advice for moving beyond beginner level?

[retired]

I'm heading in a different direction. I play everyday for quite some time but I play the music that's in my head. I tried playing other peoples tunes, but that was like work and quickly got boring, and that almost led to putting down the whistle. I'm happy with my progress as I find playing a lot has just naturally led to improvement. Often I listen to tunes and then just play my own version and let it go wherever it takes me. Feels very cathartic ! I think about the 'original' players who made this music up and I imagine them saying ' why the hell do you want to copy me, do your own thing' . Guess what I'm saying is this thing of playing note for note of someone else's music doesn't seem like too much fun. For me listening to other's music and doing my own thing with it really puts a smile on my face. I'm only writing this as I see a number of posts from people who seem to be struggling to get it 'right'. I suspect getting it 'right' is at the expense of creativity. And yet I just asked for the dots/abc's to Little Wing. Got them, played with it a couple of times and then went back to what came out of me. Guess I think it's more important to hear the music that is inside of us than to be a copy of what has already been done.

[MTGuru]

And yet I just asked for the dots/abc's to Little Wing. Got them, played with it a couple of times and then went back to what came out of me.

Oh no no no, not so fast. Now you have to play it again and again until your brains fall out. I forgot to mention that's part of the deal when you ask for the dots. The M in "MTGuru" stands for Mephistopheles.

[ducks]

I'm new to whistles, but have been playing music more or less competently (usually, to be honest, less) for most of my life, and mostly on my own since I left school about a million years ago. One of the things I've always enjoyed doing is playing along to music I enjoy, not always playing the melody - harmonising is I think really useful, especially when it takes you away from playing notes at the same time as the melody (I'm sure there's a much better phrase for that). You end up forcing yourself into a better instinctive understanding of the music rather than trying to think it. It has to be said that this is easier with a fully-chromatic flute than a whistle where your tune choices can be slightly limited. But you do end up with a good feel for the music. I hope. It could be I'm just fooling myself.

I've only started using dots to find music I don't already know, if that makes any sense. Playing from memory I find most useful, because it makes me understand the music properly, and I find it to be a portable thing to do - I only need an instrument and to be able to sing the tune. I'm not beyond beginner level, but I'm hoping this gets me there.

[maki]

Maybe it's time to seek out formal instruction?
If not local there are resources on-line, or perhaps travelling to a work shop.

[retired]

I've been thinking about my statement above and I need to add to it.
Imagine early 1900's Ireland, a rural area, no electricity, no radio. The usual source of music was the Saturday evening get-together, village dance or session. You're a young aspiring musician, not quite up to playing with the band yet. So you listen and take home with you what you remember. Then you practice what you think you heard, or your interpretation. Eventually you get to sit in and play, but what comes out of you will probably be a little different. Similiar enough so they don't throw you out but with a new twist. The Irish have traditionally valued personal interpretation of music, otherwise it gets stale. To hear the same tunes played in the same way, note for note, week after week, kills the anticipation of waiting to hear something 'new'. When I hear all the jigs and reels, I suspect many of them are offshoots of fewer earlier ones - maybe someone in another village playing their own version of what they heard when visiting another, and it eventually becoming a 'new' tune. So where am I going with this ? I fear 'formal' training can dampen the spirit in music. I suspect the road less traveled - putting your own spin on what you've taken in - by ear, will more likely keep the spirit alive in music, rather than getting locked in to a rigid 'trad' that has ceased to blossom. Learning by being your own teacher.
I'm either on to something, or losing it - haven't decided which yet!

[Nanohedron]

I fear 'formal' training can dampen the spirit in music.

Not necessarily, IMHO. If you already know what you're about as regards traditional music, then formal - even classical - training can be a very useful tool. To learn that way doesn't mean that you will in fact have to buy the whole package, lock stock and barrel. It all depends on you.

I know one fiddler, classically trained, whose ITM playing doesn't have that unpleasant telltale classical "smell". What his training has given him is an arsenal of technique that can be used appropriately in traditional contexts, and the result in his case is always enjoyable to hear, very traditional-sounding, and he'll pull traditional-style variations out of his you-know-what like nobody's business. The crucial factor in his ITM playing (which is pretty much all he does, now) is that he always listens to traditional players for guidance, new and old, and learns the actual music and its esthetics from that. Meanwhile his formal training is in service to his goals; he has not placed himself in service to his formal training, as so often unfortunately happens.

So, there's plenty of hope.

