Hitting all the notes in Gravel Walks and Drowsy Maggie

[Katharine]

I found that tonguing helped greatly with learning jumps to the second octave... at which time I then learned to do it without the tonguing.

But wait... tonguing is out?? Hell, I bothered to LEARN tonguing in the first place because I'd read (probably either here or something linked from here, but it's been a long time, so who knows) that it is the only way to articulate a note with the mouth.

Will someone please explain what is meant by the "glottal stop" method? Is it at all similar to the "stopping the breath" method that I had (as aforementioned) read was something only beginners did as it was WRONG WRONG I TELL YOU WRONG and was a method to be un-learned as soon as possible (to my chagrin, I might add, as it was the way I'd been articulating since my days of teaching myself a bit of recorder when my age was still in the single digits)?

Confusion is setting in...

[bogman]

Katharine, tonguing is not out.
It's a very useful tool as is a glottal stop - a wee gap in air like an uh sound or a silent cough, it can vary from very subtle to exaggerated so you actually hear the uh. Saying not to do something that others do successfully in unhelpful when it comes to the whistle. Tonguing is a stylistic choice, it's neither right nor wrong but it would be fair to say most whistle players use it relatively extensively.

[highwood]

Will someone please explain what is meant by the "glottal stop" method? Is it at all similar to the "stopping the breath" method that I had (as aforementioned)

edit:
I did not go back to read your "stopping the breath" method - what follows might answer your question!
end edit.

It is possible to control the air going into a wind instrument in your throat/vocal tract.

Your glottis is in your throat. A "glottal stop" is using your glottis to stop the flow of air - The lungs/diaphragm can still be providing 'breath support' (that is air pressure) but no air flows if the glottis is closed.

I'm not really sure exactly how much is known about exactly what is going on and even if the technical details were known it would probably not help a person to learn how to play.

I did a quick Google search and came up with:
Glottic configuration in wind instrument players
by Claudia Alessandra Eckley http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S00 ... xt&tlng=en

We concluded that the glottis has active participation in wind instruments sound production and that glottic configuration alterations may interfere in the final musical sound. This knowledge suggests the need to include

I think in general it is considered good practice to start and stop the wind into a wind instrument with either the tongue or the throat (presumably this means the glottis but I have not studied this enough to say the glottis is the only part of the vocal tract that wind players use to control the breath.

It is BAD* to stop the breath by stopping blowing - by which I mean stopping pushing the air with your diaphragm and lungs

* I'm sure there are some styles of playing or instruments where this is considered good!!!

[highwood]

Going back to the original question - how to get all the notes to sound playing leaps, especially going down...

The suggestion was made that tonguing would help - which I disagreed with.

Why:
In order for the notes on a whistle to speak and hopefully be close to in tune the speed of the air (or pressure if you prefer) needs to just right and different for every note

So to play quick large leaps the players breath must make quick relatively large and fairly precise changes. The tongue does not play a part in this, and so is not needed - except in the case of whistles which do not want to make certain leaps, in this case sometimes stopping the air flow (say by tonguing) can help.

Personally I often find that passages such as are being talked about do not need the extra emphasis/pop that the tongue adds.

I think the reason some say tonguing helps is that often they are lumping in other stuff with the actual control of the air stream with the tongue. This is quite reasonable and even a valuable way to think about it - for example we can tongue with te, ta, to, tuh, de, da, etc. But it is also useful to separate out the action of the tongue and the rest of the vocal tract - for instance te and de have exactly the same tongue motion the difference being there is a vocalization at the same time the tongue touches the front top of the mouth.

So work on playing the tune slowly (or bits of it) and work on clean, fast transitions without tonguing (which can hide glitches in the transition at low speed but at high speed things just won't work).

You could also try the tried and true practice method of changing the rhythm - playing dotted eighth sixteenth instead of even eighths and then the other way around sixteenth dotted eighth. This method gives you more time to get things correct and also gives practice at the short length notes at the same time.

[pancelticpiper]

The trick with tonguing on a wind instrument is not interrupting the air flow too much.

You want to "play on the stream" as some people have called it.

On the Irish flute, I and many traditional players never tongue. Everything is played on the stream, on the flow. "Breath pushes" (as traditional fluteplayers have called them) done with the diaphragm are used to give rhythm to the playing, and can be used to make these octave passages pop out without any interruption of the airflow.

Of course that's not been the norm with traditional Irish whistleplayers! Who tongue quite a bit. Important though to keep the "flow" or the "stream" and not let the playing begin to sound staccato, like a Fife & Drum fifer.

You can practice smooth tonguing by playing a number of high A's and high B's in a row, all articulated with tonguing, but strive to make the separation as gentle as possible.

