Irish Flute Lessons

image source

I've mentioned before that Sunshine takes several classes at our local Irish music school, and Mr M has taken fiddle lessons there as well. This fall, it's my turn to take a class. I'm taking a beginning tin whistle/Irish flute class. My intent is to play the Irish flute (the pic above is a basic keyless Irish flute), but apparently learning on the tin whistle (picture below) is the easy way to go.

I actually wanted to take the class last fall, but since I was due to have River very soon after classes started, I decided I should be patient and wait.

image source

I started a couple weeks ago, and it's been pretty interesting. The fingerings are fairly similar to flute and oboe fingerings, so they were super easy to learn. The challenge is learning the music. Irish music has a lot of repetition in it, so that helps, but a big part of learning the songs is listening and playing by ear. Despite playing instruments since kindergarten, I have never learned to play by ear (which is why I specifically looked for a Suzuki teacher for Sunshine when she first started violin lessons). I've also never been very successful at memorizing music. If you watch a session, most of the players are playing without sheet music in front of them.

Since the fingerings aren't a challenge, I'm focusing on memorizing the song we're working on. As I play I'm also trying to feel or hear what notes come next. That's the hard part. It's not at all intuitive for me, though it is for Sunshine- she's proven quite adept at playing by ear.

Can you play by ear?