hey, it’s weekend in europe, so let’s try a really good post (chutzpah!).
what came first the whistle or the reel?
no actually, for me the whistle came first because there’s something so very human about a simple flute. then i started appreciating traditional irish music. it’s the conventional whistle repertoire. now i’m learning a tune a day (and enjoying it) - weird!
a couple of questions (maybe controversies):
is there anyone out there that loves the whistle & hates irish trad?
in the madfortrad whistle tutorial cd brian finnegan says he is in awe of some pennsylvania whistler (pittsburgh or philadelphia, i don’t remember) who is playing charlie parker on the whistle. since bebop is much closer to my musical heimat, does anyone know who he is referring to?
i’ll see if this wakes anyone up. isn’t posting something like fishing? are they bitin’?
The jazz whistle player may be Billy Novick. I don’t know of anybody else who has recorded any jazz on the whistle but if there is someone else I’d like to know about it. Novick’s album Pennywhistles from Heaven is fairly old. I think there’s a newer one too but I can’t think what it is. Pennywhistles appears to be available from Green Linnet.
i tried to order the cassette on the site you mentioned, but either i or the site did something wrong. i sent a message to the admin person.
do you know any other whistlers into jazz? what about jazz flute?
i don’t presume to have acquired the skill for improvisation yet & the rules of the sessions might not encourage improvisation. nevertheless: the tunes i’m learning seem to be a systematic exercise in chordal improvisation (variations on arpeggios and scales). so: to be creative (once i’ve learned the language), i think jazz is the place to go.
greetings to canada!
tom
p.s. at the height of anti-americanism in germany, i used to hitchhike with a canadian flag on my backpack. sorry! now i’m a member of the royal canadian golf association, since you need some official justification to get on the links in germany. otherwise, i’m just a plain old american that fell in love - and stayed (in love).
[ This Message was edited by: french on 2002-11-23 11:13 ]
do you know any other whistlers into jazz? what about jazz flute?
I’m afraid my interst in jazz has withered away a lot. It used to be my main passion. The jazz flute players that I remember are Herbie Mann and Bud Shank. These guys date back a fairly long way. I can’t think of any others right now. I’m sure a few have come along since my jazz era though. There used to be a whistle wizard around Toronto. I would see him on the ferry to the island for Mariposa. He seemed to be able to play anyting. I have no idea who he is. Apart from Billy Novick he’s the only person I’ve heard attempting to play fairly complicated jazz material-tunes such as Donna Lee and stuff like that.
Just remembered Frank Wess and Canada’s own Moe Koffman.
Steve
[ This Message was edited by: SteveK on 2002-11-22 17:48 ]
Nice thread start, though I do like Irish trad. What I know is the low whistle brought me to like it, not vice-versa. And the hoarsest and windiest lows, too, so I guess this comes from a jazz background.
Now, one of the nice things with jazz, is you don’t have to justify the authenticity of your instrument, be it fiddle, flute, recorder, bandoneon, tubes organ or whatever Kazan tatar bladdoblaster you fancy… If you play washboard with a bodhran beater, it’s ok, but you’re welcome to play bodhran with a soap bar–or chitterling sausage–as long as it sounds good…
On 2002-11-22 17:56, Zubivka wrote:
Now, one of the nice things with jazz, is you don’t have to justify the authenticity of your instrument, … >
when i lay in bed with my soft whistle, after having learned my reel or jig of the day, my limited musical imagination often leads me to summertime, or misty. or one note samba (or others whose names i don’t remember.) i ordered a real book, though and was intimated by all the weird keys. can we start a list of jazz standards that work well on the whistle (more chromatic than one note samba).
tom
On 2002-11-22 14:58, The Weekenders wrote:
FRENCH IS A CUTIE-PIE and all honors that implies!!!
[ This Message was edited by: french on 2002-11-23 02:24 ]
My favorite jazz standard for whistle is “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” by Mingo Lewis. I’ve got recordings of that tune by many artists including Jeff Beck and the GRP All-star Band. Easily played in Emin on a D whistle.
On 2002-11-22 17:56, Zubivka wrote:
Now, one of the nice things with jazz, is you don’t have to justify the authenticity of your instrument, be it fiddle, flute, recorder, bandoneon, tubes organ or whatever Kazan tatar bladdoblaster you fancy…
I’m not too sure that’s true. I think the jazz listening community is pretty selective in the range of instruments that they listen to. There are some fairly impressive 5-string banjo players and I’d bet that they would meet with rejection by most hard core jazz fans. I think that their main body of listeners is the rest of the banjo community. A lot of instruments have had fairly proficient players but have never caught on. Among these are harmonica, piano accordion, french horn. Even the soprano saxophone hasn’t become mainstream. I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe it’s some factor other than rejection by listeners or jazz players. It would be interesting to know.
