Exercises, Scales, and Arpeggios

Whistle
1

Several participants in a related thread have indicate the use of or an interest in fingering exercises, scales, arpeggios, breath control, finger positioning, and such. Does anyone know of a source for this sort of thing, either published or on the Internet, specifically directed to the whisle?

On other instruments, I have found that even a little practice of such things, as uninteresting as it can be at times, is well worth the effort. Such practice will, in the long run, speed up the learning curve on most songs.

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blch

If you can’t think of scales and appregios to play without having them written out, I would suggest just learning the Cup of Tea: Gives you scales (first part) and appregios (third part). For a challenge play it backwards. :slight_smile:

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I have heard before, I think it was Leonard Bernstein, that all melodies are 90% scales and arpeggios. Knowing all of the related scales and arpeggios on your instrument and in your ear in my opinion is a must. It is like having a technique vocabulary. You hear a tune you don’t know, establish the mode then go from their with what your ear and body know. If you hear an e minor arpeggio followed by a downward scale and you have that in your technique vocabulary then you will learn the tune faster. I am with CDon on this. If you know all your technique and believe Mr. Bernstein then you already know 90% of all tunes. Gee, how many tunes do you know that start on a Gmajor arpeggio pattern? I say practice it all without music so your ear learns it good. Your eyes don’t matter.(it has taken me two years to convince my brain that the eyes are irrelevent in the making of music) Sorry so verbose, GOOD TOPIC.
Tunemarshall

4

I hear you. And if you’re going to play Chopin Etudes or the Brahms Requiem on your whistle, go ahead and practices scales and appregios first. But if you want to play Irish Traditional Music, there are only a few scales and only a few appregios. And they don’t mean a thing except in the tune that they make up. So that’s the place to learn them: the tune.

I am serious: Just find the tunes that have whatever bits of pieces you want to learn and learn the tunes. If you do it the other way around you are teaching yourself to think of a scale run or an appregio in a tune as just that, a scale or an appregio. You are not thinking about it as a part of the tune. To someone who knows the music you’ll sound like someone who plays scales and appregios and not someone who plays the tune (see my Paddy O’Brien thread.) I think there is a reason why classical musicians talk about technical exercises, and IrTrad musicians talk about relationships between tunes (“that’s sort of a cousin of the Earl’s Chair”).

And if Leonard Bernstein told me how to play a jig, I wouldn’t listen. :wink:

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On 2002-03-13 12:14, Bloomfield wrote:
blch

If you can’t think of scales and appregios to play without having them written out, I would suggest just learning the Cup of Tea: Gives you scales (first part) and appregios (third part). For a challenge play it backwards. > :slight_smile:

I remember in high school band that the director made us buy a book that had all kinds of exercises in it – scales, arpeggios, rhythms, etc. There was a bunch of stuff in there that I would have never thought of.

I don’t know any specific sources for such materials, other than Mel Bay, but I suggest going to your local music shop and looking in the learning/tutorials section.

Additionally, here are some exercises that I do to get you started:

  • Major and minor scales (D major in two octaves), forward and backward, with arpeggios.

  • Octave jumps.

  • 2-up: D F# E G F# A …

  • Triplets scale: DEF# EF#G GF#A …

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On 2002-03-13 12:40, Bloomfield wrote:
I am serious: Just find the tunes that have whatever bits of pieces you want to learn and learn the tunes.

As jfk used to say “ich bin ein beginner!”
How do know what bits i want to learn? Your suggestion presupposes knowledge that just isn’t there yet.

What i’m looking for are some exersizes to Allow fingers to move more fluidly, quickly, work on breath control when going up/down the scale 1/2/3 notes at a time, octave switches, half holing, etc.

This is to augment, not replace working on tunes.

