I’m learning, “Jump At The Sun” for which I have the dots in Bb. I’m playing it on a D whistle and it sounds fine to me. Does the whistle transpose like this, which is my understanding, or should I tweak the tune?
You definitely don’t have the “dots in Bb”. It’s commonly written in D minor, with one flat in the key signature. Is that what you meant? Whatever key you play it in, it’s not the easiest on whistle. What fingering are you using? As in, what holes do you cover for the first note of the tune?
I just looked at the sheet music, I would play it on a C whistle.
If writing it out I would move everything up one full step, in E minor instead of D minor.
All those G#'s are now Bb’s, and many whistles will do
xox xxx
for Bb nicely.
Now, on uilleann pipes if you put it up in A minor you have the sharp 4th built in, because you have a tone-hole for D#.
@Ben Yes, Dm that was sloppy on my part. The tune begins on a low D, so al hole covered on a D whistle. I went back to The Session site and found it in G, one sharp, which in a casual run through I like very well though it is a different version in the second part than Dm.
The one with one sharp is in E minor, not G.
I’m still curious how you were able to get much at all of the tune if you were playing it in D minor on a D whistle. 
It’s nearly impossible, IMO, in D minor on a D whistle. If you play it in E minor on a D whistle, it’s doable, but I still wouldn’t say it’s the easiest tune. It’s pretty distinctively English, by the way - were you going for expanding your cultural palette? Just curious …
The second part doesn’t have to be different in the E minor version from the D minor version, but I guess you’re just taking various people’s versions as notated on the session.org. I’d be very wary of those. Some of them are a bit bizarre - some may even say, wrong. Personally, since it’s a composed tune, I’d go back as closely as possible to the source. Try this for instance, at about 7:02.
@Ben - I’m new to this endeavor and do not know much of the musicology terminology so my references to keys may be wrong. The version I’ve been using is version 1 on The Sessions page though yesterday I reviewed them and found a version with one sharp which I quite like and the A and B parts seem to tie together a bit more smoothly than the first version.
And yes to the cultural palette. I especially like Brenton and Renaissance pieces. I heard “Jump” on a YT post and liked it.
The trouble is that key signature doesn’t tell you what the tonal centre of a tune is. I suppose at least it gives you a range of possibilities.
So in the key signature of one sharp you’ll find Irish tunes in
D Mixolydian
E minor
G Major
A dorian
C Lydian
In other words five different tonal centres.
Did I miss any?
About transposing, it’s confusing for many people but it’s logical in its own strange way.
So a tune appears to be in D minor, having the scale of D E F G A Bb C d
Playing the F naturals and B flats are awkward on a D whistle, but right under the fingers on a C whistle.
Since a C whistle is one full step lower than a D whistle, you have to transpose the sheet music one full step higher.
So the D minor tune is now written in E minor, that B flat is now a C natural, in the written music.
But when you perform the tune on a C whistle the tune is restored to its original key, D minor.
It’s the great thing about whistles: they’re inexpensive and portable, so you can buy a load of them and carry them all with you, and be ready to transpose to a great many different keys.
An example just happened to me: I learned a tune in G major (The Galway Rambler) I went on YouTube to practice it along with a fiddler, but he plays it in D Major. Did I have to re-learn the tune to play along? Not at all! I just picked up an A whistle and was in the right key for playing with the fiddler.
Why? Because the note that’s G on a D whistle
xxx ooo
is D on an A whistle.
In like manner I learned The Gravel Walk in A minor, but sometimes people play it in D minor. To a fiddler it’s just moving the tune one string down, they can use the same fingering.
I likewise can use my normal fingering, playing it in A minor, but play it on a G whistle so it comes out in D minor.
xxo ooo
is A on a D whistle, but D on a G whistle.
Sorry, I’m really not being awkward. I know, just know, without thinking, what key a piece is in, so if someone says it’s in a different key from the one I know it’s in, I get confused. Also, what does “Brenton” mean?
Oh, by the way, don’t use version one on the session.org - it’s wrong, especially in bar 4. Version 2 is way better. It was posted by someone who is a very good musician (not me). Version 3 is fine, but in a different key altogether (G minor), and very awkward on most common keys of whistle. Version 4 is OK, except that it has the wrong key signature. Version 5 is just plain wrong. I was going to go through the rest, but most of them are wrong. I’d say version 15 is probably your best bet, being basically just like version 2, only transposed into E minor, so fitting better on a D whistle. Was that the one you were using?
Breton + typo = Brenton 
Best wishes.
Steve
Is it? Oh. Ok.
Yes, typo. It was very early in the morning and I was soon off to work so I did not proof read. Or maybe Alien Hand Syndrome.
