Some Further Learner Observations

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JTU
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Some Further Learner Observations

Post by JTU »

My first two years learning the whistle is nearly up. Have I improved? Giiven where I started yes. Am I any good? No I don’t think so but I have fun generally playing for an audience of one.
For a learner without access in person to good whistle players this site is a bonus and the contribution from experienced and expert players is invaluable.
Here’s where I get controversial. This is an observation only from someone with little ability and from someone who has never so much as attended a Session so don’t get upset. A lot of the good Traditional players I listen to on the web play insanely fast and they are almost impossible to learn from. I assume what’s happened over the years is that players at Sessions have livened up what would become repetitive playing of similar songs over time by playing faster and faster and throwing in as many ormanents as they can so that to the beginner and learner like me the melody and even the rhythm of the tunes becomes obscured. For the players out there who use the web to teach the whistle ( and these players are for the most part clearly genuine) please teach with tunes that are not necessarily part of the mainstream Tradition. That way us Learners (please excuse the grammar) will learn easier tunes that haven’t become clouded by years of being played faster and faster and over ornamented. From there we can advance to the traditional tunes as our playing develops.
In this regard I would encourage Learners to visit an Australian web site named Bushtraditions.wiki where the tunes, some familiar some not, are arranged more simply and played at a more leisurely place.
That’s my two bob’s worth.
Have a great Christmas and New Year and thanks for your help over the last few months.
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by busterbill »

Good luck to you on your whistle journey. I am a super big fan of the Online Academy of Irish music. They take you systematically through different levels of learning and work you up gradually to the point where you can digest the stuff you hear being played "insanely fast" even if you can't get your fingers to go there yet. They also have the benefit of putting tunes together in sets played by a number of players on different instruments in a virtual session, which you can access at full or half speed. I highly recommend it for the systematic way they set skills before you and the opportunity to play in a group session. They also answer questions. It isn't too bad, I think it was 20 pounds a month or so last time I checked. Learning on your own in fine, but if you've got no actual sessions, virtual sessions aren't half bad.
tstermitz
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by tstermitz »

I think your complaint about speed is both valid and not-so-valid.

Yes, a lot of players play very fast. On recordings you could expect the tunes to be worked up by professionals to a high level. In long-standing sessions they've played the tunes a lot. I experienced a mixture of awe and desperation as I was learning. And then, one day, your fingers start to figure it out, and what seemed like crazy fast is only fun fast.

Personally, I think tunes are played too fast under several situations:
(1) As you say, with beginners, who are trying to learn.
(2) In a mixed-level session, when the speed is too much for the majority of the group to keep up, then everybody gets sloppy and unhappy
(3) Often, speed just loses the sweetness of the melody.

Question for you: How fast can you type? With practice your fingers can become extremely dexterous, and I think whistle players have the edge on the fiddle players as many/most tunes in D or G lie easily on the whistle and the finger motions are small and efficient.

Here is a tune that is easy to play extremely fast on the whistle: Sally Gardens. As opposed to Red Crow which is just about impossible for me!
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by ytliek »

Try the slowplayers.org for a more comfortable pace.
http://slowplayers.org/1295-2/

There are plenty of websites that provide a moderate pace for learning. Some of the beginner questions on this forum get responses with quality tutorials. YouTube has to be used with caution as there are loads of videos that are terrible for learning. Have you tried this site?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6idv6eJA2iQ
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by StevieJ »

JTU wrote: I assume what’s happened over the years is that players at Sessions have livened up what would become repetitive playing of similar songs over time by playing faster and faster and throwing in as many ormanents as they can so that to the beginner and learner like me the melody and even the rhythm of the tunes becomes obscured.
You make it sound as if experienced players play the way they do solely to confound beginners! While I sympathise with your plight, I don't think that is what is happening. There may be a few misguided people who play at absurd speeds "because they can" or who think that excessive ornamentation is a good thing... but in general tunes are played at speeds that suit the type of tune and ornamentation serves to help the tune along. Also, this music developed and was shaped (and continues to flourish) outside of what people today mean by "sessions".

