At Blocki Flute, we love Celtic music. It teaches kids culture, rhythm and improvisation. We're lucky to have a master KinderFlute teacher, Molly Shortridge, who is also an Irish flute performer — and she's sharing her approach here, along with short video lessons for each idea.
Joyful Celtic teaching ideas, by Molly Shortridge
It's always wonderful to teach the Blocki Flute Method to my students, and especially joyful when we come across one of the Celtic songs interspersed throughout the method. After students get the gist of the tune, I revel in adding other elements into the mix for a more authentic Irish feel.
Let's look at the tune "Soldier's Joy" in Blocki Method Student Book 2, page 33.
1. Swing the rhythm and give weight to the upbeats
Hornpipes are usually swung, close to a dotted eighth / sixteenth note pattern. Most Celtic music, when notated, is written in straight eighth notes, but that is not how the rhythm should be interpreted. Listening to other performers play this tune or other hornpipes will help students find the groove.
It also helps to take the music into cut time and give a little weight to the upbeats, which I explain in the video along with swinging and slurring.
2. Don't tongue
Celtic flute music is generally not tongued. For beginning Irish flute, it's best to switch to long slurred passages to break the habit of wanting to tongue. On sheet music you find for Celtic music, articulations are generally not written in — so don't tongue everything just because it looks like you should.
As a side note: instead of tonguing, players employ a "glottal stop," a throat articulation. I don't generally teach the glottal stop to most students on the Blocki Book Celtic tunes, unless they want further study of Irish flute music.
3. Make variations
Students enjoy taking notes out or adding notes in as a first step toward making a variation. It's fun for them to look for intervals of a 3rd in their music and try adding a middle note, creating triplets. For instance, in the first measure they could add a B-flat between the first two notes — and voilà, a triplet. This can be done in many places in this hornpipe.
Have students circle the places they want to try, and then on the repeat of the same section, let them try triplets in new places. The video demonstrates changing duples to triples.
4. Add ornaments: the cut
Cuts, sometimes called grace notes, are finger articulations. They often separate two notes of the same name, or they are sprinkled around the tune on single notes.
5. Add ornaments: the roll
When confronted with three notes in a row of the same name, we have an opportunity to add an ornament called a roll. It's like a gruppetto in classical music, but the groove is different.
6. Put it all together
Bonus tip: listen, listen, listen
When I first considered joining the Across the Pond Celtic Band, I was told by the guitarist to "listen, listen, listen." I spent nearly two years only listening to Celtic music, because I had played classical music for so long that I did not have the groove internalized.
It would be beneficial for your students to listen to other performers, on a variety of instruments, playing this hornpipe and others. Who knows — you may spark a passion that leads to challenging, fun and exciting opportunities in the future, for you or for your students.
About Across the Pond
Across the Pond is a wedding band, concert band, party band and festival band, performing traditional Celtic music in its own unique arrangements.
- Named one of the Top 20 Celtic Folk Bands worldwide for 2014
- Co-winners of the Texas Scots Talent Competition, 2015
- "I Know My Love" voted Best of Contemporary for 2015 and inducted into the Celtic Radio Hall of Fame
Across the Pond — where tradition meets innovation.
About Molly Shortridge
Molly Shortridge (B.M., Temple University) started her music career as a music therapist and classical flutist, but became enamored with Celtic music over the years. When the pandemic hit, she was able to spend more time delving into the genre and began collaborating with guitarist Mike Morrison and Across the Pond.
As the owner of a music and arts center, The Perfect 5th, and also The Fluteplace of Central PA, she maintains a large teaching studio. Molly has taught flute pedagogy seminars at national and regional conventions and workshops in colleges. She has performed in orchestras, ensembles and as a soloist throughout central Pennsylvania and Italy. She is also a published artist specializing in flute-related artwork.
In Across the Pond, you can find her playing an array of flutes: the silver Boehm flute, a wooden six-holed Celtic flute, whistles, alto flute, piccolo and more.
Find more Celtic tunes
You can find lots of Celtic songs in Blocki Method Books 2 and 3. They're not only fun, they're full of arpeggios that help with technical development. We find that students are much more motivated when they love the music they're playing. Fun, engaging and purposeful adds up to a lot of progress.
