Slurring, tonguing and the lazy/undecided mind?

[Peter Duggan]

Please don't put notes into my mouth.

I didn't!

Sometimes your accent needs working on. Maybe you have a Scottish one?

Dunno what that's supposed to mean but, if you're criticising me for disagreeing* with your 'as long as it isn't all tonguing like a recorder and you've got some other ornaments in there, you'll be fine', then I still disagree!

*Generically, rather than specifically with your playing (which I've never heard).

[david_h]

I was thinking of this discussion when listening to your strathspey recording Peter, and wondering how much your recorder and pipes experience had helped in making that work so well.

[Peter Duggan]

Um, but it didn't 'work so well' (being fatally flawed for another reason altogether)...

Realised a day after making and posting it that I'd let my fingering get sloppy through the d/c/B/A/ F<D passages (which were actually sounding d/c/B/A/ G<D even though I'd been so sure I was landing the F#s on time that I'd heard them), took it down to redo (still pending)* and can't believe I missed that!

As for what it might have gained from those other instruments then, yes, I guess my recorder and classical flute training has given me quite an armoury of tonguing techniques (still requiring wise/appropriate employment here), but I've really not been playing the pipes long enough to claim much experience there.

*Desperately hoping no-one's saved it!

[david_h]

I meant that the rhythm was working. I don't know the tune so I didn't notice anything wrong.

I recently realised that there are dozens of dance tunes that I have learned since I started on the flute that I have never played on the whistle (I don't take it to sessions). I gave them a go and discovered that instead of tongueing rather a lot as I did before I was playing them almost completely legato as I would on the flute. There is a lot that doesn't work when done like that but the break seems to have provided a 'reset' that allows me to look at tonguing afresh - at just the time I am also starting to use it more on the flute.

[Peter Duggan]

I meant that the rhythm was working.

Yep, think it quite possibly was (hence the 'fatally flawed for another reason altogether'!), so keen to get it recorded and uploaded again soon.

[Infernaltootler]

Pete, lets not fall out. I'm not having a go at your playing at all, hence the smiley face which I deliberately put in to try and show I was joking. (I don't really like smilies much).

I'm not expressing myself very clearly.

I think you need to try ornamentation combined with listening. As you learn the ornaments you put them in, throw them in even, until they begin to feel natural. If you are listening plenty you will find a place to put them that sounds right.

Once you have learnt to play, you can only play like yourself. No one else can play like you and try all you like you won't play like anyone else either. A lot of it is in the ornamentation. A lot but not all.

a wise man once told me, Either do or do not. There is no try. Can't remember where I met him.

edit to say I'm far too shy to put up any of my playing at the moment. But I think you are right to prompt me. I'll have to give it some thought. Last thing I put up was horrible!

[Peter Duggan]

Pete, lets not fall out. I'm not having a go at your playing at all

Never thought you were, but afraid I did think (my reading of your words!) you were having a go at the way I'd expressed myself in words here...

I think you need to try ornamentation combined with listening. As you learn the ornaments you put them in, throw them in even, until they begin to feel natural. If you are listening plenty you will find a place to put them that sounds right.

Not sure if this is addressed to me or generically to anyone (this personal/generic 'you' thing!), but hoping the latter...

edit to say I'm far too shy to put up any of my playing at the moment. But I think you are right to prompt me.

No intention to prompt at all (I just don't buy this 'have to post clips to have valid opinions' thing)! So my point about never having heard you was intended solely to make it clear that I wasn't making assumptions about your playing.

[lemccullough]

I once taught an adult tinwhistle student who’d been playing 3 years or so and didn’t yet sound very good. He’d hit a low plateau early on and just never got any better at rendering a coherent tune. He kept asking me to "make him better".

Yet each week, as I tried to show him basic ornamentation techniques, he would go on and on about how ornamentation wasn’t necessary to play Irish Traditional Music. How it was just “showing off”.

Excuse after excuse after excuse rolled out of him, apparently so he could justify in his mind his continued desire to not learn these ornaments. His desire to not learn to properly play the music.

No matter how many intellectual arguments he made about ornamentation, it really all came down to Fear.

