I recently posted a thread about playing modern day music on the whistle and flute, and got some very helpful responses. But now I have another question, one of the responses was to learn from guitar tabs and just transcibe them for the whistle, so I found as song, but I don’t know how to pull off these notes, Should I be playing a D whistle, etc. any advice, suggestions, thoughts, are greatly appreciated. The following link is the song I want to learn.
Well, I’m not sure what the suggestion to learn tunes from guitar tab is meant to teach you. I can tell you, though, that your first problem is that this link is not a link to guitar tab - it’s a link to lyrics with the names (of a very rough approximation) of the cords written above them. This is of some use to a guitar player, but very little to you.
If you want to know what guitar tab is - look here:
I really have no idea how this is supposed to help your playing. In fact - I have no idea how it would even be possible to lift whistle music from tab. People who can’t read music write in tab to show how to play chords. You can’t play chords on the whistle (not with one whistle anyway). The range on the tab of most guitar parts is likely to go beyond the whistle anyway. It’s a lot easier to just learn the dots, it you ask me.
I wonder if the person suggest you get tunes from guitar tab thought that you would find modern tunes more easily there since guitar players would probably be playing them.
As the link canpiper posted shows, the lines on guitar tab represent the strings of the guitar. The numbers represent the frets. You would have to know what musical note the 4th fret on the 3rd string was to then play that note on the whistle.
Guitar tab was developed for people who don’t read standard notation. But I think you would have to read guitar tab and standard notation to translate tab to whistle notes. I don’t know if there is software that can translate it. Maybe the Strings Forum has people that know more about this stuff.
So I think maybe they were thinking of this as a last ditch thing. Most of the modern songs are copyrighted (I believe) and that is why the music is hard to find except in books that are sold. Traditional music isn’t under copyright so those tunes anyone can put on-line. If you have a recording of the song, I think you just will have to learn it by ear.
i totally see what you’re getting at. i think a much simpler way to find free popular songs that you could play on a whistle is to go to your local library and check out some sheet music. i know my local county library has quite the collection. i have to admit, there is lots and lots of wedding music, a good collection of classical, more country than you could ever shake a stick at, and hippie music from the 60’s and 70’s. i’m in bliss. if you’re not that great of a music reader, you could transcribe. also, you might just want to make friends with someone who has sheet music.
if my house ever caught on fire, i would save my sheet music. i’ve spent way too much time collecting and transposing and handwriting music before the advent of the computer.
there is some tab music that is easy to transcribe if you’re good at microsoft word. jim’s harmonica songbook has lots of harmonica music written in tab for harmonica. 4b means to blow out the 4th hole. 5D means to draw in the 5th whole. i copy and paste songs into microsoft word. then i go about editing all the “4b’s” and changing them to “c’s” “5d” become 'F’s." my nephew and i can do duets with harmonica/flute. not too shabby for free. i don’t know how to turn guitar tabs into something more useful.
This website has the notes on the guitar, drawn on the strings, fret by fret, so you could print up the tab and then by looking at this page write down the notes. I don’t know what key it would end up being in or anything.
here is something else that i figured out. here is the link to a free harping (harmonica) program. there are also many websites with free midi files that are popular music.
when you use this program, a whole midi song will be visualized in pretty colors and the actual notes written out and it’s pretty obvious where each of the different instruments are in each song. this program will also visualize in chromatic and diatonic harmonicas and a piano keyboard. many songs will have to be transposed by increasing or decreasing a half step until you get into the key that you want, which is probably d. this program allows you to play along to a midi song and even allows you to slow down or speed up a song. life does not get any better than playing along to midi files of pink floyd songs.
What you are looking at is not a guitar tab. It is lyrics with chords. The
only thing you can really do with that is figure out which whistle to use
to play this song. Then you have to listen to the song and figure out
the notes. I wasn’t trying to suggest you actually use this notation
to play the whistle, just to help you figure out if you can play the song
on a D whistle. Sorry for the confusion.
I think the tabs you’d find online would be utterly useless for transcribing to the whistle. The only way guitar tab would be useful is if you bought proper tab books as they have the standard notation printed as well which you could transcribe easily to the whistle.
Having said that if you download a program like power tab (http://www.power-tab.net/) and you grab compatible tabs off the net then it will show you the standard notation as well so they’re not completely useless.