Last night (about midnight) my wife told me that "this flute thing is becoming an unhealthy obsession". She's a Psychologist, by the way. I took it as a compliment!
Good Work! Sounds like you are practicing a lot. However, there's that knife-edge danger in being obsessed. If your hands start hurting a lot from practicing, and you start hearing tendons popping, then please, take a break. A good way to keep working on the music at that point is to spend time listening to a CD. Talking to your wife is also good.
Also, Iv'e discovered that there is something to my wife's warnings about "unhealthy obsession." Sometimes, she is referring to her own state of health due to my practicing habits. So, since I want to keep her around, and help her keep sane, I find a room at work where I can practice, or I practice at home during lunch when she's not around.
Also, remember to eat, and get a little sleep! I have found that sleep helps keep my rhythm intact. Food or water every once in a while makes it easier to blow into the whistle or to keep pressure on the pipe bag. Also, if I stand up or walk every so often, that annoying tingling sensation in my leg will go away for a while.
Hey, just because it's magnificent doesn't mean it's healthy. An obsession is by nature unhealthy, right? I mean, all things in moderation. Except for maybe Irish music. *grin*
Isn't it true that you HAVE to be a little obsessed to learn to play this crazy octopus-like instrument, (being the pipes, the fiddle is like that too, I bet?) Maybe the beer and the company of people at the session is like medicine.
There a whistle web site out there (I think it's Brother Steve's) wherein it says that two kinds of people play this music--the ones who dabble at it, forever hoping to improve without actually working at it, and the rest of us who go deep, who eat, sleep, and breathe the tunes until we're playing them even when we're not physically playing them. Guess who actually ends up able to play the music with some competence?
In my experience, you can get obsessive about this for a year or two, and then back off and still reap the benefits of your temporary addiction. Most of us won't reach all-Ireland status this way, but you'll probably become a decent session player. The longer you stay obsessed, the better you play. Or you can cycle your obsession, say, two years on and one year off. Sorta like rest-rotation for cow pastures. Except in your year off you keep playing, cutting back fom 20 to maybe 15 hours a day
Seriously, I took a lesson from a fiddler once who told me if I wasn't willing to practice a minimum of 4 hours a day, I might as well not bother at all. At the time I thought, gee, I must have more natural talent than he does because I can improve even just playing 1 hour a day. A few years later I was practicing at least 4 hours a day and astonished at the technique improvements and huge gains in learning new tunes. So it depends on your goals, how far you want to go, how much your body will let you play without injury (despite proper mechanics, we're all prone to repetitive use problems--that's how you know you're practicing enough), and whether you live alone in a sound-proof house with a trust fund to support your habit. Those of us with spouses, kids, mortgages, etc., do what we can. And we should be happy with that, nevermind all the tunes you don't know yet, and the great sessions going on--right now someone's playing tunes somewhere, and YOU'RE NOT THERE!--and those not-quite-crisp rolls you need to work on.
Another whistle web site (if I find it again, I'll post the url) summed it up well: If you sing or make noise on an instrument, you're a musician. If you enjoy making that noise, you're a good musician. If other people enjoy listening to the noise you make, you're a great musician (well, maybe just "really good").
Then we all get together and make good noise over a few pints. Ain't life grand?
I´m beginning to feel that I´m missing an important point here. Is "this flute thing" what I think it is? Or is something "frog-like" happening, if you catch my meaning?
(My obsession at the moment: got the "Lord of the Rings" in English as a christmas gift and I´m mighty glad I´ve read it in German before, though it´s some years ago...)
Up to a couple of years ago, work was my obsession (16 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 360 days a year!). Now, the fiddle obsession takes 3-4 hours of every day. *And* I even took 3 weeks off to go to Ireland and Scotland to check out the music. People at work think I have a life . Can two unhealthy obsessions balance each other out?
Now, if only there were some pub sessions around here, I could hang with other obsessed people and feel normal.
Sosaidh
ps. this site is fantastic - using the info from the discussions about triplets, for the first time, I would not be completely humiliated to play them in public... thanks!
Sosaidh, I don't know where you live, but unless it's a lighthouse on Tierra del Fuego (and perhaps even there), you'd be surprised at how many people will come out of the woodwork if you start your own session. They may not all be tremendous players or immersed in the Irish tradition, but you can still have a lot of fun together. And there may be a hidden talent lurking in your community--a burger flipper who knows 500 tunes on flute, another fiddler who assumes she's the only Irish player in town, etc.