I realise this is of little help. I would suggest that you might benefit from some one-to-one lessons with a good teacher who can show you what you need to know at a manageable pace and introduce ornaments as and when you can handle them. The web can be a confusing place. :)
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by fatmac »

I'm only a beginner myself, but you have to learn to walk before you can run, by that I mean learn the basic tune, then once you have that under your fingers, start to add in ornaments if you want, it is too confusing to start out trying to play everything experienced players throw into a tune. :)

Personally, I'm not into Irish traditional music, but some of the techniques are transferable to other genres, so I'll be trying some out, once I've got to grips with a tune. :thumbsup:
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by PB+J »

I often hear tunes I think are over-ornamented, and too fast, but what a musician wants and what a listener wants often diverge. In jazz, the music I know best, the listener often wants solos that aren’t too fast and don’t deviate too far from the melody, while the soloist wants to explore the edges of harmonic possibility and speed. Both it seems to me are “valid,” but in conflict.


Check me if I’m wrong but it seems to me that a lot of the really fast playing has to do with losing the connection to dance, and to professionalization. The guy I’ve been studying closely, Micho Russell, threw in a lot of ornaments and variations but he still kept the tune in his head and it’s still recognizable to the listener. He did a lot of solo recordings, which makes variation easier in that you hear one person thinking about the tune. He has a distinctive style of phrasing but you can hear it’s rooted in dance. And not dance in the sense of “everybody has to be as good as the best dancer in ireland;” more dance in the sense of “local people dancing.” I’ve been working on the way he plays “the old bush,” for example. He’s all over the place with the melody, but there is a very strong sense of seeking connection to his listeners. Sorry if that sounds pretentious, but I just get a sense of a guy playing well for his community or neighbors, rather than a guy playing well for judges at a competition. I may be misreading this or I may just have it wrong, but that’s what I tell myself I hear


At this stage in my “whistle playing journey,” the whole “session” thing just seems really awful—cliquish and clannish and off-putting. I’m always reading, for example, that everybody is tired of such and such a tune and would complain if you wanted to play it. There are always local variations in the way the tune is played at the session that you are supposed to magically know, and which you will be shunned for not knowing. There’s the lockstep of unison compared to the joyful freedom of Micho playing alone. The few local sessions I’ve attended, just as a listener, have seemed socially grim and joyless.

I’m sure this is at least partly that I’m not good enough to join in properly. I may never be: I’m almost 60 and just trying to play the tunes with lilt and swing and freedom by myself is great fun and its own satisfaction.
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by Mr.Gumby »

The guy I’ve been studying closely, Micho Russell, threw in a lot of ornaments and variations but he still kept the tune in his head and it’s still recognizable to the listener. He did a lot of solo recordings, which makes variation easier in that you hear one person thinking about the tune. He has a distinctive style of phrasing but you can hear it’s rooted in dance. And not dance in the sense of “everybody has to be as good as the best dancer in ireland;” more dance in the sense of “local people dancing.” I’ve been working on the way he plays “the old bush,” for example. He’s all over the place with the melody, but there is a very strong sense of seeking connection to his listeners. Sorry if that sounds pretentious, but I just get a sense of a guy playing well for his community or neighbors, rather than a guy playing well for judges at a competition.
I am not sure you could describe Micho's music as using 'a lot of ornaments and variations'. In essence his music was quite sparse with only the minimum of ornamentation to support the tune and a small amount of variation to keep things lively. I must add to that that there is some more variation in some of his performance pieces but these are ones that stand out in his repertoire for that reason and are perhaps not all that representative of the whole of his output.

If you look at his generation of players it would be Willie Clancy who was the ultimate consummate player. Willie's music was full of life, ever changing, bristling with ornamentation and variation, without any of it ever getting in the way of the tune. Willie perhaps followed Garrett Barry's maxim :'I play for the heart, not the feet' even though, like Micho, he was, by all accounts, a fine dancer himself.

