Hey,
I’m new at the tin whistle, and I’m working on Ashokan Farewell. The music I’m following calls for half-holing an E. (xxxx^o)
I’m finding it tough to hit that note consistently. Is there way to do it without half-holing? If not, any advice on half-holing technique?
Thanks and best,
Joe
Hi Joe, and welcome. Re half-holing, my thoughts: the temptation early on with half-holing is to put your (in this case right middle) finger tip directly on half (or less) of the hole to get the right note. Practice instead keeping your (again right middle) finger straight and setting it at an angle to the edge of the hole (your finger will touch the edge of the hole/whistle probably somewhere between the first (farthest out) and second joint of the finger, depending on how big your hands are). Once you figure out the right angle for the tone you want, then you just have to remember that angle and put your straight finger at the edge of the hole to get the half-hole note. That approach makes half-holing a lot faster and more consistent. If you’re already doing it that way, then it’s just practice and muscle memory to get the angle right. My two bits.
Briant
Hey Joe, welcome to the whistling world!
Some tunes are just plain inconvenient for the whistle, and it seems this is one of them 
I’m not sure what key the source music you’re looking at is in, or what key your whistle is in, but I assume high D.
I haven’t seen a version of this tune that requires that sort of half hole (an F natural, I guess?). Personally, I hate half-holing for anything other than a C natural ^oo ooo, so I tend to look for alternate versions in easier keys when they come up. However, I do like Briant’s advice on angling your finger instead of sliding it halfway off.
I found a version of Ashokan Farewell in the key of Dmajor that looks a lot more manageable. It drops below the range of most whistles, so you’ll have to find a creative way to work around that, maybe jump up an octave instead of down. The rest, however, seems manageable.
Good luck, and happy whistling!
-Tim
Hey thanks for the advice. That’s really helpful.
Yes, I’m playing a high D.
And the version I’m following is about the 10th song down on this page: http://helioignus.webs.com/fingeringcharts.htm
It’s actually pretty manageable. (I did have trouble with the notes in the second octave at first.) Now the only thing I’m stuck on is the aforementioned half-hole in the last line. I’ll work on angling.
Best,
Joe
joeryan + tenorTim,
Ashokan Farewell is why whistles in the key of A are made ! 
Notice, that on a D whistle, tunes in G can be managed by flattening the c# by either half-holing or cross-fingering.
Note further, that G is a 4th above D.
Similarly, since D is a 4th above A, tunes in D can be managed on a A whistle using the same fingering as c-nat on a D.
The main benefit of using an A whistle for D tunes is that it lets you get those notes below D, which is just what Ashokan needs. For the same reason, I also use a A tube for “Angelina Baker”.
Still, for Ashokan, on an A whistle, you’ll need to flatten B2 (bottom hand, 2nd finger). I agree with O’Briant and like the flat-finger approach on B2. I agree further, that the way to get it is simply to practice.
Personally, for Ashokan, I like to slide up from the B3 to the half-holed B2. That slow slide is a great way to find the “magic angle”.
Good luck ! It’s a great tune !
trill
ps. Tidbit for today: Ashokan was originally scored in D.
Welcome to the neighborhood.
I have seen that one played two ways. Terminology that follows is in reference to key of D whistles.
There are a variety of techniques that people use to half hole the F natural and I’ll leave that up to your own preferences.
This setting will, as has been said, have the melody drop below D. There are a few ways to deal with that. You can fold/play the notes up an octave. It may sound weird to start off but it’s a common enough technique.
You can play a note that harmonizes with the melody notes that are too low.
And you can take the most unusual step of using a D+ whistle ( or a C minus whistle if you like). A D+ whistle (generally) has an extra hole that plays the D so that when you cover it (with your pinkie) you get a C natural. Ashokan Farewell is one of the tunes that makes a D+ whistle seem normal. Ashokan Farewell is the reason I first made one of these for myself. Since then I’ve found it to be useful for a variety of other tunes.
Have fun.
Feadoggie
Joe - just to add to the above - I’ve learned it by starting in the note D. This way you get practice on half and or cross-holing C - which is an important skill, and only once per go-around will you have to half-hole E to get your F note. . I think it’s best for you to experiment with different ways of half-holing the E hole to see which technique works best for you. Use your imagination and see how many different ways you can do it and you’ll soon find your favorite and then it’s just a matter of practice. Good luck.
Ah yes, thank you trill! Using an A whistle didn’t even occur to me - and that’s my favorite whistle so far! I guess I just assumed Joe was learning on a high D.
-Tim
Hey thanks for the advice all. Good stuff.
And yes – I am playing a high D. Is the fingering on the whistles in other keys the same? Or does it vary?
Best,
Joe
Slide. Start below (covered hole) or above (open hole) and glide your finger across until the note sounds right, or interestingly wrong. Sliding into notes is a skill you should master anyway to get the nyah into ITM. Learning to do it a semitone at a time will give you lots of good practice at half-holing, and do it in a way that gives a wider target to shoot at. Eventually you’ll want to be able to nail passing accidentals dead on at reel speed, but learning to slur with precision is the painless way to get there.
