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FluteFling at Stonehaven Folk Festival

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The FluteFling Collection book launch and workshops 9 July 2022

Return to in-person events

John Crawford, Euan Reid, Kenny Hadden and Sharon Creasey at an outdoor session at Stonehaven. (c) Gordon Turnbull

Getting back into in-person events was never going to be easy, but we knew we had to launch the tunebook at some point. We couldn’t have chosen a better way, than at the 33rd Stonehaven Folk Festival. Just south of Aberdeen, it is a long established landmark festival in Scotland. With a number of artists appearing that included the flute or whistle — Flook, Rura and Deira from Asturias, it was definitely a good match.

Sharon Creasey, Kenny Hadden and myself, with John Crawford and Peter Saunders, had begun thinking about this last year but found it tricky with Covid levels being so unpredictable. Thinking about how we might have to manage an in-person event in such a climate was difficult. When I looked in January, there were still restrictions on room capacity and requirements for mitigation. The rules changed but could have changed again by the time we had responded. FluteFling is run in people’s spare time and there were organisations with full time staff who struggled, so it wasn’t going to be simple.

On top of that, we were collectively no longer used to playing in sessions, performing and teaching. I think I hadn’t taught for 2 years and certainly hadn’t played on stage for 3 or 4 years. There were steep relearning curves whichever way we looked. So Kenny approached Stonehaven organisers Charlie West and Meg Findlay knowing that we needed a bit of help.

To their credit, they understood the situation and used their experience to make it straightforward. The festival was only just returning after having to cancel the last two years and the performers that weekend were rebooked from the 2020 weekend that didn’t run. Clearly, trying to get back to the things that matter to us was a theme of the weekend.

John Crawford completed the necessary risk assessments for the workshops and he and Pete Saunders were volunteering, so we were well looked after and it was less to think about.

Setting up

Two men and a woman selling books by a display

Kenny Hadden, Coralie Mills and John Crawford ready to sell copies of the book. (c) Gordon Turnbull

The weekend was set to be a sunny one and we set our stall and new banners up in the hot and sometimes busy bar in the Town Hall on the Friday evening. Coralie Mills had kindly volunteered to run the stall, the new banners drew attention and the contactless machine was soon doing its business as we drew some friendly attention and began selling our first copies.

Having worked on this for over a year, largely in lockdown, it was difficult to gauge what kind of response the book might have. Sharon in particular had shaped it with the contributors and we could see a value in it that we hoped others would recognise. So it was gratifying to see the response from all musicians, not just flute and whistle players. Thank you to everyone who took the time to speak to us about it over the weekend.

The stall was in the bar upstairs from the concert hall and we able to quietly nip in and out to the balcony and watch some of the performances in between catching up with each friends we hadn’t seen in person for a while.

Flook performing at Stonehaven Folk Festival (c) Gordon Turnbull

Flook were in fine energetic form and, as expected, extraordinarily tight and focused. We had put up a signed copy of the tunebook as a raffle prize and were bowled over to discover that the whole band had supported us by adding their signatures. Somebody walked away that evening with quite a special prize.

 

 

Fèis and chips

A man demonstrates playing the flute

Gordon teaching a flute workshop at Stonehaven (c) David Fernandez

The Saturday workshops at Dunottar Primary School were low key and with a friendly and helpful Janny and volunteers we were quickly set up. The morning workshops were beginner flute (Kenny Hadden) and beginner whistle (myself and Sharon Creasey). It was the first time that we had tried two tutors in one workshop, but it meant that Sharon and I could address individual issues and compare notes as we went along — it’s always good to hear different perspectives on the same subject.

In the afternoon, Sharon took an advanced whistle class while I took the flute class. Everyone was at different stages of returning to playing music again — some had not played for months, some had not been in sessions, others had happily been playing away in person or online. It was tricky to get the balance right, but we all had to begin somewhere.

Returning to teaching after a gap of 2 years was also a personal challenge. There was lots of talk and questions and in the back of my mind, I could hear Hammy Hamilton’s comment from Cruinniú na Bhfliúit, that he was always happy to hear talk coming from a room because it meant that people were discussing questions rather than simply learning tunes. As David Fednandez said, he was just happy to be back with others again playing the flute.

Two men play the flute in a marquee

Kenny Hadden and Gordon Turnbull perform at Stonehaven Folk Festival (c) Martin Duckworth

Straight after the workshops, Kenny and I did a performance spot in the marquee in the square. We played some of our tunes from the book, including a duet. As many musicians elsewhere had said, it was good to get back to performing. Some of it felt familiar, other parts a bit alien after the last few years, but the sound was good and the audience enjoyed it.

