Greetings, fellow music lovers!!
Ryan, my fearless fifth grade whistle student, is doing great on “Down by the Sally Gardens,” “Leaving Rhu Vaternish,” and “Molly Halpin,” and he’s beginning to understand some of the basic ornamentations. He’s itching to try some quicker dance-type tunes, but most of the jigs/reels I know are too hard (For me, that is; he could probably handle them 
). I was thinking “The Rolling Wave” might work; any other ideas? (I’m teaching him totally by ear)
Thanks!
Tom
how about acoupala polkas as an intermediate step before going to jigs and reels?
Ballydesmond and Terry polkas are two that come to mind.
Cheers,
jb
Try The Kesh Jig, in D, and Blackthorn Stick. Both have easy triplet progressions.
I recommend this site:
http://www.verinet.com/~ktcrumb/tunes/index.php3
The sound files that come with each tune are very helpful for the beginner. They’ve got the Kesh Jig there, which I agree is a great starter.
Edit:
whoops, I scanned through your post too quickly and assumed you were the beginner… I’d recommend the site for your fifth grade student then 
.
[ This Message was edited by: Poppin’ Fresh on 2001-11-06 18:04 ]
On 2001-11-06 17:59, Poppin’ Fresh wrote:
I recommend this site:http://www.verinet.com/~ktcrumb/tunes/index.php3
The sound files that come with each tune are very helpful for the beginner. They’ve got the Kesh Jig there, which I agree is a great starter.
Going off at a tangent slightly: I don’t really know how to say this without sounding like a killjoy and/or offending people, but I’m going to say it anyway. Please take it as it is meant, which is with the best interests of beginners at heart.
In my considered opinion, many of the sound clips on this site, and indeed the same could be said of our own clips and snips, are not good references for beginners, or indeed for anybody. Many - not all - of the performances are by people who could barely be said to be beginners themselves.
I’m sorry, but these are just not the performances of Irish music that beginners need to be listening to for learning purposes. The rhythms of Irish music are subtle and need to be learned from established traditional musicians. Just as to learn French or Spanish or Mandarin you have to learn to native speakers.
As fun places for people to post their efforts, such sites are fine. But as learning resources? Avoid them like the plague.
I would suggest Ten Penny Bit as an easy jig. However, I wouldn’t try to find just the simplest sounding melodies. At a slow pace, there isn’t much difference in difficulty between many tunes. I’d let the youngster choose tunes based upon what sounds interesting and fun to him/her. Motivation is usually the biggest challenge for the kids, not technical difficulties.
Tony
Edit re StevieJ’s post: I totally agree that listening to beginners is not the way to learn the music. Clips and Snips is for our fun, I wouldn’t recommend it for learning the finer points of playing. (That includes my own.) With that caveat, I would encourage everyone to listen in for grins.
Tony
Clips](http://nwparalegalcom.readyhosting.com/clipssnip/newspage.htm%22%3EClips) and Snips Tunes
“When you make it to the top of the mountain, keep on climbing.” -Zen saying
[ This Message was edited by: TonyHiggins on 2001-11-06 18:37 ]
Learning to play by ear is great. I wish I could do it. However, teach him to read music, too. It’s a skill that’s just too useful for a musician. To me, not being able to read music would be like being able to speak French but not read it.
Thorton–
See, here’s the beauty of this: I’m his whistle teacher, but I’m also his school music teacher! He learns to read music in class; he learns to play the whistle by ear in private lessons! At some point, if he chooses to connect the two, it won’t be a problem. Ain’t life grand?
Everyone else–Thanks for the suggestions. The final choice will be his, of course…knowing him, he’ll choose something really, really hard. Hee hee
Tom
I suggest Jimmy Ward’s, a handy little jig which stays in the first octave but still sports a few nice rolls to practice. And it takes you away a bit from the much slaughtered so called beginner’s tunes.
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2001-11-07 06:30 ]
I find I’m learning Hornpipes more than any other sort of tune. I find them generally more melodically interesting then the faster reels and jigs.
