Category Archives: Workshops

FluteFling Online December 2020 Roundup

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FluteFling Online December 2020 Roundup

It was wonderful to see such a great turn-out for our first ever FluteFling Online event.

Claire Mann took us through some fine tunes over four workshops on two consecutive Saturdays and there is a group recording of everyone playing together to look forward to as well.

Claire herself was in Newton Stewart in Dumfries and Galloway, Pete Saunders did a great job controlling the technology from Aberdeenshire, while Sharon Creasey in Dumbarton, John Crawford in Aberdeen and myself in Edinburgh were also on hand to support. We had much of the country covered and then people attended live from Canada (a 5.30 am start!), USA, Germany, Sweden, France, Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Spain — apologies if I have missed anywhere — and more people accessing it through recordings afterwards, including one person from Japan.

We are already thinking of when we will do our next one, so make sure you are signed up to the newsletter to hear about it first.

Event Resources

The Event Resources archive, including recordings of the workshops themselves, will remain accessible to all ticket holders until 9 January, which is also the date for submitting videos for the group video. Once this is edited it will become available in January.

Most questions were answered either in the workshop or by chat in the messages, which have also been archived in the Event Resources.

Someone new to Scottish traditional music asked for some useful tune collections. It’s something we should maybe address more fully, but here are a few, plus some others:

 

FluteFling Online December 2020

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Claire Mann to deliver FluteFling Online 12 & 19 December

FluteFling’s first venture into online events takes place in just a week’s time when Claire Mann will deliver four 45 minute workshops on Zoom over two consecutive Saturdays. The response has been terrific but luckily we are not limited by space and places are still available.

Tailored to flute, whistle and low whistle, Claire has helped to shape the workshop mini series to provide a way for people to focus on their music and instrument over three weekends and more. Uploads of Claire’s teaching material — both PDF sheet music and recording — go up this weekend, followed by the workshops themselves, which will be recorded. With time to go over the tunes, work on the ideas and techniques AND revisit the workshops, this is a close but realistic alternative to an immersive weekend away.

Although there won’t be any sessions, there is the additional option of recording some of the material covered by Claire for a group video, to be submitted for compilation by the end of December. That’s almost a month of digging deep into the music after the extended fallow period we all currently have had to endure. The video will be completed and made available later in January, giving us all something to look forward to in 2021.

It promises to be a memorable experience and much needed by many of us traditional musicians. How can you be sure? Well, all of the organisers have all bought tickets — Sharon Creasey, John Crawford, Pete Saunders and Gordon Turnbull.

You can get your ticket on the event page too. We look forward to seeing you there.

 

April update: a celebration of community

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With events cancelled and many of us in lockdown, a look ahead to what this means for FluteFling.

The Magic Flute! FluteFling Edinburgh Weekend 2019 (c) Gordon Turnbull

It’s a sunny Wednesday in Edinburgh, the windows are open and birds are busy outside. Spring is upon us and all would seem well if it wasn’t for the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic and most people are in some form of lockdown or restricted movement. It is an uncertain and worrying time for everyone, with various concerns for health, loved ones, neighbours and colleagues, physical and mental well-being, work and finances.

It has been heartening to witness many examples of people supporting each other in the community, both locally and across the world. And there has also been much celebrating and sharing of music and song to help unite people and raise spirits in these strange and difficult times.

Traditional music connects people, places and histories and celebrates what is common to us all and the festival season would be fast approaching, when musicians, dancers and lovers of music reunite, share tunes, stories and good times together.

Traditional flute workshop with Sharon Creasey at FluteFling Edinburgh Weekend 2018 (c) Gordon Turnbull

We would have seen some of that last weekend too, with what was promising to be an amazing FluteFling Edinburgh Weekend, our seventh no less. In previous years, people have travelled far for the events in Edinburgh and Aberdeen to meet, play and learn more about traditional flute playing in Scotland and to be part of a revival. As an organiser and sometimes tutor, it is both humbling and inspiring to be part of this and to witness it take on a life of its own, fuelled by the energy, enthusiasm and support of the community that has grown up around FluteFling.