The Asturian band Deira followed us on stage and were complimentary. As we dashed across the road to the book launch, their amazing sound rang out across the square and I made a mental note to try and hear more of them.

Kenny Hadden giving a talk at Stonehaven on the revival of the flute in Scottish traditional music (c) Gordon Turnbull

In the function room of No. 44, around 50 people had gathered to hear Kenny, who had set himself up to give an illustrated talk on the revival of the flute in traditional Scottish music.

With a big display screen and good sound, his meticulous trawl through the archives was an expansion on his essay in The FluteFling Collection that had people talking afterwards.

I think most people learned something new and to others it was a complete revelation. There were good questions from an engaged audience afterwards and I hope that there will be other chances to hear Kenny present this again.

Kenny, Sharon and myself followed the talk with a short recital of our own contributions to The FluteFling Collection. Peter Saunders was there and you can hear some of the performance on Peter’s YouTube channel:

An Aberdeen-based Polish whistler and David Fernandez at the book launch session. (c) Gordon Turnbull

There was a short session afterwards and friends were able to catch up with each other. Somehow, there’s never enough time to do everything we would like to do.

We were fortunate in that the Festival had donated the space to us and provided a sound technician to help set us up. With pubs and bars filled with music across the town, we also our own space to play and could hear each other.

The bookstall still needed manning and people were getting hungry after a long day

 

 

 

Deira performing at Stonehaven Folk Festival (c) Gordon Turnbull

I managed to catch Deira perform after the launch. The trio have a tight and driving sound that reminds me of Rura, but playing traditional Asturian and original tunes with a creative use of live loops and effects.

It’s easy to see how they went down well at Celtic Connections just before the pandemic and I recommend checking them out.

 

Kenny Hadden and Sharon Creasey on whistles at Stonehaven. (c) Gordon Turnbull

We ended up taking fish suppers to the splendid boardwalk that runs along the shore. A tune was soon struck up and we were joined by the Paddy Buchanan Band who had done a great performance on the Friday night. It was a fine evening to cap a fine day.

 

 

 

Easy like Sunday lunchtime

Gordon, Sharon and Kenny (c) David Fernandez

On Sunday, we took some time to tie up the loose ends, drink coffee and reflect on the launch, thinking of what happens next.

There was such a buzz from being with people again, many of whom we hadn’t seen for a couple of years, and playing music together. The support and goodwill towards FluteFling was overwhelming, so thank you to everyone who helped to make it happen and to those who managed to attend.

Our thanks go to the organisers for accommodating us and making us feel so welcome. This was most certainly a case of a bigger organisation being true to their roots and seeing the opportunity to give a helping hand to a smaller organisation such as ourselves to get going again in the post-lockdown world. We were able to provide workshops in return and so the benefit was mutual and we would consider similar arrangements in future.

Our thanks too, for Tasgadh for the grant and support that enabled the publication of the book in the first place and to the amazing contributors who were so keen to be part of this project. To order your own copy of The FluteFling Collection in Print or eBook format, visit the FluteFling Shop.

It was a memorable weekend and we resolved to have a similar event in Edinburgh. Covid and personal circumstances have delayed this, but we all look forward to the next one. Sign up to the newsletter to hear about it first.

 

Inside the Fairy Hill: Tomnahurich

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Inverness from Charleston North Kessock Black Isle Ross & Cromarty Scotland

This month we looked at ways to learn a tune by ear and focused on Tomnahurich, an evocative slow air by Pipe Major Donald Macleod that was recorded by Calum Stewart and Lauren MacColl on Wooden Flute and Fiddle.

The tune appears in Volume 3 of Pipe Major Donald MacLeod’s Collection and translates as The Hill of the Yew Trees or the Hill of the Fairies. It refers to the distinctive hill by Inverness that was until recently a cemetery, but was traditionally where the Fairy Folk lived. The Fiddlers of Inverness is a tale told about it (see here and here for more).

Update 12 October 2018: flute player Catriona Patience has spotted a resemblance to the song Tha an Crodh-laoigh air Aodann Chorra-bheinn, as archived in this recording at the fabulous  Tobar an Dualchais/ Kist o Riches Scottish oral traditions website.

