Hi,
Through this wonderful forum, I have just
met a new friend. We want to get together
to play our whistles. But how? I don’t
play a Low D?
Should we get, say, a Flute duet book?
Or maybe a Piano book with Irish songs?
Any ideas?
Lolly
You can get a C and an F whistle and play the exact same fingerings, and be in harmony.
Around these parts when two or three whistles get together, we just play Irish tunes in the normal fashion. No different than if we were playing along with different instruments. Like all Irish tunes, the little variations keep things interesting. Check out the Paddy Moloney/Sean Potts Tin Whistles album for lots of great examples.
Okay, we do usually make one concession to having only D whistles – generally speaking on high parts someone will drop down to the lower octave. Just to avoid having both people blasting away at the top of the instrument’s range, which can sound a bit nasty.
When possible, we like to use Bb or F whistles for this sort of thing, because it sounds nicer. It’s great fun.
A “D” and a “B” will do the same, generally. Some notes may have to be tweaked to sound good if the “third” interval between the whistles isn’t right for the music.
Er, Neil, did you mean “Bb” instead of “B”? (Or maybe “G”, which would be a perfect match to the “C” to “F” example?)
The same way one person plays without sounding boring - well.
Chris
Are either of you a decent harmony singer? If so, that person can practice “singing” a harmony line, then transfer it to the whistle while the other plays the “lead” line.
If that doesn’t work for you, try listening to vocal versions, if any exist, of the songs you want to play, then try playing along with the lead vocal and one of the harmony vocals. It would probably then be best for the weaker player to play the harmony part, as it usually requires fewer changes and covers a narrower range of the scale.
Of course the C/F “same fingering” idea sounds good as well, but keep in mind that at some points the C whistler will have to cross-finger a B flat.
On 2002-07-01 13:54, colomon wrote:
Er, Neil, did you mean “Bb” instead of “B”? (Or maybe “G”, which would be a perfect match to the “C” to “F” example?)
No, I meant “B”, which is a perfect third down from “D”. I have both, and have tried it. It works.
On 2002-07-01 13:57, ChrisLaughlin wrote:
The same way one person plays without sounding boring - well.
Chris
You’re really on a…roll…today aren’t you Laughlin?
Never the less, I agree with Chris: Pick up the Laurence Nugent “Windy Gap” CD and listen to Larry and Kevin Henry play The Ash Plant/The Merry Harriers/Galway Rambler together (both on flute). Man oh man, it doesn’t get much more exciting than that!!
Okay, all together now: One, Two…
Loren
Seriously - listen to almost any Irish traditional CD with more than one instrument playing at once. What do they play? They same thing as eachother in the same key. How does it sound? Great! It works the same way in sessions. Everyone plays the same tune and it (usually) sounds awesome.
Okay, Neil…so I’m nitpicking here, but to set the record straight, there is no such thing as a perfect third. The only perfect intervals are 4ths, fifths and tritones. What you mean is that B is a minor third down from D. Bb is a major third down from D.
On 2002-07-01 14:59, Raymond wrote:
Okay, Neil…so I’m nitpicking here, but to set the record straight, there is no such thing as a perfect third. The only perfect intervals are 4ths, fifths and tritones. What you mean is that B is a minor third down from D. Bb is a major third down from D.
Thanks, Raymond, for fixing that. The devil is in the details, and I used the wrong word.
If two of the same instruments play ever so slightly out of tune with each other, by playing the exact same line they can produce a beautiful chorusing effect–like if you don’t tune the double courses of a mando or twelve string guitar exactly perfectly…or what that electronic effect gadget called a chorus can do.
It is a matter of being just enough out of tune with each other to sound better, not terrible…
Lisa
How, you ask?
First, pour yourself a draught. Now, make sure your whistles are at least a quarter tone off-pitch. Start the tune and play rolls in different places and stay about 1/64th off rhythm with the other player except for the occasional end of phrase. Start the tape recorder and make sure its plenty chiffy. Play kinda fast and use a lot of sliding ornaments.
Now you sound just like the great ones!
