I’ve heard good things about Grey Larson’s Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle. But there is also a good sounding tutorial called The Complet Irish Tinwhistle Tutor by L.E. McCullough, who is quite well known. Has anyone had any experience with these? Is there one that you would recommend over the other?
Thanks.
I have both; both are good.
With both, you really need to be at a certain level already; I recommend starting with the Bill Ochs tutor (the Clarke tutorial), then after you are solid on that do the McCullough tutor, then if you want to get way deep into the different ornaments, hit the Gray Larson book.
The Larson book in particular is huge and slow-going (but worth it!). Take your time, and don’t skip anything.
–James
I would agree that Mr. McCullough’s book is not for beginners. Something more simple to begin with is best, especially if you have never played an instrument before and can’t read music (like me 
). The McCullough book does come with a CD and you can listen to the tune examples throughout the book. There is also a library of tunes arranged for whistle in the back.
I like both books, but I think Larsen definitely does a better job of explaining the basic ornaments.
I love the careful transcriptions at the back of Larsen, though somehow I never find the time I’d like to explore them carefully. On the other hand, looking at the tunes at the back of McCullough again for the first time in years, I see the first tune is “Dash to Portobello” (he calls it “Sean Ryan’s Reel”) which is very high on my list of tunes to learn.
Really, if you can afford it, it would make sense to get both books.
Could you be a little more specific please? I’m trying to decide whether I’m ready for one of these books yet… I’ve been working off the internet mostly.
I’ll try, but I feel the need to insert a disclaimer here: my music and my playing ability are a work in progress, with a long way left to go. I may not be the most appropriate person to offer this kind of advice, so please take what I say with a grain (or three!) of salt.
Both the McCullough and the Larsen book focus in a large way on ornamentation and variation.
I would think you’d already need to have the fingering of the whistle pretty much down, along with the ability to easily hit any note in the normal 2-octave range.
Since both of these books rely pretty heavily on the ability to read music, you’ll need to be fairly decent at picking up a tune off the page. (There is also a lot of controversy over whether or not you can even learn to play a tune correctly in this fashion. I’m not going into that here, but do be aware that it’s anything but a settled issue.)
Finally, and most importantly, you should have some good recordings of Irish trad music, and you should be an avid listener. Not just passive listening, but actively trying to figure out what they are doing, and why it works, and even starting to play along with them a bit.
That’s my take on it, perhaps it is of value, and perhaps worth only what you paid to read it.
Best wishes,
–James
Excellent advice! The Ochs book is my favorite for complete beginners. LE’s book will take you further along once you’re playing all the tunes in the Ochs. I look at Gray Larson’s book as more of a reference than a tutor. A HUGE amount of material, but much of it won’t be useful to a beginner.
Having owned both, I like the Larsen book better than McCullough’s, overall. I think his approach to teaching ornament technique is excellent. He also has a more basic version of the book, the Tinwhistle Toolbox.
However, I think one of the best whistle tutorials around is free–Brother Steve’s Tin-Whistle Pages.
http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/brosteve/
Wow, I couldn’t disagree more.
If you have both books, take a look at the section on cuts. It’s page 115 in Larsen, page 20 in McCullough. There’s no comparison here. McCullough spends two pages on it, most of which is a fingering chart, which easily includes twice as many fingerings as a beginner is likely to have a use for. And he doesn’t do anything to make clear the essential distinction between the way you play a grace note in classical music (where it is a quick pitch before the note) and the way you play a cut in Irish music (which it is simply an articulation).
Larsen spends 22 pages on the subject. He starts with the very basics, and builds up with a series of exercises, including sound samples for most of them. By the end of that, yes, he’s addressing more advanced topics than McCullough talks about – but Larsen spends a lot more time on the basics, too. And besides providing sound samples, he is very clear in the text about how a cut should sound.
Larsen is 100% more appropriate to learn from than McCullough. McCullough has a lot of great stuff in it, but it’s not good at teaching the basics.
Both have been very helpful for me. If I were to choose then it would definitely be Larsen. He explains things very well and he gives lots of useful exercises.
I would also second the vote for the McCullough tutor. It was very useful for getting to grips with some basics.
Unless he’s updated it, LE’s method is 25 years old or more. When he published it, his was the only tutor for the whistle available.
My copy says “First published and Copyright 1976. Ths editon published and Copyright 1987.” I’ve no idea what is different, though I did notice a note in the tunes section: “There are reports that the publication of this tune in the first edition of this book has stimulated at least one teacher in Washington, DC to create a dance for the tune.”
Larsen’s is better. As pointed out, LE was pioneering, while Larsen has absorbed a whole period of revival and come out with a very clear way of describing it. I have both. Larsen’s is great to dip into sometimes and just practice a certain thing. LE’s left much to mystery and guessing, in terms of describing ornaments or in Larsen’s better nomenclature, ARTICULATIONS.
larsen. times a million.
I´d love the idea of a review section about tutoring books and tune books. For a beginner or not so advanced player deciding which book to buy can be almost as difficult as finding a whistle one likes.
It’s not a bad idea, but it would be of limited use.
Not everyone learns the same way, and not everyone comes to the music with the same background.
The one thing most folks tend to agree on is you can’t go wrong by starting with the Bill Ochs book.
But, like the whistles, there aren’t many good one-size-fits-all solutions.
–James
Cool - so we can also have a competition about “who’s got the oldest McCullough”. Mine says “<> L. E. McCullough 1976”. The back cover has a note saying that an accompanying cassette tape is available from the publisher for $4.
The layout is interesting: pages are typewritten in Courier font. Headings are emphasised with underlining*. Chapter headings are show by three complete rows of asterisks. All paragraphs start with a indentation. Musical notation is all handwritten. Many parts read like an essay with pictures, I presume due to the difficulty of making sub-headings stick out.
This layout has a certain charm (reminds me of learning to touch-type on manual typewriters 25 years ago). But readable, it aint. So unless later editions are more reader-friendly, I’d recommend anything else.
(FWIW, I’m a newbie - note trad spelling! - have been playing for 2 years, but due to limited practice time I really only have about 6 months experience. Basically I’m “shite” … but I get a lot of enjoyment from it, and that’s all I do it for. Mostly I work on pub-standard tunes, so that I already know the rhythm, and just have to learn the notes. I learned enough about cuts and taps from McCullough to articulate some notes, beyond that I’m not worried about ornamentation at all. Maybe this will change in 10 years or so 
MaryC
- For those who remember, “Underlining is for typewriters” was mantra from the book “The Mac is not a Typewriter” Some of us learned all we now know about layout from this wee gem.
I had that one too! I lent it to someone years ago and never got it back, but I remember it well.
And three cheers for “The Mac is Not a Typewriter.” Nearly everyone I work with still uses two spaces after periods and colons, a throwback to the days of typewriters, monospaced fonts, and DOS, and I still hear Robin Williams’s voice in my head as I delete those extra spaces.
Her “Non-Designer’s Design Book” is also brilliant and has improved my design sense considerably.
If you’re going to learn from a book, you’ll need Larsen eventually and, since he offers really detailed explanations, you might as well just start there.
That said, Brother Steve’s website is free and excellent on ornamentation. He cuts right through to the core I think. If you start there you can go on to Larsen if and when you think you need to.
Unfortunately, no, they’re still typewritten.