Beware YouTube "Tutorials"

Whistle
1

First off, I love YouTube, there are plenty of great resources on there, and plenty of great players who post/have posted regularly. This is not a warning against YouTube or against tutorial videos in general.

I have noticed, though, that there are a more than a few people on the site offering “tutorials” and teaching videos that leave a lot to be desired. Their playing is often not particularly good, but some will slap a bunch of reverb and/or backing tracks on it to buff up the sound. In fact, these videos are often somewhat slickly put together, with pop-up tabs and good editing. Many specialize in video game music, movie themes, and other non-trad music. In and of itself that’s not a bad thing (far from it, it’s fun to hear other music played on the whistle!). The issue is that they also try to teach Irish tunes, which inevitably goes horribly. Not only are they not strong players, they don’t have a grasp of trad as a style, and so they end up teaching a bastardization of whatever tune they’re attempting. Worse yet, some will make pronouncements about Irish music that are misleading, ill-informed, or just flat-out wrong.

I don’t necessarily want to “name and shame,” but one video came to my attention recently that was particularly egregious. The poster was “teaching” the Rocky Road to Dublin, a popular tune that is well-suited to beginners. The player in question not only plays the wrong notes and rhythms, they wrote in the description that adding and taking away notes is perfectly ordinary. Presumably they took the idea of “variations” to mean “anything goes!” Their other videos featuring Irish tunes are similarly poor, and they don’t demonstrate a high level of playing, in Irish music or otherwise.

There are a variety of ability levels on this forum, including a lot of beginners. If you’re looking for tutorial materials for Irish trad or tin whistle playing in general, please be critical about what you turn to. Listen to the “teacher” playing, and compare them to well-known whistle players. They don’t have to all be at the level of Mary Bergin, but it’ll help determine if this person is really in a position to be teaching. If they’re teaching a tune, listen to other versions of that tune to make sure that their version lines up. Also, if you’re looking to specifically learn a style like Irish trad, be sure that the person actually plays in that style and has a good grasp of the unique techniques, repertoire, and sound of that genre. Otherwise, you’ll be learning things that you’ll eventually have to un-learn. If you’re unsure about a certain resource, ask about it on this forum, TheSession.org, or at your local session. There are tons of great resources available (Ryan Dunn’s videos come to mind, despite a too-liberal use of reverb IMO), and more experienced players will be happy to point you in the right direction.

And if you’re thinking of making a tutorial video yourself, PLEASE be honest with yourself about your own limitations. It’s great to want to help beginners out, but you have to be sure that you’ll actually be helping, not impeding their progress.

2

Tutors need to have a sense of style appropriate to the music they are teaching, not just be able to (just about) hammer out the notes. It seems fairly obvious but it is an issue hard and bitter battles have been fought over on these forums.

Whistle reviews are another thorny issue. Some time ago someone posted a link to a whistle reviewer on youtube. Each and every whistle was blown out of tune somewhere along the scale, all in different places though. I suppose there’s a market for that sort of thing but it’s damaging and silly.

File under: Dunning-Kruger

3

Fortunately, less bitter than on a certain other forum.

I’ve been trying to find a quote - I know it’s out there, and with my amazing interweb search skills, I can only assume that the reason I haven’t been able to find it is that it has been deliberately hidden … :wink:

… it goes something like, “A beginner knows everything; an expert knows nothing”. I have no idea who said it.

4

Bob ‘An seanduine’'s sig line I suppose:

_The Expert’s Mind has few possibilities.
The Beginner’s mind has endless possibilities.
Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi
_

Fortunately, less bitter than on a certain other forum.

Are you sure? I remember, vaguely (I had to do a search) , the days when Serpent music tried to supply the forums with a tutorial. And that was far from the only instance.

5

Yes, I agree that YouTube tutorials vary from the very well done to the rank beginner giving a lesson that is often misleading. Yes, an understanding of the particular style of music is basic to whistle playing. Somewhere in the emergence of social media to include the streaming media as well people got the idea of having a personal page, website, whatever you want to call it, but, establish a following… connect with family, friends, the internet population and upload your info. Generally, on the various whistle forums posters encourage a beginner to keep playing without any real substance of help. Just be cautious while learning to play whistle… and it ought to be fun.

I can understand Skype lessons online by a knowledgeable person when a local tutor is not available. A local tutor is the best method for learning with immediate feedback, one on one, during the lesson. However, a beginner whistler posting a self made video on YouTube, Facebook, or elsewhere and asking for critique usually results in a hodgepodge of responses. Sometimes no comments are made and then the poster believes the tune must’ve of been played Ok as no one suggested changes. And there is also the anything goes mentality… rules are made to be broken which just invites developing poor playing habits. Again, an understanding of the particular style of music is basic to whistle playing.

