Getting Started

Before you dive in, it helps to understand the three parts of the studio and how they fit together.

If you are just beginning, I strongly encourage you to start with the Foundations course (tin whistle (opens in new tab) or Irish flute (opens in new tab)). Take your time with it.

I know some of you will be itching to get on to “real” traditional tunes, and those simple nursery-rhyme tunes can feel like a detour. They aren’t. By leaning on tunes that are easy to play, you get to put all your attention on the things that actually matter early on. We’re building a strong base on purpose, so that down the road, when you’re learning twisty, possibly more technical traditional tunes, you’re not fighting a shaky foundation at the same time. The simpler we keep the tunes now, the more room you have to get the fundamentals right.

Once you’ve finished Foundations, you’ll want to start learning more tunes — and a little explanation will help you get the most out of the Tune Library.

A note on the two instruments

In the Tune Library you’ll see tunes taught on both whistle and flute. For years I taught a weekly tune masterclass, alternating week to week — one week on the Irish flute, the next on the tin whistle — to give equal voice to each instrument. The whistle and flute are both pitched in D (the whistle simply sits an octave higher than the flute), so they’re remarkably close cousins. If I lead a tune on the flute and you’re a whistle player, you’ll have no trouble learning it, and vice versa.

This is true of the tradition as a whole. Eventually you’ll be learning tunes from players of all sorts of instruments — it’s completely common, for example, as a whistle player, to pick up a tune from a fiddler. Part of learning is developing the ear to hear, “ah, they’re playing a roll there,” and knowing how to render that on your own instrument, even though the fiddler’s technique looks nothing like yours.

Right now there are over 150 tunes — roughly half taught on whistle, half on flute. Please don’t look at the “other half” and think those tunes aren’t for you. They’re every bit as much yours. In fact, you’ll often pick up subtleties about your own instrument by learning a tune from the other one.

How each tune lesson is built

Each tune lesson is broken into chapters. Generally the structure is:

About half the tunes in the library currently have a Bare Bones version, and those are the ones I’ll point beginners to first. The idea is simple: once you finish Foundations and start in on traditional repertoire, you want to learn tunes without being buried in ornamentation right away. Start with the bare-bones tunes. Then, as you work through the ornamental techniques in your Technique Library, you’ll start picking up the ornamented versions — the same tunes, now with the ornaments worked in — and folding them into your playing.

Find the tunes that are for you

First, let’s get you in front of the right tunes. In the Tune Library, switch to the By set view, open Refine, and under Level choose Beginner. That surfaces the sets built for where you are right now.

Think in sets, not just tunes

Now, before you start picking tunes at random, let’s talk about your goal — because a good goal makes all the difference.

When I was first learning, people would tell me, “Learn ten tunes, then go to a session and you’ll have ten tunes to play.” That’s fine advice as far as it goes, but I think we can aim better. The way Irish tunes are actually played — in sessions and most everywhere else — is in sets: two, three, sometimes more tunes strung together back to back. So instead of ten loose tunes, a better target is three sets of tunes.

When that clicked for me, I went back through everything I’d taught — about 150 tunes at the time — and painstakingly organized them into suggested sets. That’s what the By set view gives you. Filter those sets by Beginner and you’ll see a handful of them ready to go. Pick at least one to start, and make three sets your target. Three sets gets you nine tunes and, more to the point, gives you three real sets to play when you walk into your first session.

Start with one tune

Three sets is the target — but don’t let it loom over you. In the very beginning, don’t even worry about a full set. Your immediate goal as a total beginner is simply this: learn one tune. The bare-bones version, played with good technique, at whatever tempo is comfortable, without stopping.

Be honest with yourself here. “Without stopping” means really without stopping — at a steady, comfortable tempo, nice and even, not rushing. A metronome is a good friend at this stage; it’ll keep you honest about whether you’re actually holding the tempo or quietly speeding up through the easy bits and stumbling through the hard ones.

