by Steve McGrail

GREY LARSEN

“Essential Guide to Irish Flute & Tin Whistle”

IT’S RARE that a teaching package comes out, of which it can be truly said that it represents a ‘turning point’. But that can be claimed for Grey Larsen’s ‘Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle’. The package gets off to a flying start with commendations from Matt Molloy and Joanie Madden; these are then matched by a forward from Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Missouri, St Louis. Gearóid, no mean player himself, says that he can  recommend the book to the first-time learner as much as to the advanced performer: ‘It establishes an important benchmark for future generations of Irish music students, historians and music teachers’. Not only that, he continues, but because of its provenance it also importantly ‘fills a conspicuous void in the literature of Irish flute and tin whistle playing in America’. 

So exactly how does it achieve all this? Basically, in 479 pages and two companion CDs of tunes and instrumental techniques (198 tracks), it shows players of tin whistle, piccolo, fife, Irish flute and Boehm-system flute pretty nearly everything they need to know in order to become - well - very good performers. It looks at the histories of the flute and whistle and reflects on the legacy of the playing style of the uilleann pipes, especially the pipes’ “legato aesthetic”; at selected great performers, past and present; at the philosophical, cultural and historical underpinnings of Irish music; at pulse and metre; at the modal nature of Irish tunes; at “slurring”, “throating”, breathing, embouchure, and holding the instruments properly; at the nature of the instruments, including their strengths and inbuilt limitations; at practice techniques, and naturally, at ornamentation. There are fingering charts, 73 complete I tunes plus excerpts for illustration, a bibliography with 32 references and a discography noting 32 recordings by performers like Mary Bergin, Séamus Ennis, Breda Smyth, Willy Clancy, Cathal McConnell and many more, the author himself included.

This represents an impressive opus. Yet it might still be asked why a man born in New York City and now living in Indiana has essayed it in the first place. His name may not even be widely known on this side of the pond (although it should be), and nor has he any Irish roots to call on. The simple answer, it seems, is that he has done it essentially for the love of the thing.

That love is seen clearly in the work. Even if the (high) production values of the material were discounted, and the quality of the writing (high, here’s a rare individual who understands subordinate clauses amongst other things!) and the teaching techniques (equally high), it would still shine for what Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin has called its ‘abiding sense of humanism’. And not only for that. There’s real affection contained in it for what the music represents; again, Gearóid talks of Grey’s ‘reverence for the traditional storehouse (of music)’, his book being a veritable ‘testament of deference for the tradition bearers themselves’.

Grey, born in 1955, began piano lessons at four and seemingly enjoyed a childhood and youth exploring music from Bach to Motown. He eventually studied composition and early music at Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music before going on to the Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio. There in 1976 he gained a Batchelor of Music degree, and then set out to explore traditional music as a performer, teacher, recording artist, record producer, author, sound editor and music editor of Sing Out! magazine. Already interested in the music of his native Midwest, and of Appalachia, he then became beguiled by Irish music...  It was from Irish immigrant musicians that he learned about the musical glories of “Conn’s Fold”. Three of the musicians in particular were melodeon player Michael J. Kennedy (1900-1978) from near Dunmore in northeast Galway, Tom Byrne ((1920-2001), a flute and whistle player from Carrowmore townland, Geevagh, Co. Sligo and Tom McCaffrey (born 1916) a fiddler from near Mohill in Leitrim. To these three, he says, he owes an enormous debt: ‘They taught me many great tunes, and much more about how they played the music and what it meant to them, both in their adopted homeland and in their younger years in Ireland. With open arms, they welcomed me into their... lives... and offered me their whole-hearted encouragement and approval. They also connected me with musicians back in Ireland, such as Tom’s former neighbour, Josie McDermott’.

Tom gave him his first flute – which some years later he was pleased to return to Tom’s  youngest child, in better repair and with a case he’d made himself.

That particular gesture is illustrative of his philosophy, actually. He wants to pass on the many insights and experience that he’s gained over the years, from the generosity of scores of Irish people, from Irish communities in Ireland and elsewhere. He makes no great claim for his own playing expertise (although he’s proud to have devised some particular teaching techniques for flute and whistle, of which more anon). He’s also modest about his relationship to Irish music: ‘Having grown up outside the rich culture that gave it birth, I have sometimes felt reluctant to claim the right to produce a work such as this’. That’s honest. And sensible: no begrudger in Ireland can now brand him a ‘mere blowin’, the great Irish put-down. Yet equally, he finds advantages in his outsider status: ‘(I can) point the way for others like myself, few of whom, however, have had my good fortune of learning directly  from the elders of the tradition’.

His starting point is that Irish music is a “fine art”; and a functional one also, in that it has a role in dance and so forth. The music, he says, represents a lifelong journey of discovery, personal development, joy and fellowship. So do the instruments that make it: ‘The first time... you hold your flute or whistle in your hands, you have begun a physical relationship with it that will last years’.