For beginner whistlers here on Chiff there is a sticky thread up top of forum “Whistle Instruction” that offers a variety of sources for whistle instruction. Some sources are better than others for learning while the listing is a general starting point. The “Whistle Recordings” thread is another invaluable source for referencing listening music.

6

Garbage in, garbage out.

7

Yes, and unfortunately a lot of these “teachers” are much better at that than anything else. Well-made videos, effects and background music, titles that guarantee that they show up in searches and get clicks, enticing thumbnails, and a general knowledge of how to “play the game” online can put a lot of lipstick on a pig. It’s amazing to think that they spend all this time crafting their brand and seemingly none of it on actually, you know, learning to play properly!

8

Let me voice an alternate take on this. This may be a lengthy post so you may give up reading before you get to the end.

Let me first give you a little background about me. I am recently retired. I have hobbies but was looking for something else to keep my mind sharp and have a good time doing it. While my oldest son is formally trained in music and is a high school band director the exact opposite is true of me. I have no formal music training. I love listening to and singing music but I can’t read music nor tell you what a triad is or what the difference is between a major and minor key. Musically I’m educationally “ignorant”. But that doesn’t keep me from enjoying music. I’ve always wanted to learn to play an instrument and about 40 years ago was given a cheap guitar. I self taught myself to play a few chords but gave it up after a year or so. Fast forward to this “stay at home pandemic” era and a friend of mine mentioned they were trying to learn to play the tin whistle. That caused me to start investigating tin whistles. Well what do you know, I found a youtube video that showed me the basics about how you play the tin whistle. I bought a Feadog D high whistle and have been practicing and improving on it for the past month. I do not plan on playing in sessions and I play to please myself and will at some time entertain my family and friends with a few songs.

Now to the “you tube tutor”. The one I watched and got me interested enough to go forward with it “may” be one of the ones the original poster of this thread is talking about. The person clearly makes known in several of their videos why they are playing the tin whistle. It is/was for personal enjoyment. They viewed the whistle not as an instrument that can only play a certain type of music in a specific way but they (as I do) view it as a musical instrument to be used to play and enjoy music. They do not claim that they are teaching you the “traditional” way to play a song. This person makes known (if you have watched very many of their videos) that they are playing these tunes to please themselves and now that they have paying customers and they are trying to please them.

I have zero desire to learn to play the tin whistle and play only traditional Irish tunes the traditional way. I do not want to limit myself to playing Irish tunes and nothing else. I do not care to learn to play it in the traditional way. I want to play songs that I enjoy hearing and can play. I plan on playing them in a way that my feeble capabilities will allow me to play them.

The “you tube tutor” that I’ve been watching does play the movie tunes, the gaming tunes (whatever those are) and many non-traditional tunes. They also play Irish tunes. If she’s not doing it in the traditional way, let me just say, that I couldn’t care less! She doesn’t claim to be a traditional Irish tune player. So if you don’t like what she is doing, that’s fine, move along, nothing to see here.

If this forum is only about making sure you play Irish tunes the traditional way then that’s fine and there’s nothing for me to see here so I’ll just move along.

I’m hoping this is a forum that I can learn more about the tin whistle (as long as I’m not forced to play it in only one style).

9

No different from old fashioned music tutor/methods for instruments like the piano, trumpet, clarinet, or flute. Take Jack snavely’s Clarinet Method. In it you’ll find English and Scottish airs, American, Czech, French and Danish folk songs, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, hymns, and an Irish jig titled ‘Irish Washerwoman’ to be played ‘In a Lively Two (Allegro)’. How well are all these presented? I don’t know, don’t care too much either. I just want to play tunes on my clarinet. Is it such a crime if the Danish folk song is somehow wrong? If the book was specifically about Danish folk music would that make a difference? What’s the author’s goal?

In that case they’re in it for the money and I would say that the resources spent on production is the giveaway. To judge them on musical content is to measure them with your metric, not theirs. What’s the producer’s goal?

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You might as well say ‘beware the Internet’! Because there’s good, bad and all shades between about everything on the Internet and you need to learn what to trust (and what to take with a pinch of salt) about anything to use it.

11

The two are actually flip-flopped in meaning, and their deeper meanings are different too, FWIW. But they can be compared on a surface level. Suzuki’s terms are more symbolic. Ben’s expert is the same as Suzuki’s Beginner’s Mind: in “knowing nothing”, you are free, and have endless possibilities. IOW you are unbound by preconceptions and the mistaken idea that you can really know anything, so the Beginner’s Mind is the real expert. Suzuki’s Expert misses the mark because of thinking of oneself in terms of one’s expertise; in thinking that way one is a self-made prisoner. Ben’s beginner is not so different from youth; likewise, Suzuki’s Expert is really the beginner, because if one is an “expert”, one has yet to be shed of one’s blinders.

