Review: Conal O'Grada's "An Fheadog Mhor" Irish Flute Tutor

[flutefry]

Hammy,

Being meek and unimposing, I've always found it prudent to write good reviews of barbarians, whether their axe has holes in it or not!

Hugh

[Aanvil]

Hey Flutefry,
Did Conan write a tutor too? I thought he was just a barbarian!
Hammy

Hmmm...

Perhaps the barbaric YAWP he sounds over the roofs of the world is a really hard D.

That would explain a lot.

[jadphoto]

Mine arrived! Signed even. Grand book.

For all of you who, like me, have a filing cabinet full of books that devote the first 40 pages teaching you to play a D scale (yet again)...you'll love this one.

Conal doesn't so much teach "how" to play...but "what" to play and "where" to play it.

Really kewl stuff.

Thanks again to Cat, Skyspirit, and, of course Conal!

JD

[Peter Duggan]

essential

Darn, while I've already got the Hammy Hamilton (earlier edition) and Grey Larsen books and normally take 'essential' or 'must have' as hyperbole, I'm afraid you're convincing me I need this one too!

Having had the book for about 10 days now, it's maybe time for a few comments of my own...

So is it a better book than Hammy's or Grey Larsen's? Well, not necessarily. It's different (they're all different) and you're not comparing like to like when it's much shorter than either. Hammy's (which I must have had almost since its 1990 publication and haven't read through recently) attempts a wider brief in covering history, development, maintenance etc. as well as performance and Grey's (which I got for my birthday in November and have by no means 'read' fully yet!) a much more 'encyclopedic' coverage of techniques. But Conal's clearly has advantages re. concision and usability (if only Grey's was bound to lie flat the same way!), and it's tempting to suggest that anyone who can afford thousands of pounds/dollars/euros worth of flute(s) can probably both afford and benefit from having all three!

Seems silly just to repeat all the good things already said by others, but I must echo the plaudits for the 'critical listening' section by stating that I see this especially as repaying close study and probably (for me at least) the heart of the book. While I'm astonished at how much Conal and some of the others are using glottals and (despite currently using both some glottals and tonguing myself) still can't see myself comfortable with that, it's also good to see his analysis of players like Aoife Granville and Eamonn Cotter when I'd been led to believe that tonguing on trad. flute was the work of the devil and my (sparing) use of it was naughty! So much to learn from the analysis of all the players there, and I'll be returning to the book and CD time and time again for that.

Some slight points of puzzlement to report as follows:

• There's no notated example for the second part of Willie Coleman's 'without breaths' in Chapter 1 to enable comparison alongside those given for the first part and whole of Castlebar Races.
• The subheading for Chapter 6 (on 'Glottal Stops') still refers to 'Finger Based Articulation'. (Incidentally, re. Cathy's review, Conal's use of the 'uh-oh hyphen' thing is based on one of the internet definitions he quotes on p35, but no less apt for that!)
• I'd have tidied up the notated examples by removing the 'Flute' and 'Fl.' from the starts of the staves when it's obvious they're all for flute, probably also have omitted the bar numbers and established a more consistent usage of grace notes for cuts etc. when they appear in some cases as the main note and some as the cutting 'note'.

But, while I've also noticed minor typos elsewhere, my aim is not to criticise when they've no real potential to confuse as that 'missing' music example, subheading or grace note usage might do.

Overall, it's unquestionably quite a pricey little book but, with its CD (not IMHO the 'free CD' suggested by the back cover but an integral part of the whole helping to justify the cost!) and digestible concision, an eminently usable and valuable one. No doubt the relatively small-scale publication run I imagine doesn't come cheap, but I'd rate the 'critical listening' stuff (a substantial proportion of the whole) priceless and the rest still pretty darn good!

[tin tin]

Resurrecting an older thread, I thought I'd toss in my two cents on O'Grada's book, which I recently received. Most tutors do one or two things--they teach technique and/or they teach tunes. This tutor goes a step further and actually teaches style. For me, that makes it the most effective tutor I've used.

I think O'Grada hits a good right brain-left brain balance; analytical enough to help readers get the details, but also letting 'feel' be a part of the learning process. The length/level of detail seems about right--enough to provide a solid foundation, but not so much that one gets bogged down in the details. Essentially, O'Grada is giving the student a solid start and then a push out of the nest--here are the basic skills, now go listen and play. The book and CD work very well together--both require the other to make sense, which makes for engaging learning. And as has been mentioned, the Critical Listening section is terrific. I thought I was a pretty good listener before, but after spending a bit of time in that chapter, it's almost like hearing in a new way.

All around, a great offering that fills a void in the tutorial market.

[Jäger]

I'll jump the book-praising bandwagon here. I got mine a few months back and I'm devouring every word of it! It's fantastic for me, as it really puts in writing what I've been speaking to fellow (albeit a whole lot more experienced) musicians with, what makes the music musical, and not just isolating technical elements. And it helps me to find the stuff that the older players tell me to listen to, and help me find those things on my own without having to have someone point them out to me going "listen to what Player X does to THIS note". Great stuff, swift delivery, personally signed and a whole lot of book for the buck!

[tsackett]

I've tried a couple times to write a review comparing Grey Larsen's, June McCormack's, and Conal O'Grada's tutorials. I have all three, and have spent a lot of time working with each. I've found that to work intensively in any one tutorial, I have to deliberately unlearn things I picked up from the other two. This doesn't mean they are not complimentary. I think spending some time following Larsen's precise methodical approach is good background for going into O'Grada's listening-based style. I also think that, once I've made a complete pass through O'Grada's tutorial, I'll get more out of McCormack's two books than I could have previously.

The perfect tutorial would be a combination of all three. I'd like to see O'Grada's approach expanded with a bit more detail about technique, ala Larsen, and with the abundance of tunes found in McCormack's books. If I had to pick one, though, right now it would be O'Grada's tutorial. Of the three, it's the one that has best guided me to finding the feel of the music. I know that the other two authors tried to do the same, but I think O'Grada came up with the best approach.

The dumb thing is that I've lost my copy of the book. I'm sure it's somewhere in the house, and until I find it I've been working only with the CDs.

[Berti66]

All this sounds very interesting and inspiring so I have put this book on my wishlist now.
Hope to be happier with it than I was with Larsen's tome......the descriptions here about Grada's flute tutor sound much more like what I would want.
In the past I have happily used seamus egan's flute tutor dvd, was the right combo for me but no longer working on this laptop...
Its lovely to have a dvd and a talking tutor where you can see AND hear what he/ she is doing.
To each his/ her own

[EzMan]

[Thread revival. - Mod]

Sorry to bring a dead thread back to life.
I have a copy of this in the mail, but I was wondering if anyone had the CD converted to mp3 with names and what not?
If someone has already done it it would save time for playing instead of computing. Thanks
EZ

[Mr.Gumby]

it would save time for playing instead of computing.

How long will it take, a minute or two? Sending would probably take longer..

[fatmac]

If you use Linux, (possibly Mac), cdparanoia will do it for you.

(See man cdparanoia.)

[Andro]

Wonderful review Cathy! I was always worried this book is written in Irish Gaelic, from the title. Is it in fact in English? Or indeed in both languages?

Andrew

[Steve Bliven]

Not Cathy, but I can attest that the book is written in quite understandable English.

Best wishes.

Steve

[EzMan]

If you use Linux, (possibly Mac), cdparanoia will do it for you.

(See man cdparanoia.)

Thank you Sir, on Debian these days.
EZ

[EzMan]

Just got my copy! 7 days to US not bad not bad. Very impressed with quality of the book.
Just getting into it but loving it already.
EZ