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Lesson 6: Tin Whistle Cuts
"Ornamentation is the practice of adding notes to a melody to allow music to be more expressive." You will be learning many different ornamentations in these lessons and it's important to understand and know a few things. Styles and techniques of ornamentation vary widely among whistle players. I will be teaching you the way I learned how I play ornamentations. However, it is not necessarily how everyone does it. You have many options and you will eventually have a choice on how you would like to play them.
These next couple of lessons are going to be centering around 'cuts' also sometimes called 'grace notes'. They are very fast little notes placed in-between longer notes to give the music some flavour. Make sure to go about these exercises slow in-order to do them correctly and resist the temptation to tense up while learning them properly. The cut is a way to attack a note. It should occur right on the beat, not before it as its written on sheet music. Its probably easier to think of the cut as having no duration and that it is just part of the note that is in-front of it. These are important to get right because they will be the base for all the more complicated embellishment in further lessons.
These next couple of lessons are going to be centering around 'cuts' also sometimes called 'grace notes'. They are very fast little notes placed in-between longer notes to give the music some flavour. Make sure to go about these exercises slow in-order to do them correctly and resist the temptation to tense up while learning them properly. The cut is a way to attack a note. It should occur right on the beat, not before it as its written on sheet music. Its probably easier to think of the cut as having no duration and that it is just part of the note that is in-front of it. These are important to get right because they will be the base for all the more complicated embellishment in further lessons.
Cuts on Repeated Notes
The simplest use of a cut is on a repeated note to help separate them similar to the 'tap' in the previous lesson. When two notes of the same value are played side by side and need to be separated; you can either take a breath, tap or cut. The videos below will show you an example of a cut done slowly and then up to speed. Pay special attention to the slow one.
B Cut
A Cut
G Cut
F# Cut
E Cut
D Cut
You will notice below that I say to use an A cut when on D.
Keep in mind that you can also use a G cut if you prefer on D.
Keep in mind that you can also use a G cut if you prefer on D.
Cuts Exercise
Please don't rush through this lesson or the next couple. Just because it's one lesson doesn't mean you should be able to get through it in one day. It could take you several days to get through any lesson and you might have to revisit lessons after you have gone through them.