Hello there everybody and anybody - I’m taking up the tinwhistle again and used to learn it by doh ray mee - i can’t read music - is this going to be a major problem?
On 2003-02-05 09:41, juliuscaeser wrote:
Hello there everybody and anybody - I’m taking up the tinwhistle again and used to learn it by doh ray mee - i can’t read music - is this going to be a major problem?
If you want to purchase sheet music, or download sheet music to learn, then you will eventually have to learn to read it.
However, if there is a session anywhere near your house, you can go and learn by ear. There are a LOT of people that do this.
However, just IMHO, if you really want to progress down the line, you will eventually need to learn to read the music.
Aodhan
I’ve been playing for a year and a half and I still can’t read music fast enough to play and read together, or even to tell how a new tune is supposed to sound if I haven’t heard it before. Don’t stress about it, just have fun learning by ear for now and if you want to go to sheet music later you always have the option of learning. 
You might be able to learn to transfer do re mi, to a basic understanding of notation, by studying shape notes. Here is a link:
Rudiments](http://www16.brinkster.com/arminian/rudiments/Rudiment.htm%22%3ERudiments) of Music
No you don’t have to learn to read music. Just get yourself a wife and three children who can read the dots and there should always be at least one of them available to play any new tune to you.
Funny this reflects last night discussion on Chiff-chat…
Doh-ray-me rocks!
Whistle a transposing instrument ? Right : doh-ray-me, starting from dee, or whatever you fancy, whatever key you start out from…
Easy–whatever key==> Doh=xxx xxx.
Relative minor=“Lah”-see-doh starting xoo ooo (or xoo oox)
Second major “Fah” xxx ooo.etc but don’t forget to cross-finger the Doh…
Dorian/Doric ? “Ray” mode.
Mixolydian ? “Soh” mode
etc.
This relative scale doh-ray-me is directly related to the whistle, a doh-ray-me i.e. major diatonic, but transposing, instrument.
Doh-ray-me reminds us intervals, more than absolute pitch, art the essence to trad music…
Welcome, Jules.
I’m still barely literate with the black dots, and that hasn’t stopped me at all. In primary school we learned songs by tonic solfa, and it always made more sense to me than that stave stuff. I even handled the medievel-looking notation used for Gregorian chant in the school choir without a bit of bother as it seemed intuitively to make more sense.
As Zubski points out, what matters with the whistle is the internal relationship between notes, and I’m both amazed, awed and saddened to see some people here getting tied up in knots because they’re so hung up on the absolutism of stave notation. If you find solfa easy, you probably have a good ear for a tune.
In Irish music circles (and by extension in a substantial part of the whistle and folk music world) what you effectively encounter is an adapted solfa system where Do is D, Re is E and so on up to high d. This naming convention is based on the assumption that the whistle is in D, but it is in fact applied irrespective of what pitch the instrument itself is in. Thus the bottom note of the scale on a whistle is always called “D” even if the whistle itself is in Eb, GNat or Q#.
It will make it easier to communicate with other whistle players if you get into the habit of thinking of the whistle notes by these names, and it will also enable you to read tunes in ABC notation, of which there are masses on the web. This won’t be a hindrance if you decide subsequently to upskill to stave notation, since the letter names for the notes are the same as those used in stave notation.