Then build the set

Once you can play that one tune comfortably and cleanly, all the way through without stopping, learn the next one. And the next. You’re working toward a whole set.

Here’s the pat on the back you’re aiming for: playing an entire set without stopping — including the transitions from one tune into the next. That last part matters. In a session, you don’t stop between tunes. If you break in the middle, you throw off the rhythm and the flow for everyone. What you want is to be able to lead a set — decidedly lead it — at a comfortable tempo, with no breaks anywhere, the tunes stitched together so the whole set feels almost like one larger tune.

If it helps, think of it the way classical music thinks of a larger work made up of movements. Your set is the larger work; the individual tunes are the movements. The difference is that in Irish music you very rarely stop and restart between movements — you stay locked into the established tempo and feel the whole way through. Remember, this is dance music. You want the dancers, if there are any, to be able to dance unencumbered by you starting and stopping. And it’s more than dance music too — it’s music for the players to enjoy together and for listeners to enjoy. Either way, the goal is to flow.

So the ladder looks like this:

Head to the By set view, find a set with tunes you genuinely like, and start climbing.

About ornamentation — it’s coming

You might be wondering where all the ornamentation fits in. It’s coming, and I cover it properly in the Intermediate section. For now, the important thing is this: you do not need to play tunes with ornamentation before you can play in a session. Learning ornamentation well takes its own time and has its own process, and laying a good foundation for it matters every bit as much as laying a good foundation for the basics. Don’t rush it. Honestly, the ornamentation is some of the most fun you’ll have on these instruments — but only to the degree that you can play it well. So let it come when it comes. Just know it’s on its way.

About your first session — you can go now

One more thing, because students worry about this: you don’t have to walk into your first session knowing a single tune. It’s perfectly good to just show up, listen, meet people, and let folks know you’re learning. That alone can connect you with other flute and whistle players — and maybe teachers in your area — who can help you alongside this course. Don’t wait until you feel “ready.” Go and listen.

On learning by ear

From here, I strongly encourage you to learn tunes by ear, following along with me in the phrase-by-phrase teaching. If you have real difficulty with that, I’ve also provided sheet music — just click the PDF icon on the corresponding video track.

But let me say something about learning by ear, because it’s one of the most misunderstood things I run into. Students who come from a more trained, “classical” background — where they were taught music almost entirely by reading — often assume they simply can’t learn by ear. Nine times out of ten (maybe ten times out of ten), what’s really going on is that they tried it once, it didn’t click, and they decided that was that. And the real culprit is usually that the tune was unfamiliar to them.

Here’s what I mean. I’d just about guarantee that any student — even one who’s never touched a piano — could walk over to one and, given a little time, pick out the melody of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” or “Amazing Grace.” Tunes they’ve heard countless times. That right there proves we all have the ability to learn by ear. What trips people up is that I’m asking two things at once: learn by ear, and learn a tune you’ve never heard before.

Which is exactly why listening matters so much. The degree to which you’ve truly listened to a tune — how many times you’ve let it soak in before you ever try to play it — is the degree of ease with which you’ll learn it. So listen, and then listen more.

Your beginner goal

Your goal as a beginning student is to be able to play three tune sets, in their bare-bones versions, comfortably and without mistakes. Pick the beginner sets that interest you in the By set view, and make it your aim to have three of them session-ready. That’s your foundation for everything that follows.

For our purposes, an intermediate student is someone who can — at the very least — play around ten tunes (roughly three sets) from memory, effortlessly and without mistakes. That’s not a hard number, but it’s the neighborhood. This also assumes you’re displaying proper technique: the technique taught in Foundations, and the technique I’ve shown you in the bare-bones tunes so far.

For example, one thing I’ll keep reminding you to do is lift your T1 finger when playing middle D. And remember: the key to progressing quickly is to practice slowly. Give your brain time to absorb all the new information you’re throwing at it.

