Hi everybody. First of all I have to thank you for this awesome site, it has helped me a lot already.
I´m new with this instrument and I´m a bit lost with the huge amount of information I find on the net (and on this forum). The main reason I opened this thread is because I would like to ask some recomendations about whistle players to listen to to soak up the spirit of this instrument. My main income of Irish music come from different styles (from the Dubliners to the Dropkick Murphys) but I would like to listen to more specific whistle players.
So far, the main difficulty I find with this instrument is ornamentation. I had a basic classic education in violin when I was a kid so I can follow the rythm (quite a slow one at the moment) and read music but I don’t know how tu use ornamentation. What I´m doing so far is wathc better players on youtube playing the tune and try to copy them but it becomes very repetitive. Maybe what I need is just to listen to more music and when I have more practice I will be able to use it properly but if you have some advice that would be great.
Also if you know any free (i´m still a student working with low budget) intermediate tutorial that would also be great. Most of the tutorials I find are for very beginners and pro players play too fast for me to even know what they do.
Thanks in advance for your help and sorry for bothering you with these beginner questions I´m sure you´ve been asked many times.
I’ll leave it to others to recommend particular tutorials. But let me address this:
A common mistake is to think that a background in classical music gives you a leg up on anything but the very basics. In terms of Irish trad you are a very beginner. And it would be worthwhile not to jump the gun. It’s usually easy to spot a classical player who hasn’t bothered to master the trad fundamentals because they thought they knew too much. Personally, I came to the music after years and years of playing classical and other music at a very high level, and it still took me months and months to start getting the hang of the bits that make Irish trad distinctive. Part of the trick is swallowing your pride and starting from scratch, knowing that you’ll make much faster progress than a true beginner anyway.
So don’t discount beginner tutorials like Brother Steve, and Ryan Duns, and Sean Cunningham. And when you get to the point where the pro players are, amazingly, not playing too fast anymore, then you’ll know you’ve graduated.
Practice is indeed a key here! . . . This is true no matter what kind of music you like to play. Listening to others is also a key. Especially when it comes to “traditional” music.
But at this point I really wouldn’t worry about your music being repetitive. If you have children, think back to when they were learning to talk. They could sit there drooling and repeating ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga over and over again! For hours! Day after day! The point being, they were learning three things: the concept of language itself, how your home language works and how your home language is produced. It’s no different for anyone learning music: you have to learn the concept of music itself, how your musical idiom works and how it’s produced. Shakespeare wasn’t writing great soliloquies at the age of eighteen months. Don’t knock yourself out if you don’t sound like some big name whistler after only a short time with a pipe in your mouth!
In fact, feel free to be as repetitive as you like. This is your ga-ga-ga-ga time. In time, as the patterns of the music and the ornaments settle in your fingers, listen to how others play the same tune; you’ll come to see where they use ornaments and where not, and how they differ from one another. Talking with folks here is also a great help: a lot of people here (not me) actually play in real settings (sessions and so forth). They can offer lots of practical tips. They can’t tell you what to do, but they can help you on your quest to sorting out what you want your music to sound like. .i. finding your voice.
There are also more focused things the child learns – the series of 'lects – dialect, regiolect, localect and at last ideolect: “English” to “General American English” to “Appalachian English” and on down to state, county, township and family & personal realisations of “English”. Your choice, once you’ve got the basics of the instrument and the rudiments of ornamentation down, will then be what “accent” do you want to play in? When approaching music of the whistle sort you might want to decide upon what kind of music and what style of playing you want to learn. Do you want to become a hard core ITM player? Do you fancy Kwela? Do you prefer a kind of “Scotch-Irish-American” broad style? Do you want to make your own style? If ITM, what Irish region or county or town’s style do you want to emulate? Just as an immigrant immerses himself in a community and ends up speaking with that community’s accent and using that community’s words, so too you might end up cultivating the “musical accent” of a particular locality and the style they like to play.
One thing you can try to do is simply “try on” different styles of ornamentation: write out the tune you like and place a generic mark of some kind (I use a “+” for what little it’s worth) in places where you hear other players put ornaments. Then, go through and play the tune over and over, varying what ornaments you use and how many of those places you actually ornament. Try going all baroque and put in gobs of the frilliest ornaments you can manage, then go plainstyle and ease off considerably. If you like how player A does the first part of the tune and how player C does the second half, mix and match! Copy what others have already done, then rework and make it your own!
Yes, this I suspect is an issue that hasn’t been fully considered yet. What type of whistle music do you want to play? There is a list of whistle recordings up at the top of this whistle forum page. You might want to seek out some of these whistle players to listen to their particular style of play and identify something that appeals to you. Styles vary as well as types of whistling.
