.
Someday, someday.
Atta thread! THA[blip]a[blop]anks!
I am working with our percussionist with the whistle and I could hear his pats the last time.
It could be that your finger lifting muscles are too weak. Here is what an old GHB player advised me to do, and I think it worked.
I told him to make a dowel about whistle length, put 3 screws in it, one above the top hand, one below the bottom hand and one between the hands. Stretch some rubber bands across, slip the fingers under the rubber bands and excersize the finger lifting muscles. Increase the number of rubber bands as your strength improves.
An excersize I give him is to “roll up and down the scale”. That will force you to drop idea of the the “4th note” of the roll if you have that problem. Of course, I have him to start with the crann on the bell note, so he will eventually get the rhythm of the roll/crann for all the notes.
How many of you can do the C natural roll??? That one and the B rolls are the hardest to master, I think.
HMM… You should recommend caution on the power of such contraptions:
wasn’t it about the way R. Schumann ruined his career as a concert pianist, after he added one too much weight to his “fingers exerciser”?
Ok-he was reportedly batty, but we have our share around…
In definite agreement, here. What’s needed is to develop the fast-twitch muscle responses; light resistance should do. Otherwise, I think it could be overdone; the rest -and most important- is practise.
Perhaps I should have stated that I am not a believer in the “no pain, no gain” school. I suggest lots of reps with lighter rubber bands (I ended up with 3 rather thin long bands) until the fingers are tired, not painful.
I found about halfway through a 30 minute TV show (or, even better, excersize during the commercials of a one hour show) did the job for me.
Everything to excess (except for moderation)!
Amen, Bloomie! Thank God, it’s not just me. Bill is, besides an extraordinary teacher, also a wonderful human being. He exudes the music and its context from every pore and lavishes on his students all that will help to get there. He is particularly kind. By example, after botching my way through a tune at a pace way beyond my capacity, he would respond thusly: “Hmmm (hand gently stroking chin); an interesting interpretation, nice feeling and rhythm. Perhaps we could try again in some more recognizable form?”
I’ve changed my whole approach because of Bill. Where I used to play as many tunes as I could for as long and as fast as I could each night (thereby practicing long and wrong, as it were, and breaking one of Bill’s commandments), I now play a few tunes slowly and repeatedly. It’s amazing what happens and what you can hear as you play and how the muscle messages actually start to get delivered to the brain (or vice versa)so that muscle memory starts to really impact the phrasing and ornamentation. Before, it was as though I felt I had to play everything every night so as not to “lose” a tune. But if you give yourself half a chance and follow Bill’s instruction, you will not lose tunes because you will begin to develop an ear whereby you know enough when you went off and are able to get back on track yourself.
Slowing up, lilting tunes, and listening to as much of the music as you can is all important. I too experienced not being able to correct tunes that I had made permanent through practice. My problem area has been never trying to learn by ear; although Bill even there has made me see that I do have something of an “ear” I just don’t work at using and honing it. I amazed myself by getting down by ear all of the notes on the first tune I tried on Bill’s ear training CD in about a half hour over two days. I have to get myself to the point where this becomes as rewarding as practicing easily with known tunes so perhaps someday I can return to a group that learns in good part by ear.
Thanks for the reenforcement Bloomie.
Regards,
PhilO
Phil, the original post in this thread was written some time ago, and I think I’ve a come a little way since then; although I don’t think I’ll ever get to where my rolls don’t need work. You are right about Bill, of course, and I am now lucky enough to be taking regular lessons with him. It’s amazing to just sit and watch him… uplifting & humbling all at once. And he still always telling me to slow it down. 