Of course, i could write out some exercizes of my own, but that would be like work, and if i wanted to work, I’d have a real job.

cheers,
jb

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Dave Auty has a very good site at http://www.whistleworkshop.co.uk

[ This Message was edited by: bozemanhc on 2002-03-14 07:36 ]

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[quote]
On 2002-03-13 13:04, brownja wrote:

What i’m looking for are some exersizes to Allow fingers to move more fluidly, quickly, work on breath control when going up/down the scale 1/2/3 notes at a time, octave switches, half holing, etc.

I took one community class (offered by the City of Portland) and the suggestion of the teacher was to learn a tune, and when you find a part of the tune that is difficult, practice that part over and over till you get it right. So, for me I had the worst time going from a B to a high D, so sometimes I just go back and forth between those notes 20 or 30 times. I do scales too, but that transition isn’t in the scale. The other thing she had us doing, which I still haven’t got the hang of, is scales with tips & cuts. I don’t try to augment the tunes I am learning, but I try to do embellished scales. I figure when I know the basic tune, I can add embellishment as I go, and my fingers may actually know what to do by then.
One thing I am learning as I listen to more live music, and less CD music, along with using music software to hear the “basic” tune, is that really good players do different embellishments at different times. Same player, same song; but different instruments at the session, or different players, or different vibe at the pub, leads to totally different embellishments. I think the only way to do that is if you know every embellishment for every note, and how it works with other notes around it, at an almost spinal level. The only way to get there is to do every one of those embellishments thousands of times, which is hard if you also play the other 80% of the tune every time. To me, it is “Wax on, wax off” Come to think of it, it really is like martial arts. You practice drills (this punch 100 times, that block 100 times, this sequence of defense & attack 100 times), you practice forms (like practicing a tune), and you spar (or play in a session), where everything comes together and becomes fluid. By the way, you can’t “practice” sparing, any more than you can “practice” playing in a session. The “practice” prepares you for the sparing mat, or the pub session.
OK, no more waxing philisophical, back to work!

Gordon

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Music stores have books full of exercises, arpeggios, and patterns for clarinet, violin, etc. Many of these are in keys that are not particularly friendly to standard key whistles. They can easily be modified… Lots of the exercises are brutally difficult. If one learns to handle them, it truly makes the playing of music on the whistle more fluid and relaxed, because of the learned facility. I have used such exercises to better my chops on both whistles and hammer dulcimer.
Cheers to all.
Byll

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I’m familiar with cuts, but what are tips?

I completely agree that being dogmatic can be very harmful. When I was in the early stages of learning, someone giving a whistle class told me that you never use tongueing. I went back and tried to relearn everything I had learned, without tongueing, and nothing sounded good anymore. I didn’t have internet then, so I didn’t have the advantage of balancing viewpoints from all you good people. The only good thing was that I was forced to learn all about cuts and rolls very early on.
That said, I do think a moderate amount of work on scales etc. can be very beneficial to muscle-memory.

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On 2002-03-13 13:22, bozemanhc wrote:
Dave Auty has a very good site at > http://www.whistleworkshop.co.uk> .

Thanks Boz!
That link behaved strangely because of the period at the end.

http://www.whistleworkshop.co.uk/Scales.htm
and
http://www.whistleworkshop.co.uk/index.html

That’s about what i’m looking for.
Thanks,
jb

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I clicked on the URL and it didn’t work for me either. I am glad you figured it out.

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On 2002-03-13 15:32, Blackbird wrote:
I’m familiar with cuts, but what are tips?

What I learned as a tip or strike is tapping the note below the note being graced, as compared to a cut, which opens a hole above the one being graced. A long roll (which I understand in concept but can’t do worth a darn :wink: is basically three notes of the same value, with a cut between the first two and a tip between the last two. I think a tip is always one note down, while a cut can be more than one note up.
I am sure there are more subtleties, but that is the basic version I think. Take a look at the Sessioneer website (www.sessioneer.com)for a bunch of good info like this, as well as a bunch of tunes in Midi format and Gifs of the sheet music. Very useful sight!

Regards,
Gordon

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Thanks Gordon. I had only heard of tapping and not tipping! The things you learn.