[Jaime]

@retired... I hear what you are saying, but I'd really like to play with other people someday, so I'd like to learn tunes they at least have SOME chance of recognizing.

Coming from classical flute lessons, even the concept of playing by ear was very intimidating for me. I had always had dots in front of me, or at most, had memorized music by drilling with the dots. So just the fact that I am starting to be able to listen and echo back what I'm hearing is already an achievement. Like ducks, I'm appreciating that it makes music portable - no need for a music stand and piles of paper!

I've been lurking here long enough that I have heard at least some of the "how not to sound classical" advice - don't tongue much (if at all), don't use diaphragm vibrato much (if at all). Hard habits to break, but I'm workin' on it.

[pancelticpiper]

What got me moving beyond beginner level, back in the 70s, was getting together on a regular basis with a really good player, who served as a teacher and mentor.

I guess they started out more or less like lessons, except that he never charged me anything for his time!

We ended up forming a little band, with him and I on winds and a couple other guys on strings. My mentor knew how to play flute and pipes but his main instrument was an early Overton Low D whistle, the first I had seen.

This guy would teach us all tunes. It's how I learned the music. He was insistent that we never play the tune the same way over and over, but vary the tune as we went along. So I learned the art of variation in Irish music from him.

Anyhow, what would do you tremendous good would be to get together with a good player. My 2 cents.

PS yes to everything Jem the flute says.

[jemtheflute]

Hi Jaime - sorry for delayed response - have been pretty much away from 'puter for a few days, so only just got to view your vid clips.

First surprise - you're not a bloke (as expected from name/spelling thereof)!

Second one - you're playing R hand top, yet mention having had (presumably Bohm?) flute lessons - nothing "wrong" with that per se, just a surprise in context and perhaps longer term unhelpful if you ever decide to go back to flute.

There's nothing obviously amiss with your hold that might hold back finger fluency, nor general over-tenseness, save perhaps that you seemed to me in places to be rather holding onto the whistle with your top hand and being a little stiffened thereby. But certainly more relaxation and confidence in your support of the whistle would help. It ought to be quite secure simply balanced on your two thumbs and between your lips (not held by them, just resting) with the bottom little finger resting on the tube.

Try holding it thus and doing some practice taps, starting with the open C# and tapping T1 and working your way down the scale (and back up). I know there's old stuff here somewhere about how to "throw" your finger at the tube and bounce it off - no time right now to write it all out again, sorry. Then do the equivalent for cut, starting at the bottom and working your way up. Do both next-note-up cuts and the "other way" (cutting T3 for all lower hand notes and T1 for all upper hand notes) and also try cutting B1 for lower hand notes.... even if you adopt the T1 & 3 style for cuts, being able to do the others is useful in rolls, and will improve general flexibilty of both hands. Remember the cuts and taps are not to establish pitched notes in their own right (like classical grace-notes) but merely to break or preface (articulate) the main note, so the movements need only be quite small but need to be very quick, and they can't be that if there is any stiffness or tension extraneous to the actual muscle impulsion needed to make the motions. For taps it may help to think of your fingers as sprung to be open-at-rest like the platter keys of a Bohm flute, so to tap you have to push against that but as soon as you release the finger it will spring back up. For cuts, imagine your finger is a closed-standing key which you have to flick up, but its spring immediately closes it again. You can actually do this experimentally by using the B hand to tap a raised T hand finger down (with a glancing motion, like testing a hot surface) or to flick a closed one up from underneath (like flicking a paper pellet). Or have an assistant do it so you can use both hands. (I do this to show pupils, when I have any.) But remember, the springs are set as lightly as possible to reliably achieve their purpose.....

Oh, and the advice to try to get to play with better players who will tolerate you is very good - it is one of the best ways of advancing. Your general musical foundation looks to be fine to me.

[StevieJ]

I've been thinking about my statement above and I need to add to it.
Imagine early 1900's Ireland, a rural area, no electricity, no radio. The usual source of music was the Saturday evening get-together, village dance or session. You're a young aspiring musician, not quite up to playing with the band yet. So you listen and take home with you what you remember. Then you practice what you think you heard, or your interpretation. Eventually you get to sit in and play, but what comes out of you will probably be a little different. Similiar enough so they don't throw you out but with a new twist. The Irish have traditionally valued personal interpretation of music, otherwise it gets stale. To hear the same tunes played in the same way, note for note, week after week, kills the anticipation of waiting to hear something 'new'. When I hear all the jigs and reels, I suspect many of them are offshoots of fewer earlier ones - maybe someone in another village playing their own version of what they heard when visiting another, and it eventually becoming a 'new' tune. So where am I going with this ? I fear 'formal' training can dampen the spirit in music. I suspect the road less traveled - putting your own spin on what you've taken in - by ear, will more likely keep the spirit alive in music, rather than getting locked in to a rigid 'trad' that has ceased to blossom. Learning by being your own teacher.
I'm either on to something, or losing it - haven't decided which yet!