As an intermediate student, you’ll start working more intentionally on your ornaments. The goal is to execute these effortlessly and without mistakes:

A word on order here. A roll is nothing more than a combination of a cut and a tap. So work on your cuts and taps in parallel, together, before you start in on rolls — because your rolls will only ever be as good as your cuts and taps. Get those two solid first and the rolls have something to stand on.

This is where the Technique Libraries come into their own. Foundations was sequential, but from here the studio is à la carte. The Tin Whistle Technique Library (opens in new tab) and the Irish Flute Technique Library (opens in new tab) each lay out every technique on a single page, so you can pull one up and work on any single piece of your playing on its own. I’m entrusting you to use these resources — the tune lessons and the technique libraries — well, and responsibly.

And of course, all of this means working the ornaments naturally into the tunes you’re playing, not just drilling them in isolation (though a bit of that is good to do!).

Don’t gloss over these fundamentals. They lay the groundwork for everything in advanced playing. In fact, it’s good to think of yourself as staying in the intermediate stage for quite a while. The longer you spend here mastering your cuts, taps, rolls, breathing, and tone, the better equipped you’ll be when you cross into advanced playing.

Really, we are all “advancing” players — even as beginners. The moment we pick up a whistle or flute and get a sound out of it for the first time, we’ve advanced.

So go easy and be good to yourself.

At this stage you’ll also want to make regular use of the player controls beneath the lesson videos. You can slow lessons down, loop difficult passages, and repeat phrases without changing pitch. These are incredibly useful for working through ornaments and tricky sections slowly and carefully.

And if you ever want a check-in, I’m here for it. At any point along the way — if you’re wondering whether you’ve got something right before moving on, or you just want a bit of coaching to get over a hump — you can schedule a one-on-one video call with me (Skype, FaceTime, whatever works). Just reach out through my contact page⁠ (opens in new tab).

A word on “intermediate” and “advanced”

Sorting players into intermediate and advanced is a useful enough thing to do, and I think the lines I’ve drawn are fair. But I’ll be honest — there’s something going on beneath those labels that the boxes don’t quite capture. A student can tick every technique I’ve listed and start thinking of themselves as an advanced player. And here’s the thing: we don’t really want to be regarded as advanced. That appeals to the ego, but it doesn’t appeal to the ear.

The goal is to play music for yourself, yes — but even more than that, for others. Art is a kind of service. A painter doesn’t only paint for themselves; they paint for others to experience the painting. As musicians, we’re sounding notes for other people — for the musicians playing alongside us and the listeners taking us in. The listener doesn’t care whether you’re “advanced.” They don’t even think in those terms. Your music either draws them in or it doesn’t.

That’s why it’s worth taking your time with the foundational techniques. You’ll enjoy your own playing more when it’s built on something solid, and your listeners will feel it too. Rush through the fundamentals and your sound will be off. It just will.

The truth is, there probably won’t be a morning you wake up and say:

And at the heart of every good musician, the goal shouldn’t really be to be considered advanced (that mostly feeds the ego). The real goal is to enjoy your music and share it with others. The advancing itself should be enjoyable.

That said, here’s roughly what an advanced student looks like: playing tunes beautifully, with good rhythm and lift (i.e. playing not just “metronomically” — do they “breathe”? do they “bounce”?), performing without mistakes, weaving the foundational ornaments and techniques in naturally, and learning tunes by ear.

Advanced students are also starting to make the tunes “their own” — developing a more personal style and approach. Depending on your taste, that might mean more variation in your interpretation, approaching the same passage a little differently each time through.

I don’t need to say much to direct advanced students, because you tend to be self-starters. If that’s you: pick my lessons apart, slow sections down, come up with your own interpretations, and experiment with different approaches.

Sometimes the hard part of being an advanced player is staying challenged. I hope I can help keep you encouraged here — maybe by offering a different angle on a tune than you’d have arrived at on your own.

As musicians, we should always be learning — always keeping our ears and minds open to new sounds, approaches, techniques, and ideas.

That’s all I have to say for now. If you have suggestions on how I can make this guide more helpful, please let me know.