Blind whistle beginner

Whistle
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Okay I’m blind and using TalkBack and a screen reader to navigate and this is my first post. I hope this comes out okay and isn’t too rambling.

I first stumbled across the tin whistle about a year and a half ago and have been muddling my way through and only managed to figure out one tune which is Scarborough Fair. Here. Just recently, I have gotten a hold of gray Larson’s essential guide to Irish flute and tin whistle and gray Larson’s tin whistle toolbox. It took a while to find accessible versions of them that my screen reader would read. Even then, I am still having to have help with the music staff and I’ve been transcribing that into Braille

I have the audio files for the books and I also have his two 150 tune books. One for tin whistle and one for flute. I figured this is more music than I could probably learn in a lifetime. I have been listening to the audio files until I’m familiar with them and then I will get some help transcribing the staff notation for a song into Braille and I’m just transcribing the very basic notes and if they’re in the first or second octave but as far as rhythm and timing and ornamentation goes, that’s all done by ear. I haven’t worked out a tabs system for Braille that suits me yet in order to add symbols for ornamentation but I figured if I can just memorize the order of notes. The feel and rhythm of the tune should come through hearing and I can learn to add ornamentation by ear. I wanted to keep the Braille basic in order to help me not be reliant on it. So I just memorize the notes and move on focusing just on the audio. I just don’t want to be stumbling through while trying to keep up with the audio. I apologize if this isn’t making sense.

I’m currently in the cuts section of the two books and I’ve got a few songs from one of his first tin whistle lessons books transcribed into Braille and I can stumble my way through playing Bonnie at mourn owed to Joy and I’m working on the Londonderry air/ Danny, boy. I figured these would be good ones to start with with getting comfortable with the second octave and also ode to Joy gets me practicing cuts because there’s a lot of repeating notes.

It took me awhile to find a tin whistle that I was comfortable with. I ended up getting a shush D pro whistle and I love it. I still don’t like playing the high B. It’s uncomfortable but that only shows up on occasion and Danny boy seems to sound okay with just the normal. B.

I live in Oklahoma and don’t really have access to sessions, but I’ve always wanted to have music at my fingertips and be able to express with that. It’s been mainly a personal endeavor and I’m not planning on playing with others. Just something to add music to my life. I’ve always wanted to play music and never could, but something about this music really connects with me and I’m really wanting to take this as far as I can.

I have a low D whistle on the way, It’s just a simple Dixon non-tunable but I figured it might be a good one to start with.

All that exposition out of the way my thoughts are. Does anyone have any tips for somebody in my situation? Any comments on the books that I’ve chosen? Any particular tunes from the two 150 tune that are well loved or that you would recommend. I’ve listened to all of them and then there’s a few that really stand out to me. I really liked the green cottage. For some reason that one really caught my attention and I like a lot of the jigs. But picking tunes to learn and practice with is quite the endeavor because again I have to transcribe it to Braille in order to figure out the notes and once I have that memorized then I can go into timing and rhythm and ornamentation without wondering wait. What note is next or how do I make this next sound and so forth? I’m quite envious of you guys that can pull up a tune on thesession.org and take a glance at some music notation and be like okay so that’s the center and flow of the tune and then move on and just play it by ear LOL

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I love reading music, but a lot of the best players I know don’t read music at all. They learn everything by ear and always have. So that’s probably what you should focus on. Don’t overthink it! It’s doable with practice.

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Hi Elwyn,
First of all, well done you! It’s really inspiring to hear how much enthusiasm you’re putting into learning music. And being able to transcribe tunes into Braille that’s seriously impressive.

Reading and transcribing can be useful, but I think the most important thing is to listen, listen, listen. Find a solo recording of a tune you really love, listen to it in a loop until you can hum it, and then just trust your fingers, they’ll start to find their way.

Honestly, some of the best moments in music happen when people close their eyes and just get lost in the sound. All the best, there’s so much joy waiting for you in music!!

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Elwyn,

Welcome to whistling ! I picked it up late in life and have enjoyed every moment.

For you, I would recommend an “echo partner”.

The “echo partner” knows a tune. They play a note or two. Your job is to play it back. When you can play it back, he adds a few more notes. You can learn an entire tune by dividing it into phrases. This process will exercise and strengthen both your listening and playing abilities. While best done in person, It can even be done over the phone. I’ve done it.

Honestly, the musicians I admire most have all had a strong ability to play by ear.