Here in Helena Montana we started our session with two of us, both on fiddle. We'd been friends for several years before we realized that we both played fiddle, and then Irish at that. Within two months we were up to 4-6 regulars. Within two years we were crowding out a coffee house and moved to a bigger space in a taproom (free beer for musicians!). My weekly local session update email now goes out to 32 people--not bad for a small town of 24,000 in the Far West sub-Canadian provinces. And we've had great players drop in from out of town--always a treat. Give it a whirl, put posters up at the music shops, get in touch with any groups or individuals that do a St. Paddy's Day parade in your town (you're almost guaranteed to at least find a bodhran beater or whistle player there), do what you have to to find people who share your obsession. Then sit down together to play--in your living room, at a bar or coffee house, in a basement room at a local church, wherever. And then be patient...give it time to gel and for people to get comfortable with each other and the tunes. A year later you'll look back and be mystified at how it all came together and how you lived without a session for so long.
Which reminds me of a point I wanted to make in an earlier post: you'll know you're really getting the music when you start scheduling your week around the next session, and when your fingers or lips or whatever (depending on the instrument you play) CHANGE because you're playing so much. String players get callouses on their fingertips, flute players on their lips, bodhran players bleed on their goatskins, and we all develop little muscles where we can't see them and nerve connections to fire those muscles and stamina and coordination and grace that we didn't have before. There're no short cuts--play, play, play. And you'll know you're getting it when you have to use an emery board to take some of the callouses off your fingertips, or your toothbrush feels different on your lips, or you can still feel the pressure of the bow on the tip of your little finger and below the knuckle of the index finger--even though you put it down hours ago.
Oh yeah, well, I have the opposite sob story -- there's no WAY I can make ALL the sessions in town! Not only are some of them just too close together to get from one to the other, but my husband would probably put his foot down firmly if I tried taking yet another night out for music...
And I hate that feeling you get when a session leader asks when you're going to show up at THEIR session -- "yeah, yeah, yeah, I will! Oh, wait, I can't, dammit, my husband and I scheduled that night for our weekly passing in the night..."
Actually, Zina, I've always wished there were too many session to choose from where I live. I'd like nothing more than to fade into the background and just play along, instead of being one of two or three people expected to crank out the tunes. And I'm sure the background is where I'd fit in most sessions down your way.
But thanks for the reminder to raise a toast to our long-suffering spouses tonight when I'm down at the taproom....
Ha. I doubt that background crack would be true, Will -- Denver simply is NOT a hotbed of great Irish musicians, although we have lots of great players in general. You'd be expected to be your normal brill self, I'm sure. Heh.
As for what we pass, that's between us and our cats. *grin* Aack, gotta run, I have to teach this afternoon!
glauber,
You're just on a roll...one track mind? But let's look at the plus side here. You could use all these whistles as wild and amazing art deco--cover your ceiling with them, put them in a vase like a bouquet of flowers in the center of your table and each time you pass by play one. The possibilities are endless. I wonder if they'd be considered a good long-term investment. Or take them on that Antique Roadshow...
Of course, you and your wife could have enough kids to form a whistle band! Life is short--have fun!
Linda
I've luckily had my moments where I've been able to release some of the obsession building up.
Earlier I spent a lot of time working on a project in Southern France, away from home. I used to go back to the office site at 10 o'clock at night when no-one was there. You should see the faces of the security people who popped their faces in at 2 AM in the morning.
-.. these days I'm almost done building out my loft, far away from any neighbours or sleeping rooms, so it's about time to let that obsession blossom...
Halldor
Ooooo! You'll have a real, honest-to-goodness place just to play your music? I'm jealous! I've dreamed of that for years, Halldor. And a dream it will always be. Enjoy it. It sounds WONderful!
Unhealthy obsession
Unhealthy obsession
Last night (about midnight) my wife told me that "this flute thing is becoming an unhealthy obsession". She's a Psychologist, by the way. I took it as a compliment!
# Posted on January 14th 2002 by glauber
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Glauber, we're all obsessed with this music, but the "unhealthy" part is how you know that you're practicing as much as you should be.
# Posted on January 14th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Good Work! Sounds like you are practicing a lot. However, there's that knife-edge danger in being obsessed. If your hands start hurting a lot from practicing, and you start hearing tendons popping, then please, take a break. A good way to keep working on the music at that point is to spend time listening to a CD. Talking to your wife is also good.
Also, Iv'e discovered that there is something to my wife's warnings about "unhealthy obsession." Sometimes, she is referring to her own state of health due to my practicing habits. So, since I want to keep her around, and help her keep sane, I find a room at work where I can practice, or I practice at home during lunch when she's not around.