Nobody’s going to force you to play anything. However, the majority discussion around here tends to be concerned with Trad. Don’t mistake that for pressure. :slight_smile:

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Thanks, Nano. I´m not quite sure how my sig got dragged in here. Another quote from Suzuki Roshi to illustrate his rather elliptical point of view, very loosely paraphrased: One way to control your horse is to put it into an enormous enclosure. . . :smiley:

Bob

13

I understand your main point, and I certainly don’t think that the only music that should ever be played on tin whistle or discussed here is Irish music. I play other stuff on it myself, even if I mainly play trad. I do want to push back on something, though, that I hear a lot and that I do think is a bit of a cop-out on the teacher’s part. Yes, there are “traditional” ways of playing the whistle that have their own techniques, sound, etc. A lot of these can be fairly rigid, some are more loosely-defined, and some are “anything goes.” Many are directly opposed to each other; a classical flutist would be specifically told NOT to do certain things that are mainstays of Irish fluting. Just look at how many kwela musicians positioned the whistle in their mouth and you’ll instantly realize why they sound so different than Irish players! You also have people who go their own way and play whatever they want.

The issue is not that these YouTubers are “non-traditional.” There’s plenty of that going around as well, but that’s fine. The issue is that some are straight-up incompetent. Poor intonation, spotty rhythm, and more. It’s not a different technique to play flat, it’s wrong. And if you set yourself up as a “teacher,” you are potentially steering a bunch of impressionable beginners down a very wrong path. Ultimately, yes, it’s up to the viewer to decide whether to watch or not, but a beginner tin whistler isn’t going to know enough to tell the difference between good and bad. I’d argue that it’s at best misguided and at worst irresponsible to put yourself forward as an expert/authority figure (which you automatically do by assuming the role of tutor) if you are not actually at that level.

Furthermore, while it doesn’t matter to me what you play and how you play it, if you DO decide to teach something specific you should play it right. If you want to play the “Rocky Road To Dublin” as a jazz tune, go ahead. If you want to turn it into an atonal tune in 7/8, great. If you’re teaching the “traditional Irish tune The Rocky Road To Dublin,” though, you should at the very least get the notes right. The particular tutorial that inspired this post didn’t do that. They “teach” a version of the tune that is incorrect, and there is no indication at all that it is that way on purpose. They also play a few other Irish tunes that they have simply learned wrong, and they’re now passing that on to their potential viewers. And they give advice about how to play Irish music that has no basis in reality.

I think I know the YouTuber you are talking about, and while I do have some issues with her videos overall, I also think that she is fairly good at being forthright about what she is and is not. As you say, she’s not a traditional player and doesn’t profess to be, so there’s an honesty in that. If someone learns an Irish jig as a fun little diversion without wanting to go deeper into Irish music or get significantly better at playing the tin whistle, there’s no harm done. That’s not the case for all of these video-makers, and even some of her videos I find problematic.

In that case they’re in it for the money and I would say that the resources spent on production is the giveaway. To judge them on musical content is to measure them with your metric, not theirs. What’s the producer’s goal?

If that’s their goal, great. I still would tell any beginner whistler to stay away. In fact, if that’s their ultimate goal it would make me even less inclined to recommend them. And FWIW, I think you’re more-or-less correct.

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Cleanup’s less of an issue, anyway. :wink:

15

Really, it depends on one’s goals. If one learns incorrectly from these people and goes to a session, it’s not going to end well. If one thinks (because these people say) that they are playing in the correct and authentic manner when one is not, that’s a problem. If it is clearly stated up-front that this is not the way it would be played in sessions/Ireland/traditionally, and one is fully aware of that and okay with it, that’s not the issue. The problem is passing something off as something it’s not.

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That’s long been one of my favourite cartoons, Phill.

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I like XKCD, but as time goes on that particular cartoon annoys me more and more. That is, however, a much broader topic that isn’t really worth going into here.

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It’s fundamentally the same thing.

20

I think you hit the nail on the head there. If you’re at all serious about becoming a musician the internet is probably not the best way to learn (I understand that there are some good programs, but as someone who earned a college degree online, I believe that in person is always the preferred method). My goal with playing the tin whistle is to get to a point where my family doesn’t protest before I even start playing, so I enjoy learning the traditional songs as well as songs my family might recognize. This week I’ve been working on “the Lilting Banshee” and “Concerning Hobbits” - easy version.