My daughter and I have taken up the whistle together a few months ago. We both play other instruments. We are doing well with it, but are fustrated with the apparent non-existence of duet music for whistle. Can anyone lead me to a source, or specific book with some advanced beginner to intermediate duets? Finding some good duet music would quadruple our interest and fun on the whistle. Thanks for any help.
There’s Airs for Pairs, two volumes (they’re not all airs, btw, by any means). One volume is Scottish tunes, another is tunes from around the British Isles. I got mine from Mallinson’s (http://www.mally.com/).
One reason, though, that you’re not finding many duets is that the Irish tradition is to play in unison with other melody instruments. With a classical background myself, I too was looking for duets when I first began–even wrote some–but now I enjoy the tight or even ragged unisons even more.
Happy whistling!
Carol
Much recorder music and some flute music can be played on whistle. Look for easy-grade books of flute or recorder duets, for instance, at your local music store.
If you’re learning on whistle but already advanced on other instruments, a book I can suggest is “Selected Duets for Flute Vol II” edit by H. Voxman. It has several pieces suitable for whistle duets, including the Telemann Sonana No. 2 (which is a really fun piece as it is a kind of canonical fugue where both players play the same part 4 beats apart), some Handel stuff that is very playable on whistle, and the wonderful Loeillet Adagio and Allegro from Sonata No. 1 which is very playable on whistle if you can handle half-holing for the F-naturals.
Have fun!
–James
P.S. I’ve recorded a couple of these pieces for my site. Here is the Spiritoso from the Telemann Sonata on a Serpent B-flat whistle:
http://www.flutesite.com/samples/serpduet.mp3
And here is the Adagio from the Loeillet on Baroque flute:
There are several interesting duets in “The Whistler’s Pocket Companion” by Gilliam and McCaskill.