Whistles can be made to play most any scale. But the most common whistle will play a major diatonic scale - do, re, me, etc. The intervals between pitches and therefore the fingering patterns will be the same on all of those whistles. You play the tune the same way, using the same fingering pattern from whistle to whistle. So if you learn to play Ashokan Farewell in G on a D whistle you can play it with the same fingering on an A whistle but it will now be in the key of D - as has been suggested. You still have to deal with the half-holed flatted seventh in any case. Is that clear enough?
Ashokan Farewell is one of those tunes that is played in session by players from many backgrounds and genres. It is played in Bluegrass, old time, folk and Irish sessions IME. Kudos to Jay Ungar for writing a good tune. And thank you Ken Burns for burning it into our brains. Take your time and learn to hit that note. It will serve you well going forward.
Feadoggie
I agree that sliding is the best way to learn to half hole. Eventually, it’s nice to be able to go right to the half hole without sliding. If you’re doing this in a fast tune, if you’re a tad off it won’t be too noticeable.
As long as you’re practicing, work a bit on half holing the rest of the holes. There are a lot of times when it’s nice to have a G#, Bb, etc.
Note that whistles with larger holes are easier to half hole-- there’s more margin for error.
The actual finger action used to slide up to a note, or to halfhole it, depends on what part of the finger is used to seal the hole for that particular note, and whether you’re approaching the note from below or above.
So on that F natural on Ashokan Farewell and Give Me Your Hand (odd how similar those two phrases are…) are approached from E, and on a Low Whistle I’m using “pipers’ grip” and having that finger straight and sealing the hole with the middlejoint pad of that finger, I roll the finger up a bit from the bellnote side of the hole to get the F natural. On a High Whistle I would use the endjoint pads on all fingers but still rotate and draw back the side of the finger nearest the bell end of the whistle, opening up the hole on the bellnote side. Such halfholed notes, approached from the note below, are the same as sliding up to the fully openholed note, it’s just that you’re stopping the slide at a midpoint. You can let your ear tell you when you need to stop the slide!
Now if approaching F natural from above, say G, in a High Whistle, I’ll place the finger down on the whistle off to the side a bit, so it’s only partially covering the hole. With practice you can get pretty accurate at doing this and it can sound like you have an actual hole for that F natural. On a Low Whistle, with straight fingers, I find it trickier to get a clean precise F natural when approached from above.
About the tune Ashokan Farewell, I (like many others) first heard this tune on The Civil War soundtrack, where on the fiddle it’s played in the quite distinct Scottish idiom called Slow Strathspey, which genre uses Scotch Snaps and classical-sounding ‘turns’. If you’ve spent hundreds of hours listening to Scottish fiddlers that genre cannot be mistaken.
So I was dismayed when I heard the tune played by Irish musicians, who had patriotically removed every trace of Scottishness and bumped up the tempo and turned it into just another Irish Waltz.
I notated it off the soundtrack, and I play it with all the Slow Strathspey styling intact. (Yes I know who wrote it.)
Jay Ungar has said that he was “channeling” Aly Bain as he wrote the tune.
It happens! I play frequently with a bunch of Old Timers and Bluegrassers and there is no going back with them. They’ve played AF as a Waltz and won’t hear (maybe can’t hear) of AF as anything else. I am afraid AF is now known as a waltz and will remain a waltz forever. Ungar himself has changed the way he plays the tune over time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kZASM8OX7s
Still a darned nice tune.
Feadoggie
Have to say I’d regard the Slow Strathspey as a form rather than a idiom (although obviously it’s a form with an idiom!) and argue that you can’t describe a triple-time tune as being in Slow Strathspey style.
I notated it off the soundtrack, and I play it with all the Slow Strathspey styling intact. (Yes I know who wrote it.)
See above.
Not specific to AF per se, but another perspective on half (and other partial) holing in general:
For anyone who wants to explore old flute music on or translate certain vocal styles to their whistles, these techniques of varying how much of the tone hole gets covered, slightly modified, come in very handy for playing the ‘sensitive notes’, those “not quite dead-on in-tune” notes that impart some tension or heightened emotion to an ornament or scale or modulation between two notes. If you’re on a scale or run up to g, rather than just run through e-f#-g, vent the f# a wee bit to g-half-or-third-flat or so, let it rest there then float up to the g. It’s kind of like breathing in suddenly, holding for a second, then gently exhaling.
Nice for airs and lyrical/singing music. Perhaps not so much for dance music!
See for example: http://www.oldflutes.com/charts/simple/fingrem.htm
I thought that somebody would bring that up. Yes it’s in triple time but, at least the way it’s performed on the Civil War soundtrack, it has all the stylistic elements of the Slow Strathspey.
A bit of genre-mixing by an American… wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened!
On the 3/4 time 4/4 time thing, I will say that in Scottish music many tunes are commonly played both ways, to the point where one couldn’t say which is more ‘correct’ for a particular tune. Many of these same tunes are notated in 6/8 in Highland pipe collections.
I did Scottish dancing for many years and you would hear the same tune played in 4/4 for Strathspey time and in 3/4 and for the waltz quite commonly.
So, the fact that Ashokan Farewell happened to be played in 3/4 time on the Civil War soundtrack didn’t, to my mind, have anything to do one way or the other with the styling of it. Actually since I’d never heard the tune before I assumed that it was a traditional Scottish Slow Strathspey, played in 3/4 time, and only later learned it was a newly composed piece.