What’s the most difficult thing to learn Irish tinwhistle?
Could you please share your experience?
Warren
Learning tinwhistle is actually quite easy.
Its learning the Irish that’s the hard part.
Seriously.
The hardest part about learning the tinwhistle, for me, was learning to not be afraid to push for the high notes. But learning how to make it Irish is an ongoing struggle to grab onto this idea called ‘swing’.
The most difficult thing is stopping buying the darn things for long enough to actually learn how to play one of them.
Actually 'tis prolly the easiest thing to learn,
just the hardest to accept.
Buying the latest state-of-the-art whistle that
‘X’ (insert favourite players name here) uses
won’t make you play like them, or improve yer playing.
Persistance i.e. keep practicing that difficult section/tune etc,
and patience knowing that eventually you’ll get it how you like it!
HTH
Rhythm & phrasing.
Making a toy sound like a musical instrument.
Sonja
Also, because the whistle is so “high”, it’s an especially very disturbing instrument when played out of tune with others. Developing the ear for tuning is one other challenge, I’m struggling with this all the time.
Learning to breathe in the right place.
Oh, and timing
Jetboy got it!
After I got used to the octave jump, I discovered there are no natural breathing breaks in dance music. You have to use breathing as another ornament.
Never take a breath on the downbeat!
I have been a guitar player my whole adult life and I am used to breathing whenever I want to while playing music. So finding the spot to breathe without turning blue has been a challenge for me.
Mike
Rolls. Those stupid rolls are going to drive me to insanity.
I agree: the Irish part. I can play a few hymns, some airs sort of pathetically, and a few random tunes grabbed from movies, etc, but I can’t really play jigs, reels, etc and make them sound “right”.
I agree with TS, it’s hard to make them sound “right.” Also, for me, it’s hard to get enough speed built up to properly play reels. People advise us to learn it slowly, play slowly, and speed will come. It did, but only to a point.
I am also a relative beginner. I agree that making it Irish is difficult. Don’t let yourself feel that your whistle is not good enough. Your whistle will improve as you improve. It takes a while to learn breath control. If you want to make it sound right you have to listen to the tunes played by someone competent. There are many tunes on the net that are not good examples of Irish Traditional playing. The most important thing is to keep whistling.
Ron
Banish Misfortune has tons of rolls. Learn that 'un.
Our recording of The Jigocity (real audio link) uses it for the first tune.
Rolls, once you know what they’re supposed to sound like, are a purely mechanical problem. The usual problem is that the “tap” (or as some say, “pat”) note is not fast enough. Sometimes it helps if you half-hole your tap; whatever you do, make is so that it’s not a real pure note, just a blip.
To get the rolls right, make sure you practice rolls every day for 10 minutes. After a month you’ll be doing them without having to think. That’s what i mean when i say it’s purely a mechanical problem. Finger gymnastics.
You mean like this? :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:
ROFL!
I think the hardest thing about ITM is getting the Irish ‘accent’ on the whistle. I don’t know how to define it, but it can happen without even using rolls. It does come, but it takes determinedness (did I just create a word?) and a whole lot of listening to ITM.
BTW, after upping my whistle CD collection, and listening to the variety of styles found among recording whistlers, I’ve decided to give myself much more liberty in interpreting tunes, and hence (how many times do you get to use the word ‘hence’?) have decided to just let the tunes come out as my own - how I like to hear them. It’s been an engaging and rewarding experience.
Breathing and getting my fingers to do what I want. I’m a drummer and like Mike above I breathe whenever I darned well feel like. Plus, my fingers have minds of their own.