Fiddle tunes on whistle

Trad Irish Music
1

I’ve recently been listening to a few Tommy Peoples CDs and trying to pick up a few tunes from one of them (The Quiet Glen). On track #7 he plays The Cup of Tea and Beautiful Gortree. In the liner notes Tommy says that he wrote the second tune in E major. When I try to play along with The Cup of Tea I think that I can use an Eb whistle, but on the Beautiful Gortree it just doesn’t seem to work.

How does one go about learning to play fiddle tunes on the whistle? Besides just banging your head against the tune for a while and seeing if it will fall in place are there any tricks of the trade?

2

The main difficulties you can encounter are key and lower strings. If a tune has a lot of lower string work on the fiddle it can become awkward to raise the low notes a whole octave as you would generally do.
Some keys don’t sit well on the whistle, for most of the Dm/Gm tunes it’s best to treat them is if they were one tone up and then play them with the fiddler on a C whistle.
There aren’t a huge number of Irish tunes in A but for the ones there are there’s little other than to leave them or play them the way they are, leaving you half holing the Gsharps.
Offcourse you will have to adapt certain sequences in tunes to suit your instrument as players from one instrumetn to the next will approach them slightly differently.
There’s no real rule of thumb as to what to do.

By the time you get to fiddle tunes in E major, and they are rare enough, I would be inclined to transpose them to D and not play them with the fiddler, play the mon the fiddle which is given my ability on that instrument isn’t an obvious option or just leave them alltogether and enjoy listening to the fidler playing them.


[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-12-27 11:02 ]

3

On 2002-12-27 10:37, dlambert wrote:
I’ve recently been listening to a few Tommy Peoples CDs and trying to pick up a few tunes from one of them (The Quiet Glen). On track #7 he plays The Cup of Tea and Beautiful Gortree. In the liner notes Tommy says that he wrote the second tune in E major. When I try to play along with The Cup of Tea I think that I can use an Eb whistle, but on the Beautiful Gortree it just doesn’t seem to work.

How does one go about learning to play fiddle tunes on the whistle? Besides just banging your head against the tune for a while and seeing if it will fall in place are there any tricks of the trade?

Normally, to play along with The Cup of Tea you’d need a D whistle, so if an Eb whistle works this suggests that Tommy has his fiddle tuned up a semitone - not an uncommon practice among fiddle players when they are not constrained by fixed-pitch instruments. (PS just slipped the CD into the CD-ROM drive and he is indeed tuned up.)

Fancy fiddle players like Tommy, particularly those with Donegal connections, enjoy playing tunes in E major too. This is a pig of a key for the whistle. Normally, an E whistle (rare) would be your best bet, or possibly an B whistle (even rarer). But since Tommy is tuned up, you’re in luck - a common or garden F whistle should do it for you.

As far as general hints at learning tunes from fiddle players are concerned, while head banging does sometimes give results, a little knowledge can save pain. Knowing what key the tune is in and on which whistles it is easy or possible to play in such a key is a good plan. There have been many questions on the main whistle board (which is probably according to the FAQ where you should have asked this question) about keys, and people have given handy little charts, so try a search.

I don’t know whether this eventually happens to non-fiddlers, but through years of playing fiddle I can tell what notes are being played (in trad music), regardless of whether the fiddler is tuned to concert pitch or not. This has nothing to do with perfect pitch, which I don’t have, but with patterns and sound colours. For example you can easily tell which are open strings - the sound of the open E or A string is very characteristic for example, and this gives you a road map. And there are many other distinctive features like this.

Difficult for non-fiddle players, maybe, but I get the same thing with pipes, which I don’t play: the sound of the E note, esp. in the second octave, a first-octave C-natural, a “hard” low D, and a second octave “back D” are so distinctive you can’t miss them. Years of listening is the key to this.

The most commonly asked question about fiddle tunes is what to do with notes that dip below bottom D on the whistle. This has also been dealt with on the main board on several occasions - try search on “Music in the glen” and you should find at least one such thread.

Hope something in this rant is of use.

S

4

Thanks guys. I will definitely search the archive. These kind of tips are invaluble.

Next time I’ll post anything whistle related to the main board.

Happy Holidays All

5

Dlambert:
I own an E and a low A whistle. I play in a band that already had a repertoire that uses both Scottish tunes in A as well as versions of standard reels brought up to E.

I use the E whistles on those tunes that were transposed. I pretend they are still in the standard key (usually G major).

On the Scots tunes in A major, I noticed that many still have a G natural as they are modal, like Atholl Highlanders. I just grin and bear it and learn in on the D for those or if the range allows (no note highter than third octave A), I use the low A.

Atholl Highlanders has a particularly tricky section on a D whistle that I have drilled and drilled and requires alternate fingerings for speed. Its “good” for me, tho, I know, to do this kind of work. If the tune did not have G nats, I would likely use the E.

