Teacher says to tongue every single note

Whistle
1

Hey everyone,

I’m a beginner, I started back in January and had a lot fun learning by myself, but recently I realized I had the hands backwards and so I decided to start over properly with a teacher this time. Where I live the closest one is 1h away, so I opted for paid online courses (pre-recorded and without feedback), from a teacher that clearly knows what he’s doing and plays beautifully.
In the curriculum he goes in details about things like rhythm and breathing, so I thought it would be good so that I don’t get bad habits.
However when I started, I was surprised by a few of his teachings :

  • You should only play with straight fingers, having the middle one bent makes you look like a beginner and isn’t as good for dexterity

  • You should play with the whistle a bit on the side / crooked, similarly having it too straight makes you look like a beginner

    And the weirdest one for me :

  • You should tongue every single note, it sounds cleaner and more energetic. He went as far as to say playing without tonguing sounds horrible and playing with gluttural stops is even worse.

    However when I started learning by myself I did look up things like tonguing, and the general advice seemed to be to not tongue too much, especially as a beginner, and to add it little by little as you got more comfortable. But I’ve never heard anyone say to tongue all the time, and apparently some old players even frowned on tonguing at all ?

    So now I’m a bit confused, and wondering if I should “trust the process” and learn his way of playing (which does sound really nice), and then branch out to other ways later, or if I should follow the general advice and ignore this instruction.
    My instinct is to listen to the teacher as he knows way more than me after all, but I started this paid class in order to not learn bad habits so I’m a bit worried.

    Any advice ?

2

Have a little pot of salt handy so that it’s ready to pinch. Try out whatever he suggests and be ready to reject it if it doesn’t seem to make a useful difference. Trust your own judgement.

I had music lessons as a child for three different instruments (violin, piano, trumpet), but none of them were useful beyond the first few lessons; I made more progress by breaking free of all that and just playing the music that I found inspiring instead of having endless horrid tunes imposed on me. Wherever there were difficulties, that’s when it would have been useful to be able to consult a teacher, but the vast bulk of it was a pointless expense. Actually, there was a fourth instrument before all of those (recorder) with free teaching from a friend’s mother where she taught her son along with me, and my sister along with his sister. That was much better as we just ripped through all the standard books at high speed, only putting more time into the better pieces, and we soon reached the point where we could tackle anything, while the instruction was minimal.

Go for what motivates you and you’ll find your own ways to improve.

3

I have not heard the finger thing. I don’t think anyone should care about “looking like a beginner,” and as far as I’m concerned the best whistle player out there is Mary Bergin, who bends her fingers to play, so that isn’t true. But to be honest, I play with straight fingers for that reason, I find it easier to be more dextrous, so I’d say take the advice unless it’s very uncomfortable for you.

The side thing is IMO bad advice. A lot of players do that to position the whistle a bit closer to one of their ears to hear. Apart from my personal thought that it looks a bit silly, I find it just kind of awkward to sit and play like that for a while. I’ll say again that very few of the players I’d admire do that, at least on a regular basis.

The tonguing advice is wrong, wrong, wrong. I cannot think of a single decent player who tongues every single note. To my ears, it would sound un-idiomatic to the point that I’d assume the person was a wayward recorder player. Maybe your teacher is just that, a recorder or other wind player who also plays tin whistle and is transporting their technique from one to the other. There are a variety of approaches to tonguing, with some players tonguing a lot and some very little. Again, I cannot think of anyone I’d want to emulate who tongues every note.

If the above advice was indeed given to you by this teacher as you’ve described it, I would highly recommend finding another teacher. There’s a chance that maybe he didn’t quite mean it the way you’ve described it, or that maybe some of the advice like the tonguing is an exercise and not necessarily meant to be done all the time. But as you’ve written it here, this person does not sound like they know what they’re talking about.

I know you might not want to name them for fear of backlash, but even posting an audio clip or something of their playing might tell a lot. Or, PM me a clip of their playing if you don’t feel comfortable posting it publicly. I think it would be good to get someone else’s ears on it to see if they’re actually a competent player, or just good enough to sound good to a beginner.

4

Thank you for the advice David and Bigsciota.

David : the tunes he is teaching are quite fun so no issue there, but I admit that tonguing every note does seem counter-intuitive to me. I’d love to get a live teacher at some point in the future, but yes this was meant to be a “first few lessons” thing where I’m sure I’ve got the basics down at least.