However, playing Irish flute or whistle is not “fine art” in the “classical” sense, he warns. It’s intensely personal and it belongs to a culture and specific ways of living, seeing and conversing: indeed, there’s an entire chapter (23) called ‘The Language Analogy Revisited’. In this he reviews the parallels between playing and talking: ‘With instrumental music becoming fully “conversational” means that you are able to listen so expansively that you are completely aware of what and how you are playing,  and, at the same time, you are listening beautifully to the other musicians around you... This is the ideal music session, the transcendent experience Irish musicians live for’. The playing is at the same time collegiate as well as intensely personal. He talks of the personal element by quoting Matt Malloy: ‘The real art form... is actually playing solo, that’s what it’s all about.... you stand or fall on your interpretation of that piece. It’s no good playing it like I play it, you must put your personal stamp on it, be that good, bad or indifferent’. The music, Grey contends, becomes a mirror and projector of the soul: ‘The way you speak reveals... a great deal about what you are... When you listen to the playing of a master musician, you “know” something of their soul... and you can feel your own beautiful potential in the unique mirror that their music holds before you’.

Spoken with truth, but how to reach that sublime state? This is where Grey and his package come in, to at least point the tyro, or even the experienced musician, in the right direction.

After some fascinating background on the flute and the whistle, he launches into the eighteen chapters that comprise the direct teaching. What’s contained in them, he says, works for the whistle and flute and can be adapted for the Boehm-system instrument also. To make it all easier (after gently mentioning that reading music would be desirable!) he describes his own way of notating ornaments, whilst admitting that in reality ‘the full embodiment of a traditional Irish tune cannot be written down’. He criticises the notion of the “grace note”: ‘The liberal use of “grace note” as a term, as a concept and a notation practice... has severely limited our thinking... constraining many people’s understanding of ornamentation’. He shows how the “cut” ornamentation (although entirely different) is frequently confused with a grace note. Accordingly, he’s devised new notational symbols for the cut, the “slide” and so on.

The thirteen chapters on ornamentation (along with their introduction and preface) cover: Cuts, Slides, Long and Short Rolls, Condensed Long and Short Rolls etc. They represent the  single largest part of the whole work, the longest chapter being on cuts. The cut, Grey insists, is not a note ‘for the simple reason that it is not perceived as a note’. He shows by wave diagrammes how practice can turn the beginner’s initial full note into something that’s barely there at all – yet so much the more powerful for that.

He mentions all the ornaments but recommends selectivity: it’s all about ‘finding your voice’ which ‘requires years’. However, ‘over time, and with dedication, you will find an ever-clearer view of yourself through your music’. He cautions against ornaments like the trill and stresses that vibrato should only ever be an ornament, in contradistinction to its classical playing role. He describes finger vibrato, then comments that whilst breath vibrato is controversial, both Mary Bergin and Matt Molloy readily use it for slow airs.

He has ornaments he particularly favours, like the “shake”, an alternative to the crann. ‘Lovely’, he calls it. He also likes “tight triplets”; these, apparently, come from ‘crossing noises’ or ‘crossing notes’, giving a ‘bubbly’ or ‘popping’ sound. He sees their roots in the tight or staccato playing of uilleann pipes, or of Highland pipes.

Section 4 addresses tonguing/ multiple tonguing and throating, and musical breathing. Breathing and embouchure have already featured in Chapters 5 and 6. Unsurprisingly, he spends a good while on the topic, because ‘to breathe articulately, you must first attend to the physical requirements of deep breathing’. Later, in an arresting phrase, he calls playing music ‘an athletic activity’. ‘Breathe before you have to’ is his general advice. He discusses strategies to shorten a long note, say, or to omit a nonessential note completely. As an example of breathing techniques, he provides three settings of the jig The Banks Of Loch Gowna. One has no breathing guides marked, the others have, at different points. He offers various hints (‘never omit a note that falls on a pulse’) and also considers “circular breathing”. This, he says, is fine in principle but not in practice: ‘the result sounds anaemic, not to mention monotonous’!  

The work is full of good advice and explanation. Some of the latter is intriguing, like the account of the mechanics involved in reaching a high octave on the whistle. There’s discussion of ‘anchor points’ for the whistle with recommendations on using the bottom pinky. There’s debate, too, about what ‘being in tune’ signifies for whistles and old simple-system flutes. Postural advice is offered and there’s information for left-handed players as well.

An especially interesting chapter is that on slow airs. Grey is trenchant about these: ‘...masterful playing of slow airs demands a higher level of experience and maturity... than any other aspect of this art’. It is about creating ‘an interpretation of the song on your instrument’. The word “song” is deliberately chosen, because he believes slow airs should emulate sean-nós songs. These are sung in a free and loosely-articulated rhythm based on the natural flow of the words; so, no two verses will sound the same and the ornamentation   will correspondingly vary. Having Irish is apparently a boon for a would-be slow air performer, but failing that, Grey suggests creating slow airs from sean-nós style songs in English. He gives examples of musicians who he thinks excel at slow airs, like Josie McDermott, Paddy Keenan, Seamus Cooley and others.

There’s really so much in the work that it’s difficult to know where to stop with it. Yet it is to have sequels – The Essential Tin Whistle Toolbox and two “Celtic Encyclopaedias”, one for Irish Flute and the other for Tin Whistle. This sounds like an embarras de richesse, but it’s likely that anybody who’s used the Essential Guide will nevertheless buy them as they appear. That’s because Grey has produced something remarkable here, at every level, and has done it with sureness, honesty, humility, insight and passion. He has called the learning of Irish music a ‘delightful challenge’: The Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle should encourage anybody to take up that challenge.

For more information visit the Grey Larsen website at www.greylarsen.com. Visitors to the site will also find an interesting new development - ‘The Irish Tune Bank’ - Grey Larsen's online repository of traditional Irish Tune Packets.