Listen to the playing of Pete Fountain, the great New Orleans jazz clarinetist. He's really really good at this, at articulating a series of notes of the same pitch while keeping the "flow".

[highwood]

My teacher and his teacher and ?? called this "playing on the wind" and "tonguing on the wind".

The trick to a 'smooth tongued phrase' is mostly the wind - tapering each note before starting the next with a gentle tongue. This is a simplistic explanation - it really needs the hands and voice as well as more words to explain. I think this is easier to execute on oboe, which is the instrument I learned it on, than whistle.

edit: I should add that the tapering is tricky on the whistle since a reduction in volume tends to be accompanied by a flattening of pitch which if anything is the opposite of what you want to happen - quieter and a little brighter is what you need

[Magickdancer]

Wow... I go away for a few days and look how chatty you get! Thank you for all the input so far... yes, I used the wrong word - legato - when I meant slow, or perhaps largo? Allegro I think means fast, so that's eventually what I need to get to if I want to play with others in my area. That's why I'm asking about speed, and these songs in particular, because they get played in sessions. If I want to play in sessions here, I need to learn these tunes. I already know a bunch of songs that no one else plays, which makes it difficult for me to play with others until I get my repertoire up.

To answer a couple of questions:

Final tempo: I was looking through Youtube to find a version of DM that wasn't lightning fast, so unfortunately I can't show you how fast I would like to play it.

On practice speed: I always work slow to practice a new piece and work up to tempo over time, for those that maybe assumed I was practicing faster than I should and are practicing bad habits. I know better than to do that, because speed does make up for a badly played tune.

Michael Mullen, a fiddler in my area, said something I think is important to remember - if you are playing for the general population, which I do on occasion, they aren't going to know that Irish Washerwoman, Drowsy Maggie, or Gravel Walk are old, overplayed tunes in sessions. They will hear something fun and familiar, clap along and enjoy the music, and give a wonderful appreciative applause at the end. So it's a win-win situation really... the audience connects with you, and these pieces are a little more difficult to play, right? So you as the player get your "workout", too, so to speak.

As far as the whistle goes, I've found that my generation will play the low note on Drowsy Maggie a little more easily than the Oz, and the only way I'm getting the low note with the Oz is if I tongue it, where it kind of "pops" out. When I play slower, yes, the note comes out after a bit on the Oz, but more like a car slowly shifting into gear instead of rapidly.

I am not a big fan of glottal stops so far, but will try them out more often to see where I can use them. And in general, I also don't use tonguing for all my notes, just where I want a separation or emphasis. I *have* been noticing more cuts and/or taps being played on Drowsy Maggie (via Youtube today), which I wonder about, and if it would help me some in this matter. But I just can't get around how quick the low note is, and could I really shove an extra "something" in time enough to make this darn low note work.

[bogman]

Tempo is subjective. You'll very often hear people say "nice playing but too fast". Generally they're wrong and are going by their own taste. If you listen to old recordings for dancing or top contemporary players you'll find the tempo to be surprisingly brisk if you try to play along with it. Personally I think tunes can be played at the pace you're in the mood for and I find the speed police pretty pathetic. Over a lifetime you're likely to play the same tune at many different tempos.

As far as tunes seen as "overplayed" go, it may be true in some locations that the general public are unaware that it's only standards being played but don't assume that. Certainly this side of the water there's plenty places with a pretty clued up audience when it comes to trad. They like the standard tunes too but if you play only the old favourites every week they're not necessarily going to blindly clap along.

Tounging adds good definition when played well. Though some of what Highwood says makes sense I disagree regarding tounging and think that with quotes like " The tongue does not play a part in this, and so is not needed - except in the case of whistles which do not want to make certain leaps, in this case sometimes stopping the air flow (say by tonguing) can help." he totally contradicts him/herself.

[pancelticpiper]

About tempos for Irish reels, traditionally they've been around 108-116. You'll never go wrong staying in that region.

There's a tendency with some sessions and some Irish stage bands to bump the tempos up far beyond that, to speeds far faster than the dances the Irish traditional music was created to accompany.
My wife listens a lot to a current Irish band, an excellent band with excellent players who play excellent tunes, but their tempos are so fast that to me the tunes all become somewhat tuneless, a pounding rhythmic jumble. All the intricacies and subtleties of the music are steamrolled over. It's the difference between playing the music for the music's sake, and playing the music for the musicians' sake, in my opinion.

Listen to the old Ceilidh bands, and the guys who played in the old Ceilidh bands, to hear the music at appropriate tempos.