Bigsciota : Yes that’s exactly what I was thinking when looking at Mary Bergin playing, I don’t think she look like a beginner haha ? I agree that playing with straight fingers feels nice now that I’ve gotten used to it, but the focus on “not looking like a beginner” made me a bit surprised.
From what he says he learned irish and breton music on tin whistle since he was a kid, so I don’t think it came from learning the recorder. When he plays it sounds great to me but I don’t have the ear to really know what he’s tonguing, just what he said. I do think he uses soft tonguing and he advises to continue breathing out while tonguing so that the notes aren’t too separated.
Yes that’s exactly why I didn’t post the name, thank you I’ll PM you a few of his videos, I’d love to have the point of view of someone with more experience and a better ear.

5

The tonguing advice sounds odd, as Irish music’s a legato tradition. Also, it’d be a bit of a nightmare to have to tongue every note when playing fast reels or polkas.

There isn’t really a formal whistle technique in the way there is for some other instruments. There are useful pointers for beginners, but I’d be a tad suspicious about anyone who claims there’s a ‘right’ way to do it. People have opinions, sure, but it’s not a settled science.

On playing with the whistle to one side – I don’t usually play like that, but I occasionally find it useful to be able to. I’ve been in a few big sessions in noisy pubs where I couldn’t hear myself at all, but of course other people could. The only way to be sure I was in tune was to stick the whistle in one side of my mouth every now and again. Not something to worry about at this stage, though.

6

Assuming that this is someone who is actually a tin whistle teacher and not a recorder teacher that is extremely odd advice.

Are they doing it to help you work through some issue as a new player or are they advocating that that’s the way the instrument should be played?

I can understand the former, but if it’s the latter, perhaps find yourself another teacher.

7

I’ll second what people are saying above, none of those three points make any sense.

About “straight fingers”, myself (and probably most players) don’t consciously think about how they’re holding the various sizes of whistle from High Whistles (like Eb, D, and C) down through the Mezzo sizes (like A, G, and F) to the Low Whistles (Like E, D, and C) and finally the Bass Whistles (like Bb, A, and G) but adjust their finger posture to suit.

For me, with High D my fingers have a natural relaxed slight curve. Totally relax your hands and arms, dangling loosely at your sides, and take a look at your fingers: they’re not stiff and straight. That’s what you want, relaxed fingers. You’re still sealing the holes with the flats of you fingers’ end-joints.

However as the whistles get bigger the most relaxed finger posture is the so-called “piper’s grip” where the fingers do get flatter, but still not stiff. With Low Whistle piper’s grip you’re using the end-joint pad of your ring fingers but the middle-joint pad of your middle and index fingers.

You’ll note here how I’m unconsciously changing grip as I’m descending through the sizes (I receive no money from YouTube) Irish whistle demo high, mezzo, low, bass

8

About tonguing, you’re not going to sound much like a trad player if you tongue too much.

Listen (a lot) to Mary Bergin. Yes there’s plenty of tonguing but yet the underlying feel is a legato flow.

When I was teaching Irish flute and whistle workshops, and had private students, a common issue was people coming from Boehm flute or Recorder tonguing too much.

Part of it is the misleading way most Irish reels and jigs are notated. For mainstream sightreaders standard ITM sheet music is telling you to tongue every note.

To have the sheet music tell you to play with the smooth legato flow requires “ties” to be written connecting the notes. Put the ties in and voila the non-ITM sightreader will play the way ITM is supposed to sound.

But ITM sheet music nearly always leaves the ties out, so it’s up to the player to infer a legato flow.

At the beginning I think it’s best to not tongue at all, in order to get that “flow”.

A second reason to not tongue is that tonguing notes hides sloppy technique. If you play all the note-changes legato, all the transitions from note to note are heard, and sloppy fingering is revealed.

A good teacher will give pointers about where tonguing is usually done. Or, just do a ton of listening and playing, you’ll figure it all out soon enough.

1 Like
9

Then about playing the whistle to the side, who cares.

Yes I see that done occasionally, but it doesn’t matter. Why would a teacher even mention it?

10

Thanks for the help everyone !

Moof : yeah I do find it quite hard to tongue everything on the quicker tones, and interesting info about playing to the side ! He said it was because it looks better and it’s more comfortable for the right hand, but your reason makes sense. I do prefer playing straight on, so as you said I won’t worry about that for now.

Eskin : he’s a tin whistle teacher and only teaches that + low whistle, bagpipes, and folk guitar. He’s advocating that it’s the way it should be played, I think I would not have an issue if he was saying it’s how to play like he does (very energetically, “high impact” is what he calls it), but he said slurring sounds horrible which had me do a double take and reconsider everything. So I’m glad I asked everyone here before I relearned wrongly.

Pancelticpiper : Yes that’s what I did too, the main change he advocated for was to keep the middle finger straighter, you don’t close the hole with the end of the fingerpad but with the middle or joint, and I’ve definitely seen others play like that, but I’ve also seen many others play like you do and like I did naturally. I’ll definitely try my best not to be stiff.