The three tutorials that MTGuru mentioned are a great starting point (free too) so check them out. If you like movie themes possibly Eliazabeth Velez Urie will interest you. https://www.youtube.com/user/inspirationalflute
Once you figure out what type and style of whistling you want to learn… listen to lots of whistle music… go for it and keep it fun. Good Luck!
Thank you all for your help. Don’t worry about my musician ego, as I have none . What I meant with that is that I can read music so for me it’s faster to just check the sheet to get the basic tune rather than for example use Ryan Duns videos that go note by note (although I do use his videos to see what kind of ornamentation he does when he plays “fast”). Other than that I have no really musical talent as I left the violin about 15 years ago (I´m 28 now). The other two tutorials I´m using Brother Steve’s to learn the rolls and the last one I didn’t know and it looks that his site is down at the moment but I will keep an eye on him thank you very much.
About the type of music I want to play it would be ITM (I just learnt this term right now). I got into this first with some spanish bands that play celtic music (e.g. Luar Na lubre), then with Irish rock (e.g. The Pogues) and finally I tried more traditional Irish music (e.g. The Dubliners) but I still only know a few traditional tunes. I will check the list you mentioned (I´m listening to Phil Hardy right now) but if you know any album that compilates several super famous tunes with the whistle it would be a good starting point.
I will take it with calm, the other good thing that my “classical experience” has is that I know that I can´t learn how to play an instrument in a couple of months so I´ll go day by day and use this awesome board to gain some knowladge.
You might feel that it’s faster - right now - to learn tunes from the sheet music for them, but in the long term you would be far better advised to forget about all that and learn the tunes by ear from the start. After a month or so your playing will improve a lot faster if you’re learning by ear and longer term, if you’re wanting to play Irish trad, it’s a skill that’s absolutely vital. So my one overall best suggestion to you is to acquire that skill now.
a classical player who hasn’t bothered to master the trad fundamentals because they thought they knew too much … Part of the trick is swallowing your pride and starting from scratch,
a big part of “knowing too much” may be relying on sheet music because you think it’s faster, easier, etc. And starting from scratch means forgetting that you know how to read the dots, at least until you’ve actually learned the tune. Because one of the trad fundamentals is the ability to learn strictly by ear.
rapskar, as full disclosure (not bragging!) … Both Ben and I are fairly accomplished classical players, and neither of us has any difficulty whatsoever reading sheet music. But our very last choice when learning a tune is to learn from dots. Not when there’s a good recording or, even better, a live player to learn from.
This is an interesting point I didn’t think about. It´s true that trying to learn by ear will slow me down right now, but if I want to advance more than playing just a few tunes in front of the computer it probably will be better to develope a good ear. Also I think that will help to memorize the tunes as right now I can only play one or two without looking to the sheet although I’ve been practicing a few more.
This is why I like to ask experience players, you ask for one thing and you get some good advice from something completely unexpected. I just moved in to a new city (Edmonton, AB) and I still don´t know the cyty that well but I will try to find some Irish sessions around.
Another +1 for playing by ear.. I’ve played music since I was about ten (now I’m in my fifties) and I read music and I technically have no problems playing the whistle from sheet music (according to my level - I’m definitely still a beginner at whistle). The only instrument I’ve always played only be ear for all those years is the harmonica. The whistle has something in common with a diatonic harmonica, so maybe that’s why it feels natural to do the same - it’s a bit like singing, in a way.. the notes are there, there aren’t too many of them, and it’s not too different from singing - most people can sing back a melody even the first time they hear it. At least the simple ones, and that’s my level anyway!
The memorizing process seems to work differently when learning that way too. Although that may be an individual thing. For me it sticks better somehow.
I too am a “classically” trained musician and being “paper-trained” is both a blessing and a curse. You’ll pick up tunes quickly reading the “dots” but you’ll tend to play it like it’s being read off the page. As soon as you can, leave the sheet music and listen, listen, listen.
A very useful tool/aid in that regard is Amazing Slow Downer. If you aren’t familiar with it it will slow down a recording without altering the pitch so you can find a tempo that you can play along to. You can also change the pitch if the recording is in the wrong key for your instrument. You can also loop the tune or phrases of the tune that are giving you problems. It’s a god send for those of us who are slow to learn by ear. There are other software packages that will accomplish the same thing but ASD is easy to use and works a treat.
As for tutorials, look for L.E. McCullogh (great tutor and a great collection of tunes-121 Session Tunes) or Grey Larson, tutors for both flute and whistle and tune collections.
Lots of good stuff on the web as well.
Of course you’ll learn a ton just hangin’ out here on The Chiff and Fipple.
