keeping in time

[okewhistle]

My main struggle playing Irish music is getting the rythmn right. It seems especially hard on the whistle because it's not a perscussive instrument and you can easily wander about all over the place. When I am with other people who are confident about how the thing should sound I'm fine but when I'm on my own or expected to give the lead I struggle.

I have a drum machine but its set rythmns don't seem to include anything suitable for jigs or reels. Does anyone know of a web site where there is just a rythmic backing you can play along to? Or any other ideas?

Steve

[GaryKelly]

Practice, and lots of listening to the music. The more you listen, the more you'll internalise the rhythms and tunes. Really, there's nothing better than listening.

I don't know of any websites that provide 'free' backing tracks, but there are plenty of tutorial CDs out there.

These are fine, but not totally ITM... they include English and Scottish tunes, as well as old-timey:

http://www.tri-folk.me.uk/

Hope this helps!

[BD]

There is a website called BBC Radio 2 which has a Virtual Session in which you can play along with some tunes. It has reel, jigs, hornpipes, waltzes, and tunes of other various types. The URL address is: http//www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sessions/. I have used this in the past and it is fun. It also provides the sheet music. I hope you find this useful and like others have already told you: listen, listen, listen...[/quote]

[Impempe]

My main struggle playing Irish music is getting the rythmn right. It seems especially hard on the whistle because it's not a perscussive instrument and you can easily wander about all over the place. When I am with other people who are confident about how the thing should sound I'm fine but when I'm on my own or expected to give the lead I struggle.

I have a drum machine but its set rythmns don't seem to include anything suitable for jigs or reels. Does anyone know of a web site where there is just a rythmic backing you can play along to? Or any other ideas?

Steve

You could try a great free software program Acid Xpress that gives you masses of options with the ability to put in different time signatures as well as tempo, key etc. I downloaded it recently (rather large but worth it) from http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/download/freestuff.asp
Thanks to someone's recent post - I forget who, who pointed me in this direction, I now have even less time on my hands and am playing around with rythms, sounds and more downloads, and all in the name of whistle playing.

Ian

[ChrisA]

Or any other ideas?

There are several listening tutors out there, notably L.E. McCullough's 121 Favorite
Irish session tunes and the MadForTrad CDs. If you got one of these, and learned to
play a few of each tune type in unison with the CD, you'd have little trouble with the
rhythm for future tunes of the same type.

I have trouble imagining a constant rhythm backing that can fit any actual tune... I do use
a metronome for 1-click-per-beat sometimes, but I never have a beat inside a group of
notes. It would drive me crazy to have something banging away a standard jig 'beat' bip-ta-bap on a bar where I hold a note for the whole dotted quarter value, and so on. (This is why
good bodhran players need to actually know the tunes they're accompanying.)

[Whitmores75087]

Forget drum machines or complicated metronomes. Use a cheap metronome that just clicks out the beat with no emphasis...just click click click. Set it at a speed you can play with and off you go.

[okewhistle]

Thanks everyone.

Someone told me that as the tunes are usually dance tunes learning to dance them helps. I certainly find barn dance tunes easy, probably for that reason.