I’d love to learn the low whistle with the piper’s grip, I’ve been looking into it because I love the sounds of low whistles. But I have tiiiiny hands with a particularly small little finger (it doesn’t even reach the flute at all if I cover the holes normally), so I’ll stick with smaller whistles for now and try to learn the piper’s grip later (or try to find a cheaper used carbony low whistle haha).
I’m already struggling a bit with the little finger-stabilizer thing because my middle finger doesn’t reach at all without skewing my right hand inwards, which hurts a bit and feels awkward. I’m experimenting with using the ring finger to stabilize, either below the holes and then sliding up, or with it on the D hole when I play C#. I read some low whistlers do that to stabilize and it doesn’t change the sound of the C# audibly, so hopefully I’m not learning another bad habit, but it does help with my tiny fingers.

About tonguing, I did send the videos to bigsciota who confirmed that he doesn’t sound very traditional though he doesn’t sound bad either, so that makes sense. I did start with not tonguing at all, so I guess I’ll go back to that for now and continue listening to great players, thanks !

11

Just a quick comment on the issue of tonguing. Mary Bergin has an excellent series of tutorials in which she works through many aspects of Irish whistle technique and explains how she approaches playing many tunes. She does make extensive use of tonguing, and other techniques, to provide the kind of rhythmic emphasis she wants. The tutorials include clear notation that shows where she tongues.

As others have pointed out, she does not tongue every note. But she does tongue a LOT of notes. Just skimming through the notated tunes, I’d say that she tongues between a third and half of all the notes. While this seems like a lot, it is still fundamentally different to tonguing every note, by default. If you do that, then you will have no ability to use tonguing for rhythmic emphasis, which will be devastating to the feel of the tune.

The whole point is to not treat all the notes equally. The key is to understand the underlying structure of the music and understand which notes should be emphasized for a particular phrasing and rhythm, and which ones should not. Once you understand this, then you can slowly and selectively introduce the rhythmic emphasis, using tonguing, in combination with other techniques, such as cuts, rolls, etc, to bring the tune to life and infuse it with the kind of lift that makes this music so nice to listen (and dance) to.

Unless you are technically very good, often “less is more”, in the sense that you can really clutter up a tune and mess up the rhythm if you try to cram in too many ornaments (of which tonguing is just one kind).

12

Blu didn’t want to “name and shame” here, but sent some videos. The teacher in question is certainly competent in the sense that they know the tunes, can play with decent rhythm and speed, and wouldn’t immediately stick out in the middle of a session.

But solo, there are quirks that wouldn’t really fit in with an “Irish” sound. My guess would be that they have a background in classical woodwinds, maybe recorder, and/or in non-Irish folk music. Funnily enough, they have many videos where they sound better than in their instructional clips, but they also don’t seem to be following their own advice about tonguing!

I’ve done a good bit of teaching of whistle myself and I would definitely want my students to listen to me, but it’s also good to have a bit of a critical ear. In this case, regardless of their playing, some of the instruction just didn’t make sense, at least not in an Irish context. Again, listening to good players can help anyone, beginner to advanced, hear when things might not quite be right. So good on you, Blu, for taking the less-than-helpful advice this teacher gave with a pinch of salt!

13

When I took lessons, my teacher did give me assignments like : “Tongue every note in this jig” and then “Don’t tongue any note in this jig”. Interesting to see the difference and finally get to the middle ground.

14

Totally, those types of exercise are good to teach students how to feel when to use a technique, you can tell tell tell someone how to do it but in my experience it only truly lands when they feel it for themselves

1 Like
15

Ah, the “finger stabiliser thing” or as I call it “anchor fingers”.

Yes there are trad players who use the lower-hand little finger, but just as many that don’t.

If you watch Mary Bergin (and many other trad players) you’ll see them use the lower-hand ring finger as an anchor finger while playing certain notes and/or certain passages.

Mary Bergin Tin Whistle

When I was starting out, pretty much all the players I was watching did that.

My original Irish flute & whistle mentor would leave various fingers on for various passages which sometimes gave cool percussive effects, but the main principle seemed to be “economy of motion” that is moving as few fingers as possible (especially in fast reel-playing) instead of feeling tied to an artificial fingering chart somebody cooked up.

After playing this way for many years it dawned on me that it more or less formed a coherent system, not that the players doing it were conscious of that.

I did a video demonstrating these various anchor fingerings and the sorts of passages where they allow far fewer fingers to be in motion.

(I receive no money from YouTube.)