As far as listening goes, I would suggest listening to anything solo or sparsely arranged, not just whistle music. Early on I probably learned more listening to the Kevin Burke live CD, which is mostly solo fiddle, and Jack and Charlie Coen (all solo or duet flute and box) than anything else. It doesn’t hurt that I love both and never tire of listening to them (I guess that’s another requisite for what to learn from).
Yes if you find a video where the tune is heard only once, or a video where the player is playing the tune the same way every time, and copy that, it will be repetitive.
One of the most amazing things about Irish dance music is its plasticity, the way that many/most players will play a tune differently each time as they go along. It seems that you’re reaching out for that.
Try this: instead of working on ten different tunes, find ten different versions of the same tune, and learn them all. Play them over and over until they’re internalised, well in your head and well under your fingers. Now start breaking them up: as you go along, grab the first phrase from one version, the next phrase from another version, until you can fluently throw any phrase from any of the versions into your playing at will. Now, you can play that tune many times in a row without ever generating the same thing twice.
I’ve made a couple videos the express purpose of which is to give the learner a large number of alternate ways of playing the same tune. I don’t know if others have made things like that.
Try this: instead of working on ten different tunes, find ten different versions of the same tune, and learn them all. Play them over and over until they’re internalised, well in your head and well under your fingers. Now start breaking them up: as you go along, grab the first phrase from one version, the next phrase from another version, until you can fluently throw any phrase from any of the versions into your playing at will. Now, you can play that tune many times in a row without ever generating the same thing twice.
This is really good advice!
I too am classically trained and used to reading and writing sheet music. And the challenge for me has been just this, not playing the tune exactly as written and not the same way twice. In this sense it’s a bit like Jazz. No Jazz musician will play a tune the same way twice. There will always an element of improvisation and variation. But you will still be able to recognize the tune…
Thanks everybody for your advice. What I started to do know is first read once the music sheet to get an idea of the tune and to know which is the first note and scale (that’s the most difficult part for me), and then try to play it by ear. Doing this I play exactly the same way every phrase because all my focus goes to which note should I play next. I guess that when my fingers are used to the tunes I will be able to start changing it.
About music I’ve been listening a lot to Flook which I didn’t know and I loved it and I went to a Jam Session that blew my mind. I don’t think I will ever be able to play like any of those guys (although the only guy who played air instruments used mostly the pipe and flute, so I didn’t listen to almost any whistle music).
I will try to use the advice you all gave me but I will try to keep it as fun as possible as I know myself and when I loose interest about something it’s hard for me to keep with it.
The thing is, I was taught a different approach, right from the beginning.
There was no such thing as “the next note” which implies that a tune is a fixed string of particular notes.
Rather, I was taught the building blocks/motifs/licks (or whatever one might call them) and to throw various ones in as I went along; the tune was something assembled on the fly, not memorised.
However I was, for each tune, first taught a basic or generic version, but as soon as that was under my fingers the exploration of a large number of possibilities was undertaken. The emphasis was on improvisation and achieving a sort of wildness which my teacher considered essential. Years later some friends and I played live on a local radio programme and my old teacher came up to me afterwards and kindly scolded me for my conservative playing. He expected more!
Anyhow I just now made this simple video demonstrating the basics of cuts, pats, and rolls.
About variation, a YouTube video I did a couple years ago has disappeared. However, here’s one I did that’s still up, on uilleann pipes, though nearly everything applies to whistle too.
If you play along with everything on that video you’ll have a sense of what I was talking about above.
The director was describing one of the peculiar problems they have to contend with during their evening rehearsals. Namely, that the frequent electric power cuts in Kinshasa often leave them rehearsing in the dark.
In the spirit of lemonade from lemons, the musicians have ended up memorizing their parts and can play them entirely by ear, in the dark or otherwise. And the director said that these are often their best rehearsals. Because by necessity, the music then flows directly from the mind and the heart, not from the page,
Yes, this is a bit fluffy. But the point is relevant here, I think.
In fact, deliberate practice in the dark or in very low light, or with eyes closed, can help to focus the mind and ear almost meditatively and minimize distractions, including the distraction of reading dots. It’s also good preparation for pub sessions, which are not always known for their stellar lighting.
. What I meant with that is that I can read music so for me it’s faster to just check the sheet to get the basic tune rather than for example use Ryan Duns videos that go note by note (although I do use his videos to see what kind of ornamentation he does when he plays “fast”). Other than that I have no really musical talent as I left the violin about 15 years ago (I´m 28 now). The other two tutorials I´m using Brother Steve’s to learn the rolls and the last one I didn’t know and it looks that his site is down at the moment but I will keep an eye on him thank you very much.