Best wishes,
trill

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Thank you for the kind and encouraging replies and I am primarily learning with the audio recordings when transcribing Braille the system I have currently is literally just transcribing EeeEFGFddD To steal a phrase from Bonnie at morn. This is for two reasons. I am learning music but I am also working on further deepening my Braille sensitivity as well. When the tune is transcribed I will feel one phrase or one section until I have it memorized and then then listening to the audio until I can play that sequence of notes the way it sounds. I’m hoping with time that the step with Braille won’t even be needed.

I got the books that I did because I don’t want to just be able to hear a tune and play it. I want to know why it sounds that way. I want to know how all this works. I heard Grey Larson’s books are the best at describing all the technical ornaments and so forth.

I think with time I will probably just be able to hear something and play it, but at the moment it’s really important for me to further work on my Braille writing it out by hand. As well as reading it by hand. There is a system of Braille in place that would transcribe music more completely including duration of notes and rests and so forth. Much like visual music staff does. However I wanted to simplify mine as much as possible so that I’m not relying on the music staff to tell me how the tune is to be played like a classical musician would do so. I wanted the audio that I have to do that or my own ear when I listen back to my recordings.

I hope I answered any misunderstandings with the replies I received so far and clarified things further. Once again, my apologies for anything that may have come up with voice to text that may not make sense. If so let me know and I will do my best in editing this reply if possible or making a new one.

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Have you come across the ABC notation system, Elwyn? This is a simple, machine readable code used to generate staff music and various form of tab on computers.

But as well as being machine readable, it’s easily human readable. I’m wondering if by getting your Braille reader to read staff music, you’re adding in an unnecessary process? Most folk tunes have been transcribed into ABC notation and they’re easily found on the internet.

The notation for a tune always starts with headers that indicate the tune title, type (a jig, for example), meter, bar length, and key. That will probably be the most confusing part for someone new to it, but as only four or five headers are used for most tunes, they’re not difficult to learn. I can explain them if it’s of interest.

The rest of the notation is given as note names, separated by bar lines. Upper case letters denote the low octave of the whistle, lower case letters denote the high octave, and if a letter is followed by a number, it means it’s a longer note. So the first bar of Joe Cooley’s reel goes:

EBBA B2 EB

The first four notes are quavers, but B2 is a crotchet. If it were a dotted crochet it would be B3, and a minim would be B4.

You may know all this already, but I thought I’d mention it!

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Thank you very much for the reply. And yes, I have heard of ABC notation but it doesn’t transcribe easily to Braille. It is however screen reader accessible for the most part. I however am sticking with the books that I’ve got in order to get transcriptions of tunes because I want to be getting them from One source or as few sources as possible. Navigating thesession.org is tedious at best because again with a screen reader I’m having to scroll through item by item. I don’t know if any of you have ever accidentally turned on TalkBack on your phone, but it is tedious to use at the best of times.

As far as transcribing the staff notation from my books into Braille, I’m able to either get help with someone reading it to me out loud or I can get my phone to somewhat read it to me. Note by note and then I just put it in Braille.

I usually only have to feel my way through the Braille notation a few times. Then I’ve got it in my memory and can just focus on the audio in order to get timing and rhythm and so forth. Again. I’m trying to keep the Braille as simple as possible so it’s not a crutch but just a stepping off point. But I’m also wanting to strengthen my Braille sensitivity for reading it and also practice writing it. So doing so fulfilled two needs

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Bravo for you! As others have said, I strongly recommend learning the tunes by ear. If you can sing the tune, you can play it. For inspiration, I recommend recordings by The Bothy Band, Lunasa, Altan, Danu, Matt Malloy, and Seamus Egan, among others. If you would like to attend a live session, check out thesession.org. That site lists weekly Irish sessions at The Patriarch in Edmond and at McNellie’s Public House in Oklahoma City. The site also lists monthly sessions at Bishop Quigley’s Pub in Tulsa, The American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City, and Full Circle Bookstore in Oklahoma City. While whistle is frequently used for traditional Irish music, it’s also used for contra dance and English country dance music. The Scissortail Traditional Dance Society sponsors dances in Norman, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Even if you don’t dance, you can go listen.

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Thank you so much. I have found the reference you talked about.

This is all wonderful information about local sessions. Navigating new and unfamiliar environments as a blind person though is kind of terrifying and I will definitely keep this list in mind and work out getting someone to go with me to help navigate.

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To further my inquiries, has anyone used the Grey Larson books and are there any particular tips in navigating them or particular tunes in any of those four books that would be most prevalent to learn early on? I’m very thankful for the audio recordings because there is no way I could learn any of this with just music staff.

