To celebrate Blayne's second year of teaching Irish whistle & flute online (and his upcoming 100th masterclass), we're giving away our top-recommended whistles to all new students at Blayne's online teaching site! Sign up today over at Blayne's teaching site, www.BlayneChastain.com/user/register, to get your free whistle.

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I love Irish traditional music. I like the scope of it—the fact that there are thousands of tunes out there and a myriad of regional and individual styles that often come together in unexpected ways.

The essence of the solid trad player is a musician who knows a wide variety of tunes and can play them with exquisite skill and style. To pull this off, all players (seasoned and new) need to do lots of listening and practicing at home, playing in sessions (maybe even onstage), and then more practicing.

While there is no shortcut to mastery—everybody needs to practice—it has become clear to me that while good quality practice can lead to excellent playing, distracted practice is a decidedly inefficient path to

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The last few days I've been on holiday visiting family in the southeast (US) and as usual brought my flute along for the ride. Sometimes she gets played, sometimes not, depending on the social intensity of the trip. This one has been relaxed with lots of down time which has been a great opportunity for getting back into regular practice / playing.

So right now I'm right in the middle of practicing and as usual my mind tends to wander as I'm practicing my cuts, taps, rolls, breathing, intonation, tone, interpretation, variations, etc... I've been thinking about the concept of mastery a bit. This is something that many of us reach for but in the backs of

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When asked how to take one’s playing to the next level, the first thing I think of is… Are you learning by ear or by sheet music? While sheet music is a great resource that we have at our disposal these days, it’s good to remember that Irish traditional music has been for ages and continues to be shared orally… Yes, it’s an “oral tradition” we traddies like to say. Simply put, folks have been learning tunes from other folks for years and years by just hanging out, playing music together in ones kitchens, porches, pubs, etc… When a tune goes by that you dig, you say… “Hey… Teach me that tune would ya?”

So why is that better than just cracking open a tune book you say? Well… think about why you

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