The better I got to know him, the more this element of fear came to the fore. According to him, he wasn’t very successful at anything he wanted to do in his life, from work to personal relationships.

Learning the whistle (and not learning it well) was just the latest symptom of trying to do something he liked and not doing it well.

He embraced the failure. He let failure and fear define his whistle playing, his self-identity, his life.

The fear of being the best he could be, the fear of pursuing new creative paths, the fear of letting himself become deeply immersed into a thrilling sensory world of sound that could positively change his life and the lives of others.

Ornamentation is part of the grammar and expressive language of Irish Traditional Music. If someone’s afraid of making the effort to employ ornamentation, they should ask themself, why are they bothering to play at all?

Fear needs to be added as Number 8 on The Seven Deadly Sins list. It’s an illness. We all have it to some degree, and the key to living a sane human life is to eliminate it as much as possible from everything you think and do.

So start with what you can control.

Start with your tinwhistle, that simple little six-hole tube you use to breathe out your essence into the world. Cause that IS what you’re doing when you play.

And what You are you putting out there?

A You that’s tentative and afraid of stepping “out of line”?

Afraid of what “people might say”?

Afraid of being “a show-off”?

Or a You that boldly explores to the fullest the tinwhistle’s capacity for challenge and innovation and self-fulfillment.

No doubt about it, ornamentation is a tough skill to learn and get right. So is tying your shoes, learning to swim, being a parent, making informed choices about who you vote for.

Banish the fear. Don’t make excuses. Learn your ornaments.

[Peter Duggan]

Dunno who all this 'try ornamentation combined with listening' (Infernaltootler), 'afraid of making the effort to employ ornamentation' and 'Learn your ornaments' (lemccullough) stuff is aimed at but, if it's me (?), there's a huge misunderstanding about my OP, my subsequent contributions to the thread and the nature of my self-doubts (long-term experienced but self-critical player consciously pursuing stylistic changes but never even hinting at an aversion to ornaments).

So, OK, perhaps it's this 'generic you' again, but I'm not convinced when both Infernaltootler's and lemccullough's latest posts appear to be replies to mine, so TBH find myself quite narked by their misguidedly patronising tone!

[hans]

Peter, I don't think it was directed at you at all. Just general statements.
And lemccullough is defending himself, which is fair enough when being accused of being a "show off" and overdoing ornamentation.

[Infernaltootler]

Peter, it isn't all about you. You take everything I say as a personal comment and it simply isn't.

[hans]

It's a pity in the English written language a capitalised "You" is not used to address a person, in distinction from a general "you", only a capitalised "I".

[lemccullough]

Check out a site called Creativity Post (http://www.creativitypost.com) that has many good articles on the subject of overcoming obstacles to achieving creative goals.

Also worth reading: ART AND FEAR by David Bayles and Ted Orland. http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fear-Observat ... 0961454733

“Artists get better by sharpening their skills or by acquiring new ones; they get better by learning to work and by learning from their work. They commit themselves to the work of their heart and act upon that commitment. So when you ask, ‘Why doesn’t it come easily for me?’, the answer is ‘Because making art is hard.’”

Doing ornaments is hard. Making the initial commitment to master them is harder.

Here’s to more music in 2013.

Best,
L.E. McCullough

[FascinatedWanderer]

Check out a site called Creativity Post (http://www.creativitypost.com) that has many good articles on the subject of overcoming obstacles to achieving creative goals.

Also worth reading: ART AND FEAR by David Bayles and Ted Orland. http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fear-Observat ... 0961454733

“Artists get better by sharpening their skills or by acquiring new ones; they get better by learning to work and by learning from their work. They commit themselves to the work of their heart and act upon that commitment. So when you ask, ‘Why doesn’t it come easily for me?’, the answer is ‘Because making art is hard.’”

Doing ornaments is hard. Making the initial commitment to master them is harder.

Here’s to more music in 2013.

Best,
L.E. McCullough

Perhaps my reading comprehension skills have slipped markedly since the days they were kept sharp by standardized testing, but I don't think anyone here is disputing the necessity of ornaments or the worthiness of the goal of striving to do them better.