I’m having a severe case of brain fade this morning. I need to play Ashokan Farewell with fiddle and guitar players tomorrow for a funeral. It’s a beautiful tune requested by the family. My problem is that I can’t get my old brain to think through the transposition and whistle selection I need to do to be able to play with them in the proper key. I am presently hyper-caffeinated and I think I have it but would appreciate someone here more familiar with this to check me out.
As written, the tune is in the key of D and starts out on an “a” note. Problem is, if I play this on a D whistle as written, there are a fair number of notes that fall below the bottom “d” on the staff that I obviously can’t play. I have usually transposed the entire piece up so that it starts on the second octave “d”. This leaves me with only one “c” note that falls below the staff that I can fudge fairly easily. If I want to play this solo on a D whistle there’s no problem. However, if I play this on a D whistle with the fiddle and guitar who are playing it as written, I’m obviously way off.
In my fevered brain, it seems to me that if I transpose the piece up as I have usually done to start on second “d” and then play it on an A whistle fingered like it was a usual D whistle, I’ll be OK. Am I right? Help, my head hurts and if I drink any more coffee, I think it’s gonna explode.
peteinmn, can you read standard music notation, or are you reading “dots”?
Reason I’m asking, I know Tom has this TABed out in D, along with the standard notation. He could throw it into any key you needed and give you the correct notation - but he doesn’t have a program that does “dots”.
Feel free to email him (put the symbols instead of the “words”):
tom “at” strothers “dot” com
and - of course - we won’t tell anyone about this since it’s a copyrighted song!!!
The range in that tune is too high for transposition–if you shift it up, you’ll never make the third octave D in the second part. That’s the money note, so you want to keep it where it is.
When I play it, I play it in D with the low notes (C to G) up an octave and play the rest exactly where they should be.
You are right.
The original is in D.
You transposed the piece so that it is in G.
Playing something in G on an A instrument will make it come out in D.
FWIW, I play this on a D flute, but transpose only the parts that go too low. But when playing for a funeral, I wouldn’t take any chances. Try to make it sound how you think that the family would like it best.
Perhaps I’m not as befuddled as I thought. I found an MP3 of this played by a group called Fiddle Fever and lo and behold, I was able to play right along on my A whistle. Too cool! I may still be just a hacker, but this sounded almost like music to me. Now if I can just not screw up too bad. At least I a have a chance to practice this with the other palyers tonight. Meanwhile, Fiddle Fever on my computer and I are gonna run through this a few more times.
What you really need is an A ‘modal’ whistle, with a low G pinkie hole and a C natural thumb hole.
You can half-hole the C natural with a standard A whistle, but you’ll have to skip the low G note in the tune unless you at least have an A+ whistle.
I’m sure there are other solutions, but that’s what works best for me.