Also, remember to eat, and get a little sleep! I have found that sleep helps keep my rhythm intact. Food or water every once in a while makes it easier to blow into the whistle or to keep pressure on the pipe bag. Also, if I stand up or walk every so often, that annoying tingling sensation in my leg will go away for a while.
# Posted on January 14th 2002 by dirk
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Usually it´s the baby in the family keeping the parents awake at such a time, not the father practising rolls...
Jörg
# Posted on January 14th 2002 by Joerg Froese
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Which always makes me wonder...is there such a thing as a *healthy* obsession?
Zina
# Posted on January 14th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Unhealthy obsession
I haven't been practising very much, mostly obsessing about flutes.
# Posted on January 14th 2002 by glauber
Re: Unhealthy obsession
I'm sure I've clocked a film called 'Magnificent Obsession' some time ago but it did n't have any flutes. Or maybe it did.
In reply to you,Zina,warrior princess: what if you're obsessed with health? that a healthy obsession?
I'll get my coat...
Dave
# Posted on January 14th 2002 by biggus dave
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Hey, just because it's magnificent doesn't mean it's healthy. An obsession is by nature unhealthy, right? I mean, all things in moderation. Except for maybe Irish music. *grin*
Zina
# Posted on January 14th 2002 by Zina Lee
And beer, delicious beer! (doing Homer Simpson imitation)
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by glauber
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Isn't it true that you HAVE to be a little obsessed to learn to play this crazy octopus-like instrument, (being the pipes, the fiddle is like that too, I bet?) Maybe the beer and the company of people at the session is like medicine.
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by dirk
Re: Unhealthy obsession
There a whistle web site out there (I think it's Brother Steve's) wherein it says that two kinds of people play this music--the ones who dabble at it, forever hoping to improve without actually working at it, and the rest of us who go deep, who eat, sleep, and breathe the tunes until we're playing them even when we're not physically playing them. Guess who actually ends up able to play the music with some competence?
In my experience, you can get obsessive about this for a year or two, and then back off and still reap the benefits of your temporary addiction. Most of us won't reach all-Ireland status this way, but you'll probably become a decent session player. The longer you stay obsessed, the better you play. Or you can cycle your obsession, say, two years on and one year off. Sorta like rest-rotation for cow pastures. Except in your year off you keep playing, cutting back fom 20 to maybe 15 hours a day
Seriously, I took a lesson from a fiddler once who told me if I wasn't willing to practice a minimum of 4 hours a day, I might as well not bother at all. At the time I thought, gee, I must have more natural talent than he does because I can improve even just playing 1 hour a day. A few years later I was practicing at least 4 hours a day and astonished at the technique improvements and huge gains in learning new tunes. So it depends on your goals, how far you want to go, how much your body will let you play without injury (despite proper mechanics, we're all prone to repetitive use problems--that's how you know you're practicing enough), and whether you live alone in a sound-proof house with a trust fund to support your habit. Those of us with spouses, kids, mortgages, etc., do what we can. And we should be happy with that, nevermind all the tunes you don't know yet, and the great sessions going on--right now someone's playing tunes somewhere, and YOU'RE NOT THERE!--and those not-quite-crisp rolls you need to work on.
Another whistle web site (if I find it again, I'll post the url) summed it up well: If you sing or make noise on an instrument, you're a musician. If you enjoy making that noise, you're a good musician. If other people enjoy listening to the noise you make, you're a great musician (well, maybe just "really good").
Then we all get together and make good noise over a few pints. Ain't life grand?
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: Unhealthy obsession
"right now someone's playing tunes somewhere, and YOU'RE NOT THERE!"
Aaaagh...Will, that was just plain MEAN....! hehehehe
Zina
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Unhealthy obsession
I´m beginning to feel that I´m missing an important point here. Is "this flute thing" what I think it is? Or is something "frog-like" happening, if you catch my meaning?
(My obsession at the moment: got the "Lord of the Rings" in English as a christmas gift and I´m mighty glad I´ve read it in German before, though it´s some years ago...)
Jörg
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by Joerg Froese
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Up to a couple of years ago, work was my obsession (16 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 360 days a year!). Now, the fiddle obsession takes 3-4 hours of every day. *And* I even took 3 weeks off to go to Ireland and Scotland to check out the music. People at work think I have a life
. Can two unhealthy obsessions balance each other out?
Now, if only there were some pub sessions around here, I could hang with other obsessed people and feel normal.
Sosaidh
ps. this site is fantastic - using the info from the discussions about triplets, for the first time, I would not be completely humiliated to play them in public... thanks!