On 2002-11-22 18:37, SteveK wrote:
A lot of instruments have had fairly proficient players but have never caught on. Among these are harmonica, piano accordion, french horn.
hey!
even though i love toots - and the harmonica is a lot easier to play in the car than the whistle. i still want to get all the jazz whistle players out there giving me inspiration. let me be provocative:
are there any jazz enthusiasts out there that are also whistle players who have found that the instrument limits their creativity?
give me some inspiration! where’s the muse that will kiss me on a cold, autumn evening on the rhine ?
tom
[ This Message was edited by: french on 2002-11-23 02:27 ]
i ordered a real book, though, and was intimated by all the weird keys. can we start a list of jazz standards that work well on the whistle (more chromatic than one note samba)?
It seems to me it’s not the keys which make it problematic but the key changes. You can always transpose a tune to a good whistle key but many tunes have key changes in them. There is not going to be any help for it. If you want to play this stuff you need command of the whole chromatic scale.
On 2002-11-22 18:37, cdom wrote:
My favorite jazz standard for whistle is “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” by Mingo Lewis. I’ve got recordings of that tune by many artists including Jeff Beck and the GRP All-star Band. Easily played in Emin on a D whistle.
…I think the jazz listening community is pretty selective in the range of instruments that they listen to. There are some fairly impressive 5-string banjo players and I’d bet that they would meet with rejection by most hard core jazz fans. I think that their main body of listeners is the rest of the banjo community. A lot of instruments have had fairly proficient players but have never caught on. Among these are harmonica, piano accordion, french horn. Even the soprano saxophone hasn’t become mainstream. I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe it’s some factor other than rejection by listeners or jazz players. It would be interesting to know.
Steve
Well Bela Fleck plays banjo (ok, so he’s the only jazz banjoist that I know…) and a lot of tenor and alto jazz saxophonists I’ve heard play soprano as their 2nd instrument. Often, there are at least a few songs in their set or album where the sop is played. Seems pretty mainstream to me even if it’s not their 1st instrument.
I agree with the other poster who said the problem is the key changes. I’m forever picking up a whistle in the right key for the beginning of a piece, and then struggling to continue when the key changes start.
D, G, A, E, C major fingering on a whistle isn’t too bad. Bb fingering - hmmm. kind of do-able slowly. Eb - worse. B, F#, the rest of the keys - ACK!
While I certainly don’t hate Irish trad (far from it!), it’s far from the only thing I play on the whistle…in fact, most of my favorite tunes come from folk songs in various traditions or from hymns. I also don’t particularly care if I ever become an “authentic” sounding whistler in the Irish tradition. I plays what I likes (and how I likes it) and likes what I plays, and if the whistle sounds pretty, I don’t care if it sounds Irish.
Well Bela Fleck plays banjo (ok, so he’s the only jazz banjoist that I know…) and a lot of tenor and alto jazz saxophonists I’ve heard play soprano as their 2nd instrument.
I know about Bela Fleck. My point was that each of the instruments I mentioned has had at least one player who was in the range from pretty decent to very good. So at least one person has demonstrated that the instrument is appropriate for jazz. I’m not so sure that the French horn playing I’ve heard would definitively prove that instrument worthy, I guess. Yet they don’t catch on and, at least in the days when I listened to a lot of jazz, lots of people I knew considered these things novelty instruments. I guess I always thought the soprano saxophone should have been used more than it is in view of the really excellent players who have recorded with it including Coltrane and Zoot Sims. As you say, only a few people have made it their main instrument.
Instruments that do well in jazz are generally loud, chromatic and have a relative ease in expressing the artists ideas.Learning to play Jazz on a diatonic whistle makes about as much sense as ir-trad on a tuba.Pork pie hat played on a soprano whistle sounds a little ridiculous to me considering Mingus played(plays?) double bass and a low whistle is too awkward and would offer little advantage over a keyed flute a-la Herbie Mann. Mike
This is why I know I’m not alone here of dreaming of Bb and C low, keyed, chromatic whistles. There are such recorders, but I do’n’t know of any with the sound of say, a big-bore Overton.
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