Learning by ear v sheet music

The tune is deceptively simple, but offers a great way into learning by ear, which is the way most traditional musicians teach and learn. One thing that has become clear to me is that many people find it difficult to play by ear because, while traditional music relies upon this skill, it isn’t emphasised in formal music education. Indeed, many traditional musicians in Scotland rely on sheet music —in ceilidh bands it is not uncommon for example.

Of course, musicians interested in discovering traditional music that have originally learned their instrument in another tradition, for example Classical, have developed skills in sight reading at the expense of trusting and understanding their ears.

This difference struck earlier this year me when I attended the fantastic Cruinniú na bhFliúit (Flutemeet) for the first time. It takes place in County Cork just after Easter and is an inspiration behind the FluteFling Scottish flute and whistle weekends. If you haven’t been, you should go at least once. All the teaching though is by ear and no sheet music is available. You can record the tunes and ABC notation is used, but these are really for use afterwards. It’s the way they do it there and generations of Irish musicians can testify to the way it works.

Flute players in Scotland have different needs as playing by ear is new to many and needs to be supported. So I usually offer sheet music as a back-up option, again for later reference. Recently we had some success in Aberdeen and Edinburgh in sending out some sheet music in advance, but there is a risk that it becomes a distraction and it’s good to get the balance right.

If the aim is to play by ear, at what point do you refer to the sheet music? Sheet music is a representation of music itself. The more information that is represented, the more complex it becomes. However, just as speaking a language comes before reading and writing, so it is with music. Accent, dynamics, emphasis, breathing, articulation/ decoration and expression are immediately accessible through music but a piece of sheet music needs to be interpreted. I’m not against sheet music at all, but for teaching, learning and playing traditional music as well as we can, we need to step away from the paper and develop our ears.

So, to a small class on a sunny May afternoon, I thought I would try an approach used by Conal Ó Gráda at Cruinniú na bhFliúit to teach the Connemara Hornpipe from a recording. As this was intended to build confidence in learning by ear, the recording I chose was Tomnahurich, a much slower tune.

The process is is a simple idea based on very natural processes:

  • Listen to the recording a few times
  • Begin to move, tap feet etc to the tune
  • Lilt the tune, singing along. Before even picking up the flute, this internalises:
    • Rhythm
    • Melody
    • Breathing
    • Phrasing
    • Dynamics
    • “Memory hooks”, for want of a better expression: basically, a social and sensory association of place, time and people that helps anchor the tune when learning it and when recalling it. When I play this tune now, I will have associations not just of the title (and those associations) but also of the original recording, where I heard it, where I learned it and who with, what the day was like, the bright sunlight coming though the white room skylight on a rare warm May afternoon on a long weekend. When thinking of how to play this tune in future, these associations will be there and may help to jog my memory and even inform my performance.

So, preparing ourselves with the tune through familiarisation before even picking up the instrument laid a foundation for our learning. By the time we came to play, we were already inside the tune in a sense. What we were trying to do is match our fingers to our ears and the existing sense of the tune, joining up the processes.

We paused along the way to reflect on how the melody fits into the bagpipe scale and range of A Mixolydian (underlying chord shape here of A-E, no C or C#) and shifts to G shapes (underlying chord shape of G-B-D). Other considerations were, what phrases repeat, where and how do changes occur?

When training the ear in this way, songs are a natural reservoir to turn to – the melody remains mostly constant, but phrasing and dynamics can shift to emphasise meaning. Be aware that many songs can be in other keys, which is where Bb, C and Eb whistles become handy. Learn the fingering on the whistles and then transfer this to the D whistle or flute. This transposes the tune to a friendlier key and you don’t have to think about theory to do so.

Tomnahurich Resources

I have recorded Tomnahurich and the notation is up on the Resources page.

Create time and space for your music

I’m still digesting my time at Cruinniú na bhFliúit with lots of great new tunes and ideas. However at the workshop I also shared some of Paul McGrattan‘s advice on practising an instrument, creating time and space, setting achievable goals, focus, structure, exercises and routines. Lots to think about.

Session etiquette

June will see an end of term session at The Dalriada Bar, basically a slow session for flute and whistle, based upon, but not limited to, the repertoire covered by FluteFling. It will be suitable for beginners and more experienced players alike. Bringing sheet music along is fine, your friends too of course. It’s free, but if you sign up, I can get an idea of numbers.

As it happens, we ended the afternoon with various discussions, including confidence and session etiquette. That’s a whole topic in itself. Nigel Gatherer has some good advice:

In general, the watchwords are courtesy, consideration, sensitivity and patience.