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by chicagofiddler
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Zina, misery loves accompaniment....
Sosaidh, I don't know where you live, but unless it's a lighthouse on Tierra del Fuego (and perhaps even there), you'd be surprised at how many people will come out of the woodwork if you start your own session. They may not all be tremendous players or immersed in the Irish tradition, but you can still have a lot of fun together. And there may be a hidden talent lurking in your community--a burger flipper who knows 500 tunes on flute, another fiddler who assumes she's the only Irish player in town, etc.
Here in Helena Montana we started our session with two of us, both on fiddle. We'd been friends for several years before we realized that we both played fiddle, and then Irish at that. Within two months we were up to 4-6 regulars. Within two years we were crowding out a coffee house and moved to a bigger space in a taproom (free beer for musicians!). My weekly local session update email now goes out to 32 people--not bad for a small town of 24,000 in the Far West sub-Canadian provinces. And we've had great players drop in from out of town--always a treat. Give it a whirl, put posters up at the music shops, get in touch with any groups or individuals that do a St. Paddy's Day parade in your town (you're almost guaranteed to at least find a bodhran beater or whistle player there), do what you have to to find people who share your obsession. Then sit down together to play--in your living room, at a bar or coffee house, in a basement room at a local church, wherever. And then be patient...give it time to gel and for people to get comfortable with each other and the tunes. A year later you'll look back and be mystified at how it all came together and how you lived without a session for so long.
Which reminds me of a point I wanted to make in an earlier post: you'll know you're really getting the music when you start scheduling your week around the next session, and when your fingers or lips or whatever (depending on the instrument you play) CHANGE because you're playing so much. String players get callouses on their fingertips, flute players on their lips, bodhran players bleed on their goatskins, and we all develop little muscles where we can't see them and nerve connections to fire those muscles and stamina and coordination and grace that we didn't have before. There're no short cuts--play, play, play. And you'll know you're getting it when you have to use an emery board to take some of the callouses off your fingertips, or your toothbrush feels different on your lips, or you can still feel the pressure of the bow on the tip of your little finger and below the knuckle of the index finger--even though you put it down hours ago.
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Oh yeah, well, I have the opposite sob story -- there's no WAY I can make ALL the sessions in town! Not only are some of them just too close together to get from one to the other, but my husband would probably put his foot down firmly if I tried taking yet another night out for music...
And I hate that feeling you get when a session leader asks when you're going to show up at THEIR session -- "yeah, yeah, yeah, I will! Oh, wait, I can't, dammit, my husband and I scheduled that night for our weekly passing in the night..."
Zina
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Unhealthy obsession
What is it you pass?
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by Will CPT
Actually, Zina, I've always wished there were too many session to choose from where I live. I'd like nothing more than to fade into the background and just play along, instead of being one of two or three people expected to crank out the tunes. And I'm sure the background is where I'd fit in most sessions down your way.
But thanks for the reminder to raise a toast to our long-suffering spouses tonight when I'm down at the taproom....
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by Will CPT
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Ha. I doubt that background crack would be true, Will -- Denver simply is NOT a hotbed of great Irish musicians, although we have lots of great players in general. You'd be expected to be your normal brill self, I'm sure. Heh.
As for what we pass, that's between us and our cats. *grin* Aack, gotta run, I have to teach this afternoon!
zls
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Unhealthy obsession
glauber,
You're just on a roll...one track mind? But let's look at the plus side here. You could use all these whistles as wild and amazing art deco--cover your ceiling with them, put them in a vase like a bouquet of flowers in the center of your table and each time you pass by play one. The possibilities are endless. I wonder if they'd be considered a good long-term investment. Or take them on that Antique Roadshow...
Of course, you and your wife could have enough kids to form a whistle band! Life is short--have fun!
Linda
# Posted on January 15th 2002 by linda
Re: Another confession from an obsessed
I've luckily had my moments where I've been able to release some of the obsession building up.
Earlier I spent a lot of time working on a project in Southern France, away from home. I used to go back to the office site at 10 o'clock at night when no-one was there. You should see the faces of the security people who popped their faces in at 2 AM in the morning.
-.. these days I'm almost done building out my loft, far away from any neighbours or sleeping rooms, so it's about time to let that obsession blossom...
Halldor
# Posted on January 17th 2002 by MrGanAinm
Re: Unhealthy obsession
Ooooo! You'll have a real, honest-to-goodness place just to play your music? I'm jealous! I've dreamed of that for years, Halldor. And a dream it will always be. Enjoy it. It sounds WONderful!
# Posted on January 18th 2002 by linda