A friend of mine is learning guitar from a tutorial that is designed for learning by ear. Does anyone know if something like that exists for whistle?
I don’t know how “beginner” you want the tutorial to be, but the place to start learning by ear is with practice hearing intervals (the distance between notes). You don’t need a book or CD for this, but you do need a friend who knows any instrument well enough to be able to quickly play a series of notes that you have available to you on your whistle. Your friend would start by playing a single note and you would try find that note on your whistle. This could take a while. Then your friend would play a note and then another, the further apart the notes the more advanced your ability. Being able to recognize how many intervals apart two notes are is the basis of being able to play by ear well. Because I’ve practiced this way, I can now imitate an entire phrase (within limits of speed and number of notes!)
This kind of buddy practice can be as advanced as you make it.
Have fun!
[ This Message was edited by: ysgwd on 2002-06-04 15:46 ]
L.E. McCullough’s 121 Favorite Session Tunes is recommended to be used by ear, though you it comes with music, and I believe there’s some learn-by-ear stuff on scoiltrad.
(L.E. McCullough’s settings are a bit odd, though I kind of like the sound of triplets instead of crans on D… More knowledgeable players than I have discussed McCullough extensively if you search him out.)
And, honestly, I think any CD-accompanied tutor can be used by ear if it has a ‘slow’ leraning speed, and then a ‘fast’ playing speed for each tune and/or exercise…
–Chris
I don’t know of any commercial programs but you might find Chris Smith’s suggestions about learning from recordings helpful. From the index page choose fromrec.txt.
http://www.geocities.com/coyotebanjo/instruction/
Steve