Based on tunes drawn from various tutorial books, my recommendations would be:
Hornpipes: The Boys of Bluehill, The Brown Coffin, The Blackbird, The Home Ruler, Off to California, The Harvest Home (trickier)
Slides: The Glauntaine Slide, The Scartaglen Slide, The Dingle Regatta
Jigs: Saddle the Pony, The Frost is all Over, My Darling Asleep, Trip it up the Stairs, Whelan’s Fancy, Haste to the Wedding
Reels: The Star of Munster, My Love is in America, St. Anne’s Reel (aka The Skylark)
Slow Airs: Just about anything, great for practising those ornamentations! Eanach Dhuin, Carrickfergus, Roisin Dubh, & The South Wind are my favourites at the moment.
But now I’m worried these might be “much slaughtered beginners tunes” !!
Some of them indeed are
One could start a discussion about melodic interest in hornpipes as opposed to other form but maybe not. The ones you list are not the worst. Maybe Home Ruler needs some explaining to the beginner who may get lost when the fiddle takes the melody to the lower string that we don’t have. Also: Skylark is a grand tune. St Anne’s? well, some people like it, some don’t, anyhow they are two different tunes. St Anne’s is supposed to have been brought from Cape Breton in the 50s by concertinaplayer Chris Droney. It’s the one De Dannan coupled with the Teetotaller and many still follow that.
St Anne’s is supposed to have been brought from Cape Breton in the 50s by concertina player Chris Droney.
Interesting and very plausible. Although St. Anne’s reel is played all over N. America, if you are familiar with Canadian fiddle music, it seems obvious that St. Anne’s reel is of French-Canadian or specifically Québécois origin. The patterns just fit. There’s a reel called “Le reel de Sherbrooke” (Sherbrooke being a town not far from Montreal) that is an obvious cousin.
The name is a dead giveaway, anyway. In rural Québec nearly every town and village is named after a saint, and there are dozens of places called “Ste-Anne-de-Somethingorother”. The tune was probably named as being associated with a place rather than the saint herself.
This is not to contradict the idea that Chris Droney got the tune in Cape Breton. French-Canadian and Acadian tunes find their way into the repertoire of Cape Breton musicians, and indeed there is an Acadian/French-speaking region of Cape Breton, around Chéticamp where if I’m not mistaken, artists such as J.P. Cormier and Hilda Chiasson come from.
Tom,
What about polkas? I know they are usually played fast, but the melodies are often very simple and repetitive and very easy for beginners to learn by ear. Learners can start slowly and gradually increase speed as they get more experience. One that I use at most of my Whistle workshops or with beginning students is Stitches in my Britches. Teaching it in G, there are no c’s or f#'s so it is dead-easy to play and being repetitive, easy to memorize. Then when they have that, teach it in A - great practice for the c#!! Then they have a cool set by playing the tune a couple times in G then going up a tone to A. Lots of other polkas work well too! There are also some nice jigs that have no c’s or f’s in - good for beginners - Killiloe Boatman is one.
Sue
For what it’s worth, here are four polkas that were either given me by my whistle teacher or are used at the kid’s session at Nanny O’Brien’s (DC):
1. John Ryan's Polka (Dum-Dum Song)
2. Peg Ryan's Fancy
3. Sean McGovern's Polka
4. Maggie in the Woods
FWIW, I found "Out on the Ocean" much harder than (say) the Kesh Jig or The Swallowtail Jig.
-- Scott T.
I know this may be against conventional wisdom, and I learned as one my first tunes, but I think the Kesh is not a great beginners tune. It’s actually not that easy.
I would say Tripping up the Stairs, the Swallowtail, and 10-Penny Bit (for the upper register) are better beginner jigs. Even Donnybrook Fair/Joy of My Life is better than the Kesh in the beginning, I think.
Just ot get back to SteveJ’s st Anne comments. The tune does sound more French Canadian.I read the Cape Breton reference somewhere recently. CB is the thing at the moment so it’s an easily applied label. I’d go for the French canadian.
One of the beauties of being a teacher–it’s a great excuse to keep learning. Thanks for all the great suggestions! I’ve got some tunes to learn…
Tom
Butterfly… not a jig actually, but I find it a very fun tune, and it is played a HUNDRED different ways to say the least. I really liked it and you can ornament the crap out of it, or play it very plain and it still sounds very nice.
Anyhoo… good to hear another youngun’ is on their way to whistledom.