@Ben - I went back to The Session and printed version 15. I printed version 8 yesterday and quite like them both. The B part of these versions go well with their respective A part. The B part of the first version is somewhat an awkward transition from A.
I liked the link you enclosed but 7:02? The first link only goes to 5:50.
Here is were I first heard Jump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btEpAqB7BFE
Version 8 is OK, except that bars 4, 8 and 16 are wrong.
I don’t understand that. I wonder if it’s a country thing, i.e. foreshortened outside the UK? When I click the link, the video goes to 8:43.
Yes-s-s-s … it sounds like that chap has learnt the tune from the dots of one of the versions on the session.org - sadly, one of the wrong ones. I see he’s playing a C whistle. So he’s using one of the versions written in E minor on the session.org. It sounds like he also has chosen version 8. Shame he didn’t choose 15. Or, better yet, listen to John Kirkpatrick playing it. He did write it, after all.
Oh, I was sure, as a Moderator, you knew. My fear was that somewhere in the darkest corners of Chiffdom there was some poor, misguided soul (maybe Old Wizz Post) plaintively singing, “Rule Brentonia…”
Best wishes.
Steve
I genuinely do have trouble reading and understanding things like this. It’s why, nearly four years ago ( 
), I started my thread, Can’t read it wrong. I think it has something to do with the fact that I don’t like to make assumptions. Sometimes, just asking the question has meant that I’ve learned something that I didn’t already know. I just learnt the other day, for instance, that the word “livable” is simply the American spelling of the word “liveable”. I didn’t know that. I had been labouring under the misapprehension that it must be a different word - one which I just didn’t know. (By the way, for a while, the same thing happened with “aluminum”.)
That was laugh out loud for me. Sadly true, and not only for that tune, as you well know. (Hastings…just like the battle.)
I was looking at one tune the other day, which had a large number of settings, and half of them were in the wrong time signature.
So many Irish musicians, even very good ones, are musically illiterate, and some don’t know that 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 are different things.
The obvious point to make here is that this is or was folk music, played by people with little or no formal training, and until O’Neill nobody had ever put forth a claim to have found or established the “right” versions of specifically Irish dance tunes. And O’Neill and his collaborators frankly admitted to changing tunes as they saw fit, rearranging them and changing notes according to their taste. I suppose it seemed more “right” because there was a picture of a man in a police chief’s uniform on the frontispiece?
O’Neill, James O’Neill, and Edward Cronin had only the most rudimentary knowledge of keys and modes, yet recordings of Edward Cronin show him to have been quite an excellent player despite not knowing the “right” version of
“Banish Misfortune.”
nobody had ever put forth a claim to have found or established the “right” versions of specifically Irish dance tunes
Older collections often made some claims about their settings, perhaps not claiming perfection or being definitive but even as early as O’Farrell you can find the claim ‘tunes, set in proper style and taste’.
Caoimhín MacAoidh made an argument about the quality of James O’Neill’s assignment of key signatures (The scribe, p. 93 etc) that is perhaps more sympathetic than some other opinions.
But it’s not always clear what happens in the transmission, somewhere along the line. One of my favourite examples, from Levey’s first collection:
Did Levey get the key signature completely wrong or did subsequent readers who played from the printed version in D? Or did they just hear a tune that would work just fine in D? In my experience a competent traditional musician will let their ear guide their playing, rather than a printed key signature, sharpening and flattening some notes as they feel appropriate. FWIW, Séamus Ennis, or his father, appear to have lifted quite a few settings from Levey’s and he did play this version as well as one in its (now) more regular key, both sounding perfectly fine.
To my mind one of the most interesting moments in O’Neill’s work is when he asks James, then Cronin, then James again to get the key signatures right, and they both get a lot of them wrong, and the authority for them being wrong is O’Neill’s daughter, who plays the piano. You can just imagine how irked the two men must have been: Key signature was literally and completely irrelevant to their musical practice. Cronin especially played at a very high level. Did he ever even play with harmonic accompaniment? outside of the drones on a set of pipes? Who doubts that he subbed a C natural for a C sharp as he saw fit? And then for Cronin–who was then an old man, and still working as a “grinder” in a factory, to be told by the Chief’s snip of a daughter that he’s doing it wrong? I mean think of Tony MacMahon using that phrase (we’ve been doing it wrong!") to describe his umbrage at “modernists” in his essay for the Crossroads conference.
The tradition O’Neill loved and sought to preserve had no need whatsoever for the theory of key signatures. He barely even recognized the existence of the accordion and he had no time for pianos or banjos.
But what we’re talking about in this thread is a modern, English tune, composed by a known composer. He wasn’t/isn’t ignorant.