Practice: Listening Speed

People tend to discuss the speed at which they play dance music quite a bit, but lately I've been thinking about the speed at which I can listen.

Before I started learning to play the whistle a lot of dance music sounded like a blur to me. It was too fast for my mind to follow. Learning about different rhythm types helped a lot since I could follow the structure of the tune. So did counting reels in cut time.

But more than anything it seems to be a matter of practice. I'm learning to "listen quickly." The more active listening I do, the better I can follow fast tunes, and the more satisfying the listening becomes for me.

Practice: Stuck in Your Head

When I started learning to play the whistle I chose tunes based on what other people I knew were playing and which tunes I liked at the moment. But lately I've been using a different strategy, with great results.

Ever hear of an earworm? It's just a word for songs which get "stuck in your head." Not surprisingly, this started happening with tunes as I started listening to more and more Irish and Scottish music. One day, unable to get "Harvest Home" out of my head, I decided to put my affliction to good use and learned the tune. I found I was able to memorize it in about half an hour or so, instead of the large number of days it had taken me to memorize tunes the past.

Since then, I've seen "earworms" as opportunities. Whether or not a tune is on the list of tunes I think I want to learn soon, when it gets stuck in my head I work on learning the tune. I find that having the tune cycling in my head means that I'm less likely to have my own mistakes confuse me as to how the tune actually goes. This is part 1 of the basic two-step process for learning a tune.

Shows: 2006 Dublin Irish Festival Entertainment Announced

The Dublin Irish festival is, I think, the best ITM entertainment value in the midwest U.S. It's simply amazing how many great bands you get to see for eight bucks a day, when you'd have to pay several times that amount to see any of these groups individually. I also got to interview Colin Melville of the Tannahill Weavers. Here's my roundup of posts on last year's festival, for those who couldn't make it.

The festival just announced this year's entertainment lineup. See you there!

Whistles: Larry's Low Whistle

I mentioned earlier that Bardic Circle is a beginner-friendly session. Here's a shining example: Larry Shicks, one of the guys from that session, showed up one day and told me he'd made me a whistle. So I bought him a pint, which seemed like a good way to say thank you. That's it on the right, and there's a close-up of the fipple at the end of this post. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

The whistle is a low D made of PVC, with a wooden fipple. Note the offset finger holes and decorative paint. It's pretty quiet, requires a good bit of air, and has very little back pressure. The sound is reminiscent of a pipe organ or pan pipe.

I'm having a somewhat tough time getting a great tone out of it consistently. This is my first low whistle, so it could be just my own inexperience. The air requirements and back pressure are very different from my soprano whistles. Reaching the holes is no problem; standard grip works better for me than piper's grip, though. The only thing I have a hard time doing is keeping my bottom hand pinkie on the whistle.

Practice: Methods of Memorization

One of the things I like about learning to play the tin whistle and Irish and Scottish music is that my constant need to memorize new tunes (and songs, as I like to sing) is giving me a real mental workout. My day job also requires me to remember large amounts of information, but memorizing tunes seems to work a different part of the brain. Research indicates that "mental exercise" can reverse the decline in brain function in old age, so the more the better!

I notice, though, that the method I use to learn a tune has changed since I took up the instrument last year. Previously I would play the tune through until I no longer required notation (I wasn't doing much ear learning at the time). Now, however, I find it much more effective to learn a measure or a phrase and then build on that, one piece at a time. This seems more effective both when learning from score or by ear for me.

I spoke to a fiddler who uses a third method. He learns the first note of each measure or phrase — the "outline" of the tune — and then fills in the rest.

I don't know if any one of these methods is "best," but it's interesting that there are different ways to do the same thing.

Seisiún: Slow Session

I went to a new (for me) session yesterday. It's a slow session, and very different from Bardic Circle, the other session I attend.

Bardic Circle started life as a beginner's session and is still very beginner-friendly, but many if not most of the regulars have now been playing together for several years, have a pretty wide repertoire, and the tunes are not generally played slowly. I spend most of my time at Bardic Circle sessions listening instead of playing, which doesn't bother me at all.

At this session, however, everyone is studying the same 20 or so tunes, and I happened to know six or seven of them. The group played, in general, much slower than Bardic Circle. We also did some ear learning exercises, so I ended up playing more than I listened. I'm going to work on learning some of the other tunes that group plays.

Overall it was a nice experience.

Technique: Bottom Hand Pinkie

I've been experimenting with putting my right (bottom) hand pinkie finger on the bottom of the whistle, below the bottom hole. My teacher had recommended that I do this ages ago, but it never felt natural, and putting my third finger down on the bottom hole when I play a C♯ (or sometimes B, etc.) always seemed to work well enough.

Until The Atholl Highlanders. Playing A-c♯-e repeatedly is just a lot easier when I don't have to have my bottom-hand third finger moving. And similarly for some other parts of that tune.

Update: I received a suggestion in private email to try a different technique with The Atholl Highlanders, which helps even more. But I still find the pinkie helpful in this and other tunes.

It still doesn't feel quite natural, but it's a lot easier to play some phrases, and I think I can keep the whistle steadier this way.

This is (temporarily, I hope) somewhat confusing at the moment. I'm having to relearn certain passages to make optimial use of the new grip and I'm tending to grab too hard with my right (bottom) thumb and pinkie right now. But when I do it right I'm finding that some passages just come out a lot cleaner, like the second to last measure of both parts of Harvest Home.

R.I.P. Francie Mooney

Some sad news from IRTRAD-L:

Francie Mooney (Proinsias Ó Maonaigh), died last night (Tuesday 28th March) at 8pm in his home in Cois Cladaigh, Gaoth Dobhair, Donegal. Husband to Kitty, father to Mairéad, Gearóid and Anna, a teacher, writer, footballer, actor and musician. A warm and wise man, generous with his knowledge and music. He was a teacher and inspiration to very many musicians and singers. It was Francie who gave Altan their name and their reason to play music. Francie will be buried in his home parish after 11am Mass on Thursday 30th March. "Slán, slán go fóill, a Dhún na nGall, a chondae shéimh gan smálIs dod fheara brea in am an ghá, nár umhlaigh riamh roimh Ghall. Tá áit i mo chroí do gach fear 's gach mhnaoi, is gach páiste beag agus mór, Atá beo go buan, gan bhuairt, gan ghruaim. Fá Ghleanntáin Ghlas Ghaoth Dobhair". Tom Sherlock

WWW: ITM Streaming Radio

Here are some links to free, streaming radio programs featuring Irish music:

• Fiddler Liz Carroll interviewed by NPR's Melissa Block. She doesn't play a lot, but she does demonstrate a couple of fiddle ornamentations. Available in Real or Windows Media formats.
• Clare FM has some music shows througout the week (Windows Media format) and, better still, downloadable MP3s of their trad programs.
• RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta is in Irish, but just click the little loudspeaker icon towards the bottom of the page to listen in Real format.
• "Atlantic Weekly, part II," is a once-a-week program airing at 10:03 a.m. on Saturdays. It's in Charlottesville, NC, which makes it GMT - 5:00 for those of you not in U.S. Eastern time. Click "Listen live" at the top of the page for a Windows Media stream.

People who don't want their computer brought to a standstill by Real's invasive software might want to consider Real Alternative for listening to the Real format streams.

Tunes: Rhythm History

Alan Ng has been plotting the frequency of tune rhythms recorded each decade:

Click the image to access his full report which includes the top ten tunes per decade and more.