( : ( :
But seriously, if we must, you can take turns on phrases. Once in a while you can play a harmony or octave note, especially at cadences. In hornpipes, you can play harmony and meander around more than jigs and reels.
Play it with love and it won’t be boring!!
Another duet idea is the ‘round- robin’ thingy (now it’s someone else’s turn to correct MY termiage) like what you used to do with Row, Row, Row Your Boat as a kid. It’s pretty neat…I’ve never done it with two whistles, but with other combinations of instruments. Some tunes work better than others…I’ve tried Legacy Jig this way with a whistle & fiddle; it was fun.
In all honesty, my whistling friends and I -always- play the same notes, and it’s fine. If one of you is more advance than the other, it’s kind of neat to have one person playing rolls where the other is playing dotted quarters, but even if you’re playing exactly the same thing on exactly the same brand of whistle, it still sounds fuller with two whistles. It also means the melody continues uninterrupted when one of you takes a breath (usually… you could breath at the same point, of course!)
If you really want to play different notes, it’ll help to have a good idea of what notes harmonize with what, and one person could play harmony. If you’re working from sheet music, the primary note of the chord marked ought to work okay, and otherwise, the first note in a phrase is a good place to start (though some phrases -start- on a tension note, in which case you need a note that harmonizes with the primary notes of the phrase…)
Or you could pretend you’re a set of uillean pipes… one of you play a D whistle and the other one can just keep blowing G as long as possible! 
Did anyone mention yet that you really, really want tuneable whistles (if only plastic-head tuneable as per the main board’s tweaks) for this?
And don’t even think about playing G-with-D or F-with-C if you don’t have at least one of the whistles tuneable… I’ve tried ‘harmonized’ keys with fixed heads and it was far more painful than same keys!
(OTOH, I’m getting better at blowing into tune and all my Ds are tuneable now, so maybe it’s time to try this experiment again… why not live dangerously, right? 
)
–Chris
PS: On the singing thing… airs can have words added and become songs, that’s why they’re airs… if you know any. Lots of people focus on the dance tunes to the exclusion of airs.
[ This Message was edited by: ChrisA on 2002-07-01 16:16 ]
:roll:
This is rediculous. Have any of you listened to Gavin Whelan, Mary Bergin, Laurence Nugent, Sean Potts - any trad musicians? By THEMSELVES they sound amazing, and very interesting. Why not try and play as well as them before resorting to gimicks like playing in intervals and playing rounds? One of the best sessions I ever played in was just four low F whistles. We all played the same tunes. No rounds. No harmony. No gimmicks. Just four low whistles playing jigs and reels 'till the sunrise. It sounded rediculously good.
My 3.7 cents,
Chris
the whole subject-line was so ridiculous I didn’t even read the start of the thread, I am completely with Chris Laughlin above. Play your music well, play it together, play it tight [as in solid and together] bouncing your rhythms , ornamentation and variation etc off eachother an there you have it, good music. Knock the sparks off eachother
[edited typos and made minor adjustments]
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-07-02 13:47 ]
What I think ridiculous is people with trad tunnel vision - apparently some people think it’s the only music genre on the planet. Everything else is a gimmick, eh?
On 2002-07-01 17:28, Raymond wrote:
What I think ridiculous is people with trad tunnel vision - apparently some people think it’s the only music genre on the planet. Everything else is a gimmick, eh?
It’s not a trad vs. non-trad thing for me. It’s more of a “learn to play the damn whistle” vs. “make up for bad playing by playing with fancy arrangements” thing. It’s just the same for classical, jazz, anything else. BB King could play guitar by himself and it would be amazing. Yo-Yo Ma could play cello by himself and it would be amazing. Bela Fleck could play banjo by himself and it would amazing. Why, you ask? Because they are damn good players and have put serious time into studying those great players who came before them, becoming incredibly good at the fundamentals of their instruments and their musical styles and then adding their own spirit and innovation to the music. One must learn the basics first.
I hope this makes some sort of sense to you.
Chris
[ This Message was edited by: ChrisLaughlin on 2002-07-01 18:12 ]