Low notes