Ever have something just click right?

[Jim_B1]

I have to preface this by saying I am pretty dense musically. I think that's why I keep trying to get better at it. Kind of like those video games where you just keep pumping quarters in even though you keep getting killed at the same spot. You keep hoping to get past it so you can get killed just a little further on in the game. Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus

Anyway, I've been out of the groove for maybe 4 - 5 years (Finished my Masters degree, got married, bought a house, etc) and other then the occasional whistle or flute playing spree around the holidays or St. Patrick's Day I really haven't kept up too much. I had attained some level of skill prior to that but really advanced beginner/beginning intermediate is about it...

About a year and a half ago I decided to try and learn guitar. (I'm not good at it but I'm having fun so what the heck.) I have been playing a lot of Bluegrass lately and decided that some of those songs would probably sound good on the flute so I tried a few and they really do sound pretty nice lots of stuff in G which is doable with a D flute. So I started playing the whistle and flute more over the last week or two.

I am really out of shape for flute playing. The last week I've been out of breath after a few minutes and second octave was so shaky it sounded like I was doing everything with vibrato. Whistle playing was better... I'm hoping to be back up to speed over the next month or so. Got to build back my lung capacity and some dexterity.

Tonight I think things are finally starting to click again. I was able to practice for 20 minutes or so without getting too badly winded (muscles around my diaphragm are a little cramped now though and I have to relearn how to loosen my shoulders while playing) and was able to run though quite a few of the tunes I know without too many glitches. I forgot how much fun and how labor intensive the flute is

Just figured I'd post it out there. I'm sure there are a few of you who understand. I just can't explain stuff like this to non-players. They just don't get it

[benhall.1]

Good stuff Jim! Thanks for sharing, and keep it up. I'm off flute for a while, believe it or not because I've injured my leg. I can still play my whistle whilst lying on the settee, but I'm a bit afraid of how hard it's going to be to get back into flute in a few weeks time, so it's nice to know it can be done.

[loic]

keep it up Jim ! oh and I'd be curious to listen how bluegrass tunes sound on a flute

[Jim_B1]

Here's a first attempt. I made it last week. I was just trying to see how it sounded.

The song is Banks of the Ohio. It's a slow Bluegrass tune in G. Nothing fancy, and little by way of ornamentation. I start to lose my breath towards the end.

I don't quite know how to use Garageband yet so I'm not sure how to clean it up any and you can hear the metronome pretty loudly on the recording.

http://www.elementalit.com/Music/BanksOhio-Flute.mp3

[Mettadore]

Playing Old Time and Bluegrass (and Roots Country and Stringband, etc) is one of the main reasons I started playing the Irish flute. I was playing the banjo and guitar (and a few other instruments) and started wondering why there was no flute- given than much of the music is so solidly grounded in the old Celtic and Trad Isles traditions. It's like the flute just didn't make it across the pond for some reason, so I thought it'd be fun to learn it, and then bring it into a bunch of Bluegrass and Old Time sessions where it seems like it could ride the melody line in the way the fiddle often does.

[LorenzoFlute]

http://www.buffalocastle.com/

[crookedtune]

Playing Old Time and Bluegrass (and Roots Country and Stringband, etc) is one of the main reasons I started playing the Irish flute.

Me too. But what happened with me is that I fell equally in love with Irish traditional music. Five years later, I'm still unable to use flute or whistle to any real advantage in American trad, and equally unable to make the 5-string banjo sound natural in Irish trad. I'm also not impressed with most attempts by others to do the same.

Just a retro kind of guy, I guess.

[Jim_B1]

I think maybe the trick is to remember that anytime you are using non-traditional instruments in a defined genre (and Bluegrass has been defined to death ) you are no longer in that genre. I would say that attempts to add piano, flute, etc to Bluegrass fall into Newgrass more. It may sound good or at least different but it's not Bluegrass as defined by Bill Monroe so a lot of Bluegrass players just won't accept it as part of "their" genre. Irish trad is much the same. I guess that's why you end up with fusion and new age versions of a lot of traditional music.
Just an observation...