There's a strange thing with Irish bands here in the USA, not bands made up from actual Irish players, but bands made up of Americans who were raised in different music traditions and are late-comers to Irish music: many of them play Irish Washerwoman, and many of them play it in a certain way, starting slow and continuing to speed it up until it's a nearly unrecognizable garble. They imagine that it's a "crowdpleaser", that it impresses people when they play a tune faster than it was intended to be played, indeed faster than the band is capable of playing it.

[Mr.Gumby]

Well, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance...

[dunnp]

Plenty of people on both sides of the pond tearing away at Tam Lin and Masons Apron at speeds they can't handle. And plenty of audiences clapping and fake Irish dancing to it as well.

[StevieJ]

Of course I agree with all the comments about the flow being the thing, and the fact that you should be able to jump octaves cleanly without tonguing. But one point about tonguing is that it is an aid to phrasing. I look at it rather as I would look at changes in bow direction when playing the fiddle - naturally, I suppose, since I had a pretty mature fiddle style before I ever paid serious attention to the whistle.

Fiddle players' bowing styles evolve to make the music swing. Passages like the ones being discussed here (rocking figures in Gravel Walk and Drowsy Maggie) require careful attention to where you change bows. Typical "cross-bowing" patterns are not what you might expect, with slurs across the beats.

When I began playing whistle I unconsciously transferred phrasing habits from fiddle to whistle via tonguing, but it was later on that I realized that some of these tonguing patterns are in fact used by a number of top whistle players.

A good example would be the slur-tongue-tongue pattern to deal with repeated notes in jigs (what Mary Bergin calls ha-ta-tas) that is gone into in some detail in the Brother Steve site.

And another example would be dealing with the rocking figures by dividing the notes into pairs or threes with the articulation on the off-beat.

For instance in Drowsy Maggie (left parenthesis indicates tonguing) (E2 B) (E d) (EB) (E | ~E2 B) (E AFDA)

Judging by the reaction this idea got in the ancient discussion I linked to above, many people find it difficult to get their head around this idea. That doesn't mean it doesn't work though - although it is just one approach among many that you can use on the whistle.

[highwood]

Tounging adds good definition when played well. Though some of what Highwood says makes sense I disagree regarding tounging and think that with quotes like " The tongue does not play a part in this, and so is not needed - except in the case of whistles which do not want to make certain leaps, in this case sometimes stopping the air flow (say by tonguing) can help." he totally contradicts him/herself.

he is a him if it makes any difference.

And I think that I was not understood if you think I contradict myself.

It was brought up that tonguing might help "hit all the notes", ' all' being in particular large downward leaps. My main point was that these leaps should be possible without the tongue, not that one shouldn't tongue, but that the use of the tongue should be dictated by phrasing/sound concerns and NOT because it is the only way you can get from a to G

I have no desire to further rehash what I have written - I'll just add that there are 'technical concerns' and 'the music', ideally the players technique or instrument doesn't limit musicality, if you want to slur a bunch of large consecutive leaps or tongue specific notes to bring out a musical line it should be possible.

[Ceili_whistle_man]

magickdancer,
panceltpiper describes (correctly) 'breath pushes' as a form of breath control used by traditional flute players. The term I am used to is 'pulsing' which uses the glottis to restrict, not stop as in a full glottal stop, the flow of air. Essentially the same thing really, just described differently.
Drowsy Maggie/Gravel Walk can be played very easily in a legato style while incorporating little pulses of air which accentuate the rhythm and flow.
I have just sat and tried playing Drowsy Maggie using a straight flowing legato style. There is no shape/bounce/lift to the tune when playing this way, and I find it very difficult to stop myself from using little pulses or pushes to give the tune it's lilt.
Try whistling the tune legato (using your mouth, not a whistle), feel what your mouth is doing to articulate the notes in the tune (it's not a 'song' by the way).
If you are whistling by making an 'O' shape with your mouth rather than whistling through your teeth the way some folk do, then you will find that you are using little contractions at the back of your throat to restrict the airflow. I do the same thing when playing my flute or whistle, the only difference is that I don't physically 'whistle' as such, but I do use the same glottal control as I would do if I was (mouth) whistling the tune.
Walking around whistling tunes that I am trying to learn is the way I map out the tune in my head, I then transfer that to the instrument, knowing that I already have the 'bare bones' of the tune and the way I am going to accentuate it using my breath.
Hope this helps you see that there is a big difference between glottal control and glottal stops. Hopefully it will help you attack the tune with a bit more certainty as to what you need to do to get the rhythm, flow and control you are after.
The speed will come with practice, enjoy.

[bogman]

Highwood - "My main point was that these leaps should be possible without the tongue, not that one shouldn't tongue, but that the use of the tongue should be dictated by phrasing/sound concerns and NOT because it is the only way you can get from a to G"

Couldn't agree more...