Irish whistle alternate and anchor fingerings

16

Yes, I use that too – mainly out of necessity! I have to play with straight fingers (the middle joints are mostly fused), which means my little fingers don’t reach the whistle body.

Took me a couple of years to realise that I also lift my head when playing tunes with numerous C#s, as it means the whistle’s horizontal and I’m less likely to lose grip. My back brain seems to have figured that one out without the need to inform me.

1 Like
17

Thank you so much for the very in depth answers everyone !
Paddler : I’ll try to check out her tutorials when I have the money then, seems really interesting !
Bigsciota : Really thank you again for checking it out for me, he did say he learned breton music first as his whistle teacher said it would be easier than irish as a beginner.
Oh really for the tonguing ? To me the notes in some of his tunes didn’t seem that disconnected but I thought it might be because his tonguing was particularly soft, since he did say he tongues every note. Interesting.
BelgianWaffle and PMcGinsley : Yes that definitely makes sense as an exercise, I think I’m too much of a beginner to use tonguing well for now, but I will definitely try to work on it.
Pancelticpiper : oooh that’s super interesting, thanks for the video ! I did watch Mary Bergin’s video and I was wondering if she was just too fast and I wasn’t seeing her use her little finger, or maybe if she didn’t play any C# notes haha ! Ok good to know, for me economy of motion would definitely lead to using my ring finger, since using my little finger requires me to change the whole position/angle of my hand.

18

Oh yes Mary Bergin plays tons of C# notes, far more than I do, and clearly far more than, for example, Matt Molloy does.

Why is that? It’s because Mary Bergin peppers her playing with B/c#/d triplets regardless of whether a tune is in a key which nominally has c#, or nominally has c natural.

On the other hand Matt Molloy peppers his playing with B/c-natural/d triplets, oftentimes in tunes which the nominal key or scale calls for the note c#.

Beginners often imagine that ornaments must correspond to a tune’s nominal key. Actually ornaments can be thought of as stand-alone units, the specific notes of which are a result of the mechanics of executing the ornament.

3 Likes
19

About Mary Bergin using her little finger, I looked back at that video, the times when they’re showing closeups of her fingers.

Slowing the video down (there’s a slider allowing you to slow it down to .25) it can clearly be seen that Mary’s lower-hand little finger isn’t touching the whistle. Rather, it’s slightly curled and a bit lower than her other fingers.

She is often using the lower-hand ring-finger anchor. There are fairly long passages where she has the upper-hand index finger and lower-hand ring finger both parked

xoo|oox

which I call the “G shape” in my video.

I also spotted a point where she’s playing c# with ALL THREE lower-hand fingers down

ooo|xxx

which is something I do quite a bit. Depending on the melodic shape involved I might finger c#

ooo|xoo

ooo|xxo

ooo|xxx

etc.

Fingerings are byproducts of the melody. They don’t come from fingering charts.

Here’s an example from the reel The Ivy Leaf.

There’s a two-bar phrase (in ABC Notation)

|A2 ed c#dec# | BEEE GABd |

where I’m playing the notes

ed c#dec# | BEEE

xxx|xxo e

xxx|xxx d

ooo|xxx c#

xxx|xxx d

xxx|xxo e

ooo|xxo c#

xoo|xxo B

xxx|xxo EEE

because it keeps the whistle stable and there’s much less finger motion.

Likewise I play the following notes

GABd

xxx|oox G

xxo|oox A

xoo|oox B

xxx|xxx d

20

Like pancelticpiper, I use some of those extra finger shapes, for stability, but also for better tone and/or to make quick passages easier.

The OOO XXX for C# often sounds better. On my R&R 8-key of course, keys help with intonation or tone: OkOO XXXk. Holding down the three right-hand fingers has “more sonority”, as recommended in the definitive chart:

http://www.oldflutes.com/charts/simple/

I find that my B-C-d run is more “poppity” if I use the preferred C-nat from the same chart:
OXO XXXk

I recently discovered a much faster fingering for E rolls especially in the context of B-E-B peddles like Pigeon on the Gate, a tune that had me flummoxed. How the heck does Catherine McEvoy play it so quickly. I’m sure she leaves RH1 & RH2 down like this:
XOO XXO (for B)

XXX XXO (E roll)
XOO XXO
XXX XXO
XXX XXX
XXX XXO

XOO XXO

And I usually play B with my RH1 down, which slightly flattens the B note, but makes the B note more “sonorous” as well. Also, the B rolls are a little more poppity:
XOO XOO

Whether certain fingerings help or don’t help depends on the specific flute/whistle. Antique and modern instrument makers have a variety of trade-offs. Large-hole Prattens or medium-hole Rudalls each have their quirks.

1 Like