It is a particularly difficult time for those freelance musicians and performers who rely on performances and audiences for an income. Please do what you can to support them — if you buy their music, follow them on social media, share their work or reach out to them, it all helps. And look out for performances from home via various streaming apps. Facebook seems to be popular for this, but there will be other outlets too, such as Youtube.

For some of us in lockdown and not key workers on the front line, events force us to slow down, restrict our movements and reflect. For me, this slower pace and gifted time has allowed me to get the flute out more, to begin thinking about ideas for future FluteFling activities, to begin tweaking and tidying up the website. The various people who are involved in running FluteFling events will also be exploring ideas together.

On a personal note, I have found it difficult in recent months, maybe years if truth be told, to focus on some parts of my own music-making. It is true I am sure for many of us with busy lives and commitments and so maybe this is an opportunity for us all to reconnect with our own music, be in less of a hurry to learn that tune for this session, to maybe explore existing repertoire. Time to to reexamine tone and tuning, revisit ornaments and articulation, to slow down and rediscover the joys and consider what our music means to us.

I have begun to take inspiration from something Paul McGrattan shared at Cruinniú na bhFliúit -The Flute Meeting in Ballyvourney a couple of years ago. Alongside many other ideas, he suggested recording yourself once a week to monitor progress and focus your practice. So my underused YouTube channel is now going to have a new tune or set of tunes posted every Friday during the lockdown period.

To begin with at least, this will focus on tunes that I have taught or might otherwise already be found in the Resources section or on my Soundcloud account, where they are slowed down for playing. I expect other tunes, recalled, revived, relearned or newly discovered for me, will also feature on that YouTube channel.

A flute session in Sandy Bell's Bar, Edinburgh (c) Gordon Turnbull

A flute session in Sandy Bell’s Bar, Edinburgh (c) Gordon Turnbull

There will be some other posts on this website, certainly more regularly than in recent months. But in the meantime, thank you everyone, for being involved, for playing and sharing your music and for being part of the traditional flute and whistle community in Scotland.

Stay safe and stay well and we will see each other on the other side when this is all over. The next FluteFling Weekend, whenever that may happen, will be quite some celebration, for sure.

Fermanagh Reels and pulse: November workshop

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November’s workshop in The Wash House in Portobello, Edinburgh saw us look at a couple of reels from County Fermanagh that are popular in the north of Ireland. The Three Scones of Boxtie (also spelled Boxty) and Jig Away the Donkey (one of two tunes with that name) come from Hidden Fermanagh, a book of interviews and accounts exploring the lesser-known music and song from County Fermanagh, with accompanying CDs. The music was transcribed by fellow FluteFling tutor Sharon Creasey from original recordings.

Eddie Duffy (flute) and Mick Hoy (fiddle)

Eddie Duffy (flute) and Mick Hoy (fiddle)

It will come as no surprise to many that Cathal McConnell was very central to the project and helped introduce the music and musicians to a wider audience, Eddie Duffy (flute) and Mick Hoy (fiddle) in particular. They hailed from Derrygonnelly, which now hosts an annual  festival. Altan recorded The Three Scones, but these unusual tunes were recorded together by Desi Wilkinson on his Shady Woods album and are often played by Rebecca Knorr in Edinburgh sessions. Rebecca is no stranger to Northern Irish sessions herself and taught at FluteFling’s Edinburgh Weekend earlier this year.

We focused on The Three Scones, which we learned by first singing them to Desi Wilkinson’s recording, which is in a different key to the manuscript version. This can often happen in traditional music and having an existing internal sense of a tune can help to create a shortcut when then referring to the manuscript. By retaining a strong sense of the reference performance, we can fast-track the melody, breathing and phrasing of the tune and get it “under the fingers”.