There are other lengthy accounts on the web, but two types of session cropped up. One is organic, much more like a musical conversation and perhaps akin to traditional house ceilidhs or kitchen sessions. This is what I am most used to and understand. Working out what is happening can be tricky to newcomers, but the rules of normal social interaction will stand you in good stead (see those watchwords above). There are quite probably session leaders or a core of regulars and friends, their own core repertoire, stops for conversation and so on.

It isn’t a performance, it’s a social and cultural gathering. Just as in life, some are friendlier and more welcoming than others and you need to be read the situation and signs.

The other type of session is more structured and maybe even quite formal. Here there will a recognised leader and organiser and there will be turn-taking to ensure a sense of fairness when it comes to starting tunes or songs. Beyond this, my experience fails me. I can only add that these seem to lie somewhere between a session as described above and a folk club. In addition, I might add that possibly may tend to be in settings that call on a small pool of musicians and that this structured approach might be seen to be supportive of those musicians.

The Dalriada session in June will definitely be sociable and also supportive!

A Big Thank You and Summer Workshops

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Success for 5th FluteFling Edinburgh Weekend

First of all, a Big Thank You to everyone who was involved or attended the Edinburgh Weekend a couple of weeks ago. This was our biggest event yet and we were very close to being sold out.

Regulars Sharon Creasey and Kenny Hadden (basking in his new-found honour) provided our core continuity, with Niall Kenny as guest tutor and Claire Mann as guest speaker bringing in their own takes on the music and instruments. Feedback has been very positive and there was a real buzz about the place all day and into the evening.

FluteFling Edinburgh under way!

A post shared by Gordon Turnbull (@gordontheflow) on

A special thanks to the City of Edinburgh Methodist Church for hosting our event again – it really is a lovely venue with great acoustics. A big thumbs up to the Boda Bar on Leith Walk for hosting Friday night with such enthusiasm and to the Mercat Bar on West Maitland Street for sympathetically and efficiently sorting us out for Saturday. Very different venues to each other, but both highly recommended. Anyone looking to put something on should consider them as potential venues.

And of course Sandy Bells looked after us well on the Sunday lunchtime as always. One or two of us also made it to the Waverly Bar afterwards, where a great session was also to be had. A pantomime Booooo! however, to the session venue that let us down badly at very short notice (see the archive). I will try and do a more comprehensive round-up very soon, but I am now in the throes of report writing for school.

Summer workshops

After the April break, May and June workshops return this month. These will be the first since returning from Cruinniú na bhFliúit (Flutemeet) in Ballyvourney, County Cork and also since the FluteFling Edinburgh Weekend, of course, so I hope to share some ideas that I picked up over that period. NB Dates now corrected below – thanks to David Flett for pointing out the error.

  • Saturday 19 May 1-4 pm | Back at Tribe Porty, this will be suitable for everyone as I intend to focus on slowing things down, getting into the tunes further and helping with playing by ear. Tickets now on sale.
  • Saturday 16 June 1-4 pm | This will be a more sociable event and include a slow session that will utilise the FluteFling back catalogue. Venue and tickets tbc.

There will be a summer break over July and August, but there will definitely be further events from September, which will be announced just as soon as they become finalised.

Classes, workshops and tuition Autumn 2016

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Flute and whistle mural

Classes for traditional flute and whistle in Portobello, Edinburgh are set to return this Autumn but details are currently on hold until September.

I am looking into options for resuming flute and whistle classes in Portobello, Edinburgh this coming Autumn but this continues to be tricky due to personal circumstances, albeit different ones from the past year. I expect this to become clearer over the coming few weeks so will have more news in September.

Regular group sessions

I am currently considering monthly Saturday workshops or fortnightly evening classes (as before) and while I have a venue in mind, will need to confirm this.

Individual tuition

Unfortunately I am unable to offer individual tuition at this stage. This is purely due to time.

Announcements

If you are signed up to the FluteFling Newsletter, then details will be announced there first.

Image: Musical mural at Ormeau Park, Belfast (c) Gordon Turnbull 2016

Autumn term update

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FluteFling classes are taking a break this term, but will aim to be back in the New Year.

In the mean time there is always the archive to explore or revisit and I am exploring other flute and whistle playing opportunities for the group. Please check back for any updates, sign up to the newsletter or drop me an email.

Photo: David Begg (flute) playing in Sandy Bell’s Monday night session, Edinburgh (c) Gordon Turnbull