I am a beginner and I just started to try to play some slow airs where virtually all the notes in a phrase are slurred together. I am find slurring from the low to high octave a bear, like B to D, one finger to six up three half steps in tone. I can easily do that when tonguing but if I slur it, I get an aweful squawk more often than not. I’m trying to make sure the five finger come down exactly at the same time and I’m sure practice will help. But I’m wondering if the anytehcnique tips that would make it easier, or maybe I just shouldn’t try to slur that.
Honestly, I’m just a dilletante-hack on whistles, but I don’t see how a B-to-high-D can be slurred.
On the other hand, I’ve had some luck with whole-octave slurs. There was one tune I was playing with a group and the tune called for a very pronounced retard right where the whistle went from A2-to-A1. I found that with very tight breath control, the transition could be smooth as silk.
This might not be what your looking for but if you could master rolling/sliding (I don’t mean ‘roll’ ornaments) your fingers off notes for a smooth transition, you could just do that quickly with one finger after another until you fully transition to the note you want.
The issue you may have with trying to breath transition slowly is that you may notice, and some whistles do it more than others, that as you blow harder before it breaks it can have an in between where you hear some of both octave, right before it breaks, which usually isnt the ideal sound.
I don’t do a lot of slow airs so I’m not sure what the ideal solution is.
Of course it can; you just need the right coordination of finger movement and slight breath pressure increase, which becomes second nature with time. I’d also normally do it XOOOOO to OXXXXX rather than XOOOOO to XXXXXX, but both work fine.
I was thinking of trying that. I normally use XXXXXX for both octaves out of force of habit but I figured I could try OXXXXX as it’s more likely not to slide between octaves.
Just checked, and A or B to high D and back is still definitely quite doable for me despite years of not playing–but that was at the cost of lots of practice years ago to eliminate that disagreeable squawk you’re encountering. I also find the OXXXXX fingering for high D best for this situation.
When experimenting just now, I actually found slurring A to high E and back a bit more challenging, breath-control-wise. But like many seemingly impossible things, all this is just a matter of patience and practice.
What I’m finding hard to bring back is slurring from anywhere in the upper octave to the bottom three notes of the lower. An interesting exercise in breath control there for sure.
Re-reading your question, maybe what I wrote didn’t quite address your needs, so I’m going to try to do better here.
Keep in mind that there are two issues with this kind of slur: the fingering, and the breath. In this case, the fingering problem might seem to be the insurmountable issue, and indeed, in this particular case precision in fingering is both difficult and vital to practice. But don’t neglect to pay attention to breath control here as well, because it’s likely to be more of a factor than you realize. To work on that part, you might try working on slurring A to high E and back as well, and note what that requires of you breath-wise, absent the finger gymnastics of B to high D.
It might comfort you to know that even people with plenty of previous wind instrument experience, say on recorder or classical flute, find the preponderance of slurring in Irish whistle playing to be a challenge to execute cleanly (tonguing covers a multitude of fingering sins!). Meanwhile almost all wind instrument beginners generally underestimate the importance of breath control on the whistle, being overwhelmed by the challenge of getting one’s fingers in the right place at the right time lest nasty squawks emerge.
So take heart: in this case, you’re facing two very real challenges at once, and you’re not the first to have found it difficult.
Also: this is the kind of case where using traditional classical exercises like arpeggios for warmups or semi-mindless noodling pays off. A G major arpeggio will include this particular challenge. And while others might disagree, I myself find that when learning tunes, I frequently run across fragments of arpeggios (more often downward than upward) (and yes, scale runs too! as often modal, gapped, or pentatonic as standard classical though). So anyway, having those particular finger/breath skills already ingrained frequently speeds my learning.
I have beginners go through some exercises, which they are to play completely legato (that is, on a completely uninterrupted airstream).
I think Job One on any instrument is being able to get around on the instrument, including being able to go from any note to any note, being able to play notes in any combination.
One exercise is:
D E D F# D G D A D B D c D d D e D f# D g D a D b D
(Writing the notes according to ABC notation.)
It’s really a tone-building flute exercise but it’s valuable on whistle too, building breath control and facility as well as tone.
As pointed out above, there’s the issue of breath control and the issue of clean fingering.
That’s another reason I have beginners play all the exercises legato: beginners can be clever at using tonguing to hide sloppy fingering. Legato reveals exactly how cleanly you finger each note change.