We then looked at creating rhythm and swing through breath, emphasising Beats 1 (more) and 3 (less) and also how this happens against a backdrop of the flow and phrasing of the tune. Different styles do this differently, but in Ireland it is better established on the flute than in Scotland. It so happened that the class was all flute players, so we listened to and compared Matt Molloy (Ireland) and Calum Stewart (Scotland), who have very different approaches to very different repertoires, both with inspiring results.

The resources for the workshop can be found on the Resources page.

The next workshop will take place on Saturday December 14th and will continue the themes. The workshop is filling up but there are still some places available.

September polkas, singing, breath

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Anascaul Lake - geograph.org.uk - 919995

Photo of Anascaul Lake, County Kerry by Peter Church

The Autumn workshops got off to a fine start with a look at a pair of Irish polkas that I have been teaching for many years that make a great way to warm up.

Tune background

I learned Patrick O’Connor’s Polkas from a cassette recording of a County Cork band called The Monks of the Screw, who took their name from a drinking club (the screw in their name is a corkscrew). There’s an old web page on them here and you can hear snippets of the recording at Irishtune.info.

I have also recorded the version I wrote and will add sheet music to the Repertoire page. Polkas have an interesting history as a dance form and can found around the world. In Ireland, a distinction can be drawn between the polkas of the south west, in particular Cork and Kerry and the area around Sliabh Luachra, and those of the Connaught area (Mayo, Galway, Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon) further north.

The Cork and Kerry polkas are played very briskly and often have an off-beat emphasis, while those of the Connaught area are more like marches in many ways. Indeed, some of the Irish polkas can be traced to Scottish 2/4 marches. Farewell to Whiskey and The Barren Rocks of Aden are two obvious examples. For this latter reason, I find the way of playing Irish polkas on the flute and whistle a useful in road to playing Scottish marches on those instruments.

Patrick O’Connor’s Polkas were originally collected in Ceol Rince na hÉireann vol 2 as untitled tunes and I reversed the order that they appeared there and in the recording as I preferred the contrast between the runs of the first and the more punchy jumps in the second. It turns out that the one we learned first is better known as the Anascaul Polka (notation and discussion on The Session), named after a village on the Dingle peninsular, whereas the other one has no other name of its own (notation and discussion on The Session).

Caution: The Session is a very useful website that I often refer to, but the notation and information can sometimes contain errors, so please refer to it with a pinch of salt

To my knowledge the tunes are not as widely known as they maybe should be. Perhaps their relative simplicity puts people off, but this also creates an opportunity to concentrate on playing techniques.

Techniques

We began by listening to the Annascaul Polka, which is constructed on simple runs up and down. In A Dorian (see here for some ready modes information) with A as the top note and G at the bottom, it sits within the bagpipe scale, hinting that it may even have been a bagpipe tune at one point. There is a C natural as it ascends, but this and the F# are missed on the descent, making it a little ambiguous. Patrick O’Connor’s No. 1 is more punchy within the same scale.

We then alternately sang and played that part of the tune to help root it and connect it to our breathing more directly. Singing the tune, no matter how quietly, helps to develop the ear and to find places to breathe. We also naturally articulate parts of the melody in diddling that can be referenced when playing our instruments, particularly the whistle or low whistle.

It is arguably present in Gaelic puirt à beul, here’s a direct Irish example:

On the flute, glottal stops are more common in Ireland for rhythm and articulation, but tonguing is sometimes subtly used and is generally associated with whistle playing.

We looked at generating pulse with breath and on the low whistle this proved to be subtle but effective.

We discussed cuts, strikes, rolls and crans and also what I call The Sylvain Barou Method for learning and developing them, which is described in this post from 2017.

Finally, we looked at some books to support our learning. Some of the stand-out ones are discussed in this post, to which I would add Steph Geremia’s Up She Flew, a CD with her accompanying book of transcriptions and notes. To date, the only book on the low whistle I am aware of is The Low Whistle Book by Steáfán Hannigan and David Ledsam.

Upcoming events

The next Edinburgh workshop will be 23 November, while the Aberdeen Weekend takes place 1-3 November.