Imagining is just that - imagining. With what you don't know being supplied by your imagination, or your assumptions, of how things must have been. One can easily bark up wrong trees doing this.

The reality in early 1900s rural Ireland may have been very different from what you imagine. While it's quite true that tunes change through individual interpretations, and develop into new settings or new tunes through this process or through imperfect remembering, your account ignores another, equally important, phenomenon: a very strong desire in traditional musicians to learn, or teach, a given tune exactly as they had it from their teacher, or the musician that inspired them to want to learn it. You will come across this attitude time and time again, if you hear or read accounts by traditional musicians. Staying very close to the way a tune was played by others would not be regarding as stale or stifling, but a mark of respect for the tune, the local tradition, and musicians who went before. There would be changes and variations, of course, but generally at the level of small details.

The freedom to take liberties with a tune, or develop it, is granted to better players, those who really know the tradition, and their place in it. To me, being outside the tradition and not having a very solid grounding in it, and imagining you can help it to blossom by "doing your own thing" with tunes is... well, more imagination - or rather fantasy.

BTW I have no desire to be a "trad policeman" here or rain on your parade, etc. etc. I really have no objections to your taking your own path and playing anything the way that suits you. So please don't take offence - none is intended.

[retired]

Good stuff - more than one path to follow while still moving forward. This is a great forum.

[StevieJ]

Jaime, to add to what Jem says above in response to your video clips:

Leaving aside all the technical issues such as executing cuts - important as these are: in my opinion what will really move you beyond beginner level is getting a better handle on the rhythm of the different tune types.

It took me an awful long time to fully realize the point I'm about to make, a long time after I considered myself a decent player, in fact. When a good traditional player plays a jig, reel, hornpipe, etc., an important part of what they are doing - in addition to making a nice melody flow in an attractive way - is stating the rhythm very clearly. In fact, not so much stating it as smacking the listener around the head with it.

And this is what we all have to do. We can't just push the right notes out of our instrument, we have to smack listeners around the head with the fact that this is a jig, a hornpipe, or whatever. The good news is that I felt your hornpipe was reasonably convincing. The less good news is that I felt your jigs were less convincing - unconvincing in fact.

Now jigs are tricky - trickier than you think, as I wrote at some length elsewhere. Again, beyond any technical considerations, the main way to move up a level with jigs or any type of tune is to really internalize how good players make them sound. And of course there are many ways of making the different tune types sound good.

I firmly believe that once you know what they are supposed to sound like, you will quickly find ways of making this sound come out through your fingers, breath, intention, and so on. Learning techniques is all very fine, but without the intention to make a tune sound the way you know it should sound, techniques are of no great use.

So listen, listen, listen - and then start smacking people. Hard.

[y-nought]

Jiame- I agree with StevieJ about spending more time on the rhythm. My personal goal in whistle playing is to play well at sessions and I learned pretty early on that fiddler players aren't so much interested in how crisp your rolls are, or even if you play any at all. If it's session playing you're after, play the tunes with solid, lively rhythm and let the twiddley bits come later when they feel natural.

Ed

[y-nought]

Oh..and I forgot to say.....you play very well for a beginner. Lovely tone, good intonation, and you must have been practicing a lot because there is very little of the "unsureness" that most of us beginners have.

[Jaime]

This is fantastic feedback, thanks everyone.

@pancelticpiper, it would be awesome to find one or more experienced people to play with. I haven't found a local session here, but I need to think of how I could track down some other musicians.

@jemtheflute, it's not the most common spelling for a female 'Jamie' I know! I'm actually not playing right hand top, it's my el cheapo built-in web camera that flipped the image of me. I could have mentioned that if I had thought of it. Thanks for your response; I'll try the exercises you suggest.

@StevieJ, I think one thing that is going on with the jig rhythms is that I heard clips of some other beginners whose rhythms were overly monotonous to my ear (landing hard on ONE two three FOUR five six, every. single. measure.) Maybe I swung too far the other way and didn't hammer hard *enough* on the rhythm. I'll work on that.

@y-nought, thanks for the advice and the encouragement.