In case someone wasn't following that thread
"Hi Sigmund,
I'm not sure I have a key to learning but a number of things I did in order to improve were as follows (in no particular order)
- I'd find a way to slow down music recordings so that I could better appreciate the ornamentation being played. (I did this repeatedly on Matt Molloy's recordings - The Heathery Breeze album and the "Black" album). At the time there were no CD's, only Long Playing records (LP's) or tapes. I had a record player that would play LP's at 16 rpm's. That made it very easy to hear some of the fantastic long rolls Matt Molloy played on the B flat flute. Listening intensely to that music tuned my ears into how rolls and crans can sound. I later learned that there were many ways to play rolls and crans and Matt's are only one example of this.
- When I thought I had a technique or tune working well I would record it onto tape and listen back myself so that I could hear what it really sounded like. I found this very hard because at the time the only technology available was tape recorders and they were not very flattering in terms of the sound they recorded. Nevertheless, they were accurate and I was often disappointed at how I sounded on tape as opposed to how I thought I sounded. I still do this today as I have several musical blind spots where I think I may be playing a good setting of a tune and upon listening back objectively I often find that I get irritated at a particular phrase or the fact that I may play through a whole tune and use the same exact phrasing every time. From a players perspective I would feel I had done a good job on the tune however from a listeners perspective I would get bored or annoyed.
- If there were particular forms of ornamentation which I just could not get the way I wanted, I would experiment. I could never get my D crans to sound the way other flute players had them, I couldn't get G or C rolls at all and it would constantly frustrate me. Through experimentation, I have my own cranning technique and also ornamentation on the G's and C's which is nothing like a roll but I am happy with the sounds they produce. I realised that just because everyone else does something a certain way does not mean that I had to do the same.
- When I was too young to go out to sessions or at times there were no sessions I could get to, I would play along with records and tapes at home. It used to be so frustrating that some of the recordings were speeded up or slowed down to the point that I couldn't tune my flute with the recordings but I still remember the uplifting feeling of playing along with the Molloy, Peoples and Brady album and being able to keep up with them. The only problem I found with this was that it was hard to get my own setting of most of these tunes for a long time as I ended up playing them exactly like they were recorded. There were also a few quirky recordings at the time where you could adjust the balance either left or right and cut out different instruments - I think one of the Frankie Gavin early fiddle albums with Alec Finn was mixed in such a way that you could reduce the backing or the fiddle by adjusting the balance. This meant I could be playing with Alec Finn!
- I used to practise patterns of triplets - something along the lines of DEF, EFG, FGA, GAB, ABC, BCD....... all the way up and then all the way back down. This was to speed up my finger work. I had a number of patterns along with this which were normally taken from some tune which I was finding difficult and couldn't get. If I remember rightly, this started when I was trying to get the monstrous run Matt Molloy manages on the Moving Cloud (from The Heathery Breeze). He has another interesting series of runs on Drowsie Maggie where he cuts just about every note on the run. That was fun to get and great practise. The object of this was not to play like Matt Molloy, but rather to exercise my fingers.
- I used to have a couple of tunes which I felt were indicative of where I was with my flute playing. These were tunes which I had learned from recordings of Matt Molloy and Seamus Tansey. I would keep recording myself playing them every now and again and see how they had improved (or not as was sometimes the case). It's not a bulletproof way of measuring progression but I needed that feedback for my own sanity so that I could see that I was improving. It was a really positive experience because I didn't always hear the difference in my playing over a couple of months of practise but it was definitely noticeable when listening back to earlier tapes.
- For a flute player, breath control has a huge impact on playing. I was able to be use breathing exercises on my way to school and back to exercise my diaphragm. I'm not sure where you live but in Newcastle where I'm from, we would have street lights every 10/15 metres or so apart. I would try and breath out between the first and second, breath in between the second and third and so on. It wasn't really about taking the biggest breath in the world rather controlling the way in which air was coming in and going out. This way I was practising releasing and controlling my breathing which is a very useful skill for a flute player.
- I have already said elsewhere that I would be playing at every opportunity I got. Playing as often as you can (within reason) is so important during all stages of learning. It gave me the confidence to know that when I had to play in sessions or concerts, I knew what I was going to get from the flute (most of the time!).
- I used to also spend a lot of time just playing long notes to practise tone. The notes I used to concentrate on were bottom D's as I felt at the time they were important to get right - especially on the older flutes where you have to really work hard to get a clear, in-tune bottom D. When I was learning, I had (by modern standards) really poor flutes. I had to work so much harder to make the flute sound good. I wouldn't advise anyone to go out and buy a bad flute but I do think that in a strange way, this probably didn't do me any harm.
- If you need a second opinion on your playing to give you some objective feedback, pick someone whose opinion you trust. It always helps to get a second opinion sometimes and since there is so much technology to allow this to be done relatively quickly and inexpensively it may be an option.
- Set yourself objectives that you want to achieve and try to stick to them. I used to aim to learn at least one tune per week. I almost always beat that and some weeks I could digest and learn four or five tunes. Unfortunately when I was learning, my key metric was how many tunes I knew. This was partly because I liked attending sessions and did not like being left out! After a while I focused more on improving the quality of playing on the tunes I knew and really liked. I accepted that I wasn't going to get every tune as well as I wanted and decided that I would be better working on the tunes I liked playing rather than the ones I only learned so that I could play in sessions. What this provided me with was a core set of tunes I felt absolutely confident with. Over time, the standard of my overall repertoire improved accordingly. This discipline was partly instilled from competition playing but it was also something I valued immensely. The thoughts behind this for me were to get the best out of a tune for my playing at that time. I have listened back to some of these now and cringe but at the time I know that it was a good effort on my part and I learned something from the process.
- Listening to other players - not just flute players - was also critically important. For me, there is a natural path or flow to any particular tune. I found it easier to get this by listening to fiddle and accordion players and then trying to emulate their phrasing of tunes on the flute. I would try to find the natural "flow" of a tune and work out how to fit that with my own playing. Sometimes that involved simplifying what I am naturally trying to do with a tune, after all, a fiddle player or box player doesn't need to take breaths between phrases so there are always notes that need to be dropped/shortened in order to take breaths - the tricky thing is deciding which notes can be omitted and which ones you need to leave in so that the tunes melody is preserved.
- Something I only learned recently is how I navigate through a tune in terms of phrasing. It can often leave me gasping for breath just when I need it and I hate that more than anything. For this reason, I try to find a few different phrasings which allow me to get through the tune relatively comfortably without turning blue through lack of air at the end. It doesn't always work and for me it requires a lot of concentration and effort but it's definitely worth it when it works.
I'm going to stop now... I've vented enough. I hope some of this helps, not sure if it helped me!
Regards,
Tom"