Thank you for the suggestion of bands to listen to as well. I found the suggested listening thread and bookmarked it as well and have very much been enjoying having this music playing. But there are so many tunes and I’ve been trying to hunt down just the ones that are in my audio recordings for my books to get different takes on each tune that I have learning material for currently

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Okay, so I just stumbled across Shannon heeton’s podcast and YouTube. I am loving the history that she adds to things and the breaking down of tunes.

Does anyone recommend any other podcasts or YouTube channels for history and origins of tunes as well as more whistle focused instruction. From what I understand, the flute and whistle as far as fingering goes are pretty much interchangeable. You can do more with a flute, but the whistle was easier to learn so that’s the one I picked and I’m also known a few people over the years that have had some shoulder problems from playing the flute.

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I always learn tunes just by listening to ones that I hear and want to play, and I don’t think about names of notes at all, but just play them by instinct. You’ll get to that level at some point too where you just know where the note you want is and it’s just automatic. I never read music, unless I’ve composed it and written it down, in which case I use a version of dough ray me without caring about what key it’s actually played in. You’ll probably find it easiest too just to design your own system and not care about what anyone else uses, but I’ll show you what I do.

The basic notes are D R M F S L T

For the next octave up, I put an apostrophe after the letter, and for the octave below I use a comma.

If I want to use quavers I simply run two letters together instead of leaving a space between them when they’re crotchets. For semiquavers I run four letters together in a block.

To double the length of a note I add a hyphen, and this lets me mix different lengths of notes together such that a block of letter letter hyphen letter represents a semiquaver, quaver and semiquaver. There are no spaces in between for that. If there are spaces in between, then it would be a crotchet, minim, crotchet. For a rest I use a dot.

I divide things into bars by using a vertical line character.

For flats and sharps I add a flat or sharp symbol, but I really ought to make up new names for those specific notes with distinct consonants for each.

You could use any letters you like for any of those in Braille, and it might be best to use the patterns of dots for the functional symbols, such as using a single dot high up for the equivalent of the apostrophe and a single dot low down for the equivalent of the comma. The equivalent of the bar division could be three dots in a vertical line, and the equivalent of the hyphen could be the middle two dots.

I’d want to make the whole thing feel “visual” with lower notes in the octave using lower dots.

I’ve just spent some time working with patterns, and here’s one that looks neat. Start with the lowest note of the octave using only the bottom left dot. For the next note up, one semitone higher, use both the bottom dots. For the next two notes up we’ll keep using the bottom left dot, but we keep shifting the other dot upwards, so for note three it’s bottom left dot plus central left dot. For note four it’s bottom left and centre right.

For the next set of four semitones up from there we switch to using the bottom right dot for all of them, so it’s on its own for note five, then it’s used along with centre left for note six, with centre right for note seven, and with top left for note eight.

For the next four semitones we use the centre left dot for all of them, so it’s used on its own for note nine, then both centre dots for note ten, then centre left plus top left for note eleven, and finally centre left and top right for note twelve.

This system is geometrically neat while also making it easy to feel the boundaries between the notes. Note five (bottom right dot alone) could be made clearer by using top right dot along with it so that it’s easily distinguished form note one when a series of crotchets are used with wide spacings between notes.

You may be able to come up with something more intuitive to you, and if so, go for that. Whatever you design for yourself is likely to be the most efficient system for you.

Having invented a chromatic scale, I’d now redesign the other symbols. Three vertically aligned dots for the bar boundaries still works. The hypen no longer works, but perhaps both the top dots plus both the bottom ones would do instead. But I don’t want to dictate anything to you, so I’ll stop there. I just wanted to illustrate a methodical approach of the kind that would be really neat to have if it became more universally used.

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That sounds like a great system and well done on coming up with a braille system on the fly like that. But again, even as you mentioned in your post, you’re thinking of it visually. There are those who learn Braille or Braille systems by site. It’s perfectly acceptable.

Yet for myself I have to stick with the common letters in order to reinforce my own Braille practice

Transcribing each note is the corresponding braille letter for me and when indicating high notes, I drop the symbol down into the lower half of the Braille cell as opposed to indicating capital or lowercase with an extra symbol. This is to save space as well because Braille takes up a lot of space. This is just the system I’ve come up with so far and again I’m keeping it bare Bones as possible so I’m not relying on the Braille too much or the music staff too much.