On the generalized subject of adapting fiddle tunes, there are just a few tunes that exceed the bearable two octave range of a whistle and are just kind of out-of-reach for a whistler to play as a solo, rather than accompanying melody instrument. Most can be adapted with octave jumps but those few frustrate me, cause I really like em.

As for E Major whistles, I have only found: Shaw (i have an unplayable one), andSusatos, which are okay for cheap. For expensive, I know that Mike Burke makes em and I reckon other premium builders do as well. My Burke is super nice, tho softer in volume than the exact same Alpro or BrassPro D whistle. The E whistle is great for learning rolls tho, because they are faster, sort of like capoing up a guitar (a trade “secret” for learning fast scale passages).

6

For learning music - go to Google and do a search for software called AMAZING SLOWDOWN.

A Scandinavian wrote some software that is really amazing. It lets you slow down the music without changing the pitch. It also lets you modify the pitch up or down to get in tune with your instrument. Almost a full step.

Just pop the music CD in your PC, adjust the amount of slow down and pitch adjustment if needed. You can take a lightning fast reel and play it at a funeral dirge speed. You can catch all the little ornamentations.
As you learn the note, then you can gradually increase the speed until you too are playing like a mad Irishman.

(You need to have a newer PC Pentium II 500 MHz or better, with WAV and other sound file support, and sound card with speakers.)

Its a shareware product that you can try out for a short period of time. Unfortunately he only takes cash and doesn’t want to deal with credit cards, checks, or money orders because of the exchange rates. I believe he is asking around $40. Pretty cheap when you consider what the software can do for you..

7

More on the Amazing Slowdowner Software: Looks like he’s gone commercial since I last looked at the software… He now takes credit cards.

Copied from the Web Site…

Amazing Slow Downer for Windows computers

Slows down the speed of the music - between -50% and 400% time-stretching without changing the pitch.

Wrong key? Change the pitch in semi-tones - at full or lower speed.

Out of tune? Adjust the pitch in cents (100ths of a semi-tone) to suit your instrument.

Real-time processing - all described above is done in real-time - just insert the CD and press the play button!

Also slows down MP3, Wave and Windows Media Audio files on your computer in real-time.

Great stereo sound quality!

System requirements:
Windows 95/98/ME/2000/NT/XP
CD-player capable of digital reading

http://www.ronimusic.com/amsldowin.htm

How to buy
Online order - licenses only.
You may pay with your credit card over the Internet. After we have received your payment, you will be emailed a password that unlocks the trial version.

Note: Please make sure that the software works on your particular computer and that you are 100% satisfied with it.

Now, go to KAGI Online Order Processing and follow the instructions.

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8

On 2002-12-28 15:34, The Weekenders wrote:
Atholl Highlanders has a particularly tricky section on a D whistle that I have drilled and drilled and requires alternate fingerings for speed. Its “good” for me, tho, I know, to do this kind of work. If the tune did not have G nats, I would likely use the E.

What passage is that tricky in Atholl Highlanders? I don’t have any problems playing it at a brisk jig tempo on my D.

On the other hand, it is a blast to play (in its normal key) on the first octave on an A whistle. You lose a couple of low notes in the fourth section, but that’s easily worked around, and you probably end up doing more like a highland piper would anyway.

9

Henrik Norbeck’s Abc Tunes site has 1600+ Irish traditional tunes in .abc format in a 300k zip file for free download plus a shareware player called AbcMus 2. This handy wee program (no shareware restrictions)allows you to slow the music down, play snippets highlighted with the mouse, take it up or down in pitch etc. Links to other ABC format sites allow you to pick up ceili.abc with hundreds more great tunes. A lifetime of session classics are there. This is the motherload and requires no fancy kit.
With your common AWE64 soundcard, bog standard speakers, Creative music synth selected for the midi player, and whistle or flute selected for melody it beats the hell out of buying a load of CDs and trying to slow them down to learn the tunes. Hell, there’s even a driver for the PC speaker for the soundcard challenged.
I found this goldmine last week while hunting for a few tunes off that cheapy Tom McHail whistle CD that I’ve had lying around gathering dust for years. It doesn’t matter whether or not you know anything about the .abc format or whether you play by ear like me.
I particularly like the set dance Andy Kerrin’s, the hornpipes Boys of Bluehill and Harvest home, the Ballydesmond polkas, and the mother of all marches the Green Cockade /Battle of Aughrim as you don’t normally hear those tunes in this neck of the woods (yet). Of course every reel known to man and his dog is included as is some lethargic Scandinavian stuff you should ignore.
The Tom McHaile CD was mentioned in another thread here. It’s not something you should rush out and buy. Even the publisher, Outlet Recording of Belfast no longer stocks it. Having said that there are a couple of good tunes on it. But you’ve got Boulavogue - need I say more - elements of wrap the green flag 'round me.

regards,
Michael