Despite the difference in style though, both men had a deep understanding of the music and the tradition it was/is part of and while Micho's music perhaps didn't have the layered depth that Willie's had, it is extremely attractive and because of it's sparsity arguably more accessible, especially perhaps, initially, to new listeners.
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by PB+J »

Mr.Gumby wrote:
The guy I’ve been studying closely, Micho Russell, threw in a lot of ornaments and variations but he still kept the tune in his head and it’s still recognizable to the listener. He did a lot of solo recordings, which makes variation easier in that you hear one person thinking about the tune. He has a distinctive style of phrasing but you can hear it’s rooted in dance. And not dance in the sense of “everybody has to be as good as the best dancer in ireland;” more dance in the sense of “local people dancing.” I’ve been working on the way he plays “the old bush,” for example. He’s all over the place with the melody, but there is a very strong sense of seeking connection to his listeners. Sorry if that sounds pretentious, but I just get a sense of a guy playing well for his community or neighbors, rather than a guy playing well for judges at a competition.
I am not sure you could describe Micho's music as using 'a lot of ornaments and variations'. In essence his music was quite sparse with only the minimum of ornamentation to support the tune and a small amount of variation to keep things lively. I must add to that that there is some more variation in some of his performance pieces but these are ones that stand out in his repertoire for that reason and are perhaps not all that representative of the whole of his output.

If you look at his generation of players it would be Willie Clancy who was the ultimate consummate player. Willie's music was full of life, ever changing, bristling with ornamentation and variation, without any of it ever getting in the way of the tune. Willie perhaps followed Garrett Barry's maxim :'I play for the heart, not the feet' even though, like Micho, he was, by all accounts, a fine dancer himself.

Despite the difference in style though, both men had a deep understanding of the music and the tradition it was/is part of and while Micho's music perhaps didn't have the layered depth that Willie's had, it is extremely attractive and because of it's sparsity arguably more accessible, especially perhaps, initially, to new listeners.
I can only comment on what I hear.
Last edited by PB+J on Tue Dec 11, 2018 7:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by Mr.Gumby »

I can only comment in what I hear.
Obviously, that's all anyone can do. But I try to see Micho's music, which I am very fond of, just to be clear about that, in context. Micho had something special that was wholly his own. I think however, it is important to take into account the environment, time and other players of his time and place. The web of influences and interactions and all that stuff. Where he sits in the musical landscape.


Understanding his Old Bush, it may be helpful to hear Willie Clancy's Gael Linn 78rpm or Paddy Canny's recording of it, both classics. Even just to hear the different takes on the tune by men of the same generation and (wider) geographical area and to see where it sits within that grouping, in terms of style, ornamentation and all that.

Micho's clarity, both in the way he states his musical phrases and his tone, combined with his irrepressible sense of rhythm makes his playing very attractive. I have often sat with him and marveled at the clarity of the tone he hammered out of any whistle he played. Perhaps an aspect not mentioned or discussed here very often. Interesting in this context perhaps is something Pat Mitchell mentioned to me in conversation a few days ago: he said Willie Clancy had told him when learning the whistle you need to give it the first six months to develop a decent tone. Not to learn twenty tunes or start your cuts or whatever, no, just spend all your time developing a decent tone (and intonation). Food for thought, even if it probably holds true for any instrument.

FWIW, Micho regularly played competitions from the 1940s onward. I believe he got an All Ireland by the early '70s.
Last edited by Mr.Gumby on Tue Dec 11, 2018 10:54 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by StevieJ »

PB+J wrote:I can only comment on what I hear.
Naturally. But we can always learn from people who have heard more than we have! :devil:
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by Mr.Gumby »

Understanding his Old Bush, it may be helpful to hear Willie Clancy's Gael Linn 78rpm or Paddy Canny's recording of it, both classics. Even just to hear the different takes on the tune by men of the same generation and wider area and to see where it sits within that grouping, in terms of style, ornamentation and all that.
Here you go:

Paddy Canny, Peter O'Loughlin, Bridie Lafferty : The Old Bush

Willie Clancy : The Old Bush
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Re: Some Further Learner Observations

Post by Polara Pat »

I quite like this page for learning tunes.https://www.musiclessons.com/ You can plug in a youtube video easily set a section of the tune in a loop. You can also slow it down to a certain point before it distorts but it helps if you are trying to follow someone's fingerings.

Gumby, you knew Micho Russel? I've just started discovering his music. I love it.
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