I decided to try to learn a tune from Feadoga Stain. I picked track 3, slowed it down by half, and hummed along until I was sure of the tune. I thought she was playing a D whistle, so that’s what I used, but when I started playing along with the recording, I was flat. No problem - I’d read here that people sometimes tune sharp. The D whistle wouldn’t quite get there, so I switched to the Eb. That should have been a clue, but no clue was going to break my pre-conception that she was playing a D. A couple of the notes were off, which I fixed with a little half-hole work. In the end, I’d convinced myself that she was playing the tune in E on a D whistle that was tuned sharp, and started learning it that way. Just at the point where I had the tune solid and was working on getting it up to a better speed, I found out on the session.org that Mary was actually playing it on an F whistle.
Too funny! Yeah, an F whistle! Who’da thought that was possible. That is a high pitched set of tunes.
Welcome to C&F. Now that you’ve found us, you can ask here before you go through a similar adventure again.
And if you don’t have a high F whistle you should be able to use the same digital audio tool to change the pitch of the recording as you did to change the tempo.
Oh, I have an F whistle. It was sitting there the whole time. Mocking me. At this point, I figure I’ll practice the tunes both ways. Tom Billy’s actually flows pretty well in the alternate key. The Langstern Pony is more difficult, and I doubt I’ll ever be able to play it as quickly that way, but it is great exercise for half-holing.
Yes, she does. And it was never a big mystery, AFAIK. The whistles keys are listed on the liner notes. Of course that does not help you if you have a digital copy of the music. You need the hard copy.
We can thank Kenny for posting each of the keys on The Session for the benefit of the digital downloaders.