I’ve always felt I was a little tone deaf and so making sure I have to listen in order to get the rhythm and timing and length of each note. I’m hoping will train my ear and thus only using the Braille in the very beginning of learning a tune instead of always having to feel back to it. Just memorizing the order of notes and then playing the tune knowing what is next, but listening for how long and in what way I play that particular note.

I’m 38 and just now starting to make some progress now that I got a hold of screen reader accessible books and it’s explaining the structure of things more clearly. I’ve done my best to pick things out by ear, but I find memorizing the list of notes first helps so that I’m not just playing along and getting discouraged when I keep hitting what I hear and know to be wrong notes. I’ve already got the list in my head so that I know what comes next and I can just focus on how to play that note not necessarily what note it is.

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I think you’ll do fine if you just keep doing what you’re already doing. You’ll get good at learning tunes by ear over time without needing to write anything down, but by going on writing things down you’ll improve your ability to use Braille more and more efficiently too and can over time develop the system you use for writing music to suit your needs in whatever way feels most useful. It’ll all get easier and faster over time. So, good luck, and just keep at it.

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I’m really glad to hear that. Thank you! That’s encouraging.

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Is there a Comhaltas branch near where you live, Elwyn? It might also be called a CCE group.

Comhaltas offers lessons in Irish music, and groups sometimes have sessions that are accessible (slow enough) for relative newcomers. If there is a branch near you, they’re fairly likely to offer whistle lessons. It’s really helpful to learn alongside others.

They’ll also know all the local sessions. By the time your playing skills have developed, you’d have a bunch of people you know who could go along to pub sessions with you.

One of the problems with Irish sessions is repertoire – there are thousands of tunes, and every session has its own core repertoire. If you join a group of other learners, you’ll at least have a set of tunes that you can all play together.

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There isn’t a branch here in Oklahoma City. There are a few session spots but loud bars are hard to navigate and I don’t drink to boot. People don’t take kindly to that. They see it as disrespectful. If you’re at a bar and not drinking, at least that’s been my experience.

I have spoken to a few people here in the trad community and no one is very proficient with the tin whistle so there’s not a teacher for me at the moment. They are keeping an ear to the ground though for me. It would be great to have a teacher, but when a teacher cannot be found we have no choice but to come the teacher we seek. Who knows. Maybe in a decade or so I can give someone pointers so they don’t make the same stumbling blocks for themselves that I have so far.

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May I recommend a completely different approach? I’m not blind but I learn completely by ear. I can read notes but it’s not something I enjoy so I just listen to the music until I’m able to hum the tune. Once I’m able to hum the tune I’m able to play it. If there are difficult sections I slow down the tune using my video or music player to 25% to 50% speed until I know the tune by heart. This way, there’s no transcription complexity.

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I have been listening until I can hum the tune or lilt the different parts and then I will set to putting it in Braille. But I’m not going to bother transcribing a tune that I can’t even hum

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Hi Elwyn,

You couldn’t have picked a better genre of music for someone whose greatest strengths are in the non-visual modalities. I had the problem of starting with a strong visual focus and being completely dependent upon sight reading, and then jumping feet-first into learning by ear. It was a shock to the system!

Regarding the Grey Larson book, I’d say, take it very slowly, chew it up a little bit at a time. That’s what I’m doing with it. Read something, make room for that new information in your understanding, and then get some more.

Make use of the option on YouTube videos of changing the play-back speed. There should be accessible commands for doing this. Then you can slow a piece down to 75% or even 50%, and playing the same short stretch over and over again until it starts making sense and you can hear and replicate the ornamentation, or even start adding your own.

We are all subject to wanting to learn everything all at once and being able to play like the people who have been working at it for years–but that’s not the way this plays out. I encourage you to relax and enjoy the journey. Celebrate yourself for where you are, be patient with yourself and the process.

If you have small hands, you might find it easier to play a low D whistle with offset finger holes.

If you are interested in the kind of process someone talked about in another comment, having a `loop buddy,’ I would be willing to work with you and learn together. Let me know.

The other thing I would suggest is fall in love with a piece, even if it’s aspirational, and listen and learn that one, and play it until you can play it in your sleep.

I understand that you’re trying to strengthen your Braille skills as well, but it’s a bit like trying to learn Italian by learning to be a luthier in Italy, or learning French by going to a cooking school in France. It’s not wrong–but be aware that it’s a much larger scope of skills you’re taking on.

Working on your ear training skills will probably help you a lot.

One more thing: my favorite composer is O’Carolan, the blind harpist. If you’re not familiar with his work and his life, you may want to dive in and learn more about him and his music and his techniques for learning and sharing music. He was brilliant.

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