[Mettadore]

I'm much more grounded in more traditional Old Time music, of which Bluegrass- at least "as defined by Bill Monroe"- is actually something of an outlying subset. The more traditional forms of Old Time music (such as the stringband and even some roots country) is much more centered in the Celtic tradition than is Bluegrass and a very good candidate for an exploration of Irish Flute's participation while still being quite firmly in the genre.

In fact, after playing Old Time music for years, and only after deciding to learn the Irish flute, I learned something interesting: Far from being absent, the whistle and fife, if not so much the low flute, actually does have a very strong history in the old Stringband tradition- and there are still fife and flute players in the south who play stringband music. For a couple examples: I actually think one of the (now very old) players actually played with the Carolina Chocolate Drops in concert (Though, that may have been more African Fife and Drum- which is not really in the Celtic-derived genre very strongly), and The 2nd South Carolina String Band, a Civil War re-enactment band, actually has both a whistle/fife and a flute player.

Still, I do agree with Jim that Bluegrass is a very solidly defined genre, where little deviation is allowed. I've actually had people get very angry with me for bringing an open-backed 5-string banjo to a Bluegrass jam because "That's not a Bluegrass banjo!" Childish and ridiculous if you ask me, but I don't actually see myself going to many Bluegrass jams with my flute- though I still want to try.

Honestly, there is the threat that I never make it even to Old Time/Stringband music, because, like crookedtune, I've fallen a bit too in love with straight up Celtic traditional and may never see my way out of this glorious maze!

[LorenzoFlute]

The link I posted above leads to the website of the album Buffalo in the Castle, that features a mixture of irish traditional and old time appalachian music. One of the musicians is Desi Wilkinson, one of my favourite irish flute players. Despite I usually don't like music fusion, in this case the two cultures are close enough to each other (obviously, since one derived from the other one) and the musicians were well able to mix them in a very nice album.

[loic]

http://www.buffalocastle.com/

I saw Desi last summer, he told me he plays old-time only with the fiddle, cause for him old-time sounds better on fiddle.

It's funny because Desi uses one and only one instrument for one musical genre : fiddle for old-time music, flute for irish music, clarinet for breton music.
He said he doesn't want to play irish music on fiddle in order not to 'ruin' his old-time bow skills !

btw Buffalo Castle is a damn good CD !

[sbfluter]

They won't let me play a flute at the old time jam I go to. Strings only, they say.

[LorenzoFlute]

But he plays the flute on most tracks

[Mettadore]

Diane, That's a shame, really.

In defense of picky people everywhere, it might just be a way to protect from musical ridiculousness. I've been to an Old Time jam where someone brought an oboe (worth a shot, I guess) and another where showed up with a digideroo. Seriously. They tried (without understanding what we meant by "it's not in the same key") and we didn't invite them back. That's going pretty far down Jim's path of "not in the same genre." They may just not want to try to protect the jam and make sure it doesn't become a stoner drum circle. That happened to one of mine, and eventually the 4 of us who actually wanted to play music broke off to another night.

Anyway, it's a fine line between "actually playing Old Time music" and "getting stoned in a drum circle." We actually started closing our jam off to prevent this. Later, we were approached by a person who played cello and initially said "no way." But then a couple of us got together with him another time to "feel him out" and it turned out really well. He didn't try to play classical cello at all- there's no "old time" cello, but he worked it in masterfully, mostly by just sitting and not playing (amazing how many people don't realize that not playing is often a really good idea), he would often come in quite a bit in ballads as a depth filler. It was beautiful.

My point is that I see it both ways. A standard "no thank you" answer is an easy way to try to protect a musical (i.e. quality) standard, but it's also exclusionary, and that's a shame. It'd be better if they were more open to saying something like "we don't want a flake, but if you can honestly come and hang with us within the framework of this music, we'll try to let you."

This is leaving Flute-topic land. I'll get off my musical soapboxen now.

[fearfaoin]

They won't let me play a flute at the old time jam I go to. Strings only, they say.

Man, why are old-time jams so fraught?