Seamus Egan

[m31]

Don't know if folks saw this one (Emily's reel):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu26Y0DXyT8

Anybody have ideas how he gets such a fluttery/staccato sound?

[monkey587]

Don't know if folks saw this one (Emily's reel):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu26Y0DXyT8

Anybody have ideas how he gets such a fluttery/staccato sound?

Search the forum for glottal stops. Also, he does a lot of "bubbly" finger stuff, which amounts to bouncing his fingers at times. You can also search the forum for the "bubbly fingerwork" topic to read a heated discussion of it.

It's not my favorite style, but I like what he does with his tone throughout and some of the variations.

[eilam]

"Anybody have ideas how he gets such a fluttery/staccato sound?"
it's all in the flute, if i had his flute, i'd too, kick ass.

[m31]

Don't know if folks saw this one (Emily's reel):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu26Y0DXyT8

Anybody have ideas how he gets such a fluttery/staccato sound?

Search the forum for glottal stops. Also, he does a lot of "bubbly" finger stuff, which amounts to bouncing his fingers at times. You can also search the forum for the "bubbly fingerwork" topic to read a heated discussion of it.

It's not my favorite style, but I like what he does with his tone throughout and some of the variations.

Hey, I'm all for circus tricks on the flute, so long as it still sounds good. . I'll do some more searching. Thanks.

[Whistlin'Dixie]

sigh..... I love Seamus Eagan....

I like how he ornaments. I love that bubbly sound! I also admire musicians with sparser ornamentation, particularly Paddy Cartey. Man, that is some melodic playing! Nice to have a range of styles!

As for the "Bounce", isn't that an ornament taught by June McCormack in her excellent new flute tutor?

FWIW

M

[Dale]

"Anybody have ideas how he gets such a fluttery/staccato sound?"
it's all in the flute, if i had his flute, i'd too, kick ass.

[crookedtune]

Killer avatar, Dale. I'm trying to make out if you cameo in it.

[johnkerr]

Anybody have ideas how he gets such a fluttery/staccato sound?

About 10 years ago I spent a week in flute class with Seamus Egan at the Augusta Irish Week. That may well have been the only time he ever taught flute at a summer school. Before that he had been teaching banjo (mainly if not exclusively at Augusta) and right after that Solas formed and he pretty much quit doing the summer school thing in favor of band gigs. Anyway, as you might have guessed, the class was packed - probably 20 students, which is about twice the optimal number. For about the previous five years at Augusta, I had been taking flute with Jack Coen, who has a rather minimalist style (to say the least) when it comes to ornamentation. So going from him to Seamus was extreme culture shock!

Anyway, over the course of the week Seamus showed us everything he does - and I mean everything. He had no choice. The class was like a bunch of vultures swooping down and fighting over a carcass. There was no way he could have hidden anything from us. There was even one guy who spent the entire week fixated on minute twitches in Seamus's lip. Typical exchange: "Seamus, did you do something with your lip there?" Pregnant pause, Seamus lost in thought. "Uhh, no, I don't think so." Quick retort: "Are you sure, because I could swear I saw a little twitch there right before you did that bubbly finger ornament." "Uhh, no, I don't think I did anything there at all." This was repeated about 20 times, each and every day. Seamus was a model of patience the whole week, but there's probably a reason he doesn't teach flute at summer schools any more. Eventually he'd have to snap and go postal on the class, and imagine how bad that would look in the end-of-the-week evaluation forms.

So, by the end of the week I bet he'd showed us 20 or more discrete ornaments/tweaks/blurps or whatever you want to call them. For each one, he went around the room and all of us were able to reproduce most if not all of them on an individual basis. But could we ever put them all together and end up sounding like him? No way, not even if we'd had Grey Larsen there as our own personal scribe to write down and categorize it all for us and design our own customized 12-point practice plans for the next five years. Maybe a few of us came away with one or two new ornaments that we're able to stick into the odd tune now and then, but that's about it.

I guess my point is that there is no simple answer to your question about how Seamus Egan gets his sound. I doubt that he'd ever even thought about it himself before the bunch of us descended on him that week and tried to pull it out of him bit by bit, and he probably hasn't thought about it since. (If he has, it's probably been as a recurring nightmare of vultures circling for the kill, and he wakes up in sweat-soaked sheets, shuddering. Indeed, he may still be in therapy over this, a decade later. Perhaps that's even why Solas really doesn't play Irish music any more...) The only possible answer to the question of how Seamus gets his sound is that he just does. So don't waste your energy trying to over-analyze it. Instead, develop your own sound. If you hear some little bit from his playing that you like, then get hold of a video or tape and slow it down to watch and listen to over and over again until you figure it out and can reproduce it yourself. Slow it down to half speed. Play it backwards to see if Paul is really dead. It's okay to do this, to obsess over picking up some detail from a great player's bag of tricks. It's a time-honored tradition in fact - people have been doing it since the days of the 78. But the thing that you're supposed to learn from this exercise is that you shouldn't be trying to pick up some great player's sound, because you can't. You can only ever get pieces, which you will then need to figure out how to put together into your own sound. And once you learn that, you'll realize that you can only spend so much time trying to pick up each piece, because that's actually the easiest part. Putting it all together is the endless struggle.

[crookedtune]

Very refreshing and well-constructed post, John. Lots of wisdon there. (seriously)!

[Loren]

"Anybody have ideas how he gets such a fluttery/staccato sound?"
it's all in the flute, if i had his flute, i'd too, kick ass.

Loren

[chas]

Slow it down to half speed. Play it backwards to see if Paul is really dead.

LOL! He's not quite dead yet. Will soon be a few hundred million poorer, though.

[johnkerr]

"Anybody have ideas how he gets such a fluttery/staccato sound?"
it's all in the flute, if i had his flute, i'd too, kick ass.

The amazing thing is that he's able to do what he does without hoseclamps. He has all the cowbell, and then some...

[Loren]

It's just cause he bought the right holes.


Loren

[jim stone]

"Anybody have ideas how he gets such a fluttery/staccato sound?"
it's all in the flute, if i had his flute, i'd too, kick ass.

It's amazing playing, but a bit busy to my ear, anyway.
I'm curious as to what flute he's playing. Looks like it's made of
cocus. Anybody know?

Just so I can decline in case
I'm offered one, ya know.

[crookedtune]

I'm curious as to what flute he's playing. Looks like it's made of
cocus. Anybody know?

Just so I can decline in case
I'm offered one, ya know.

Yeah, the last thing you want to do is get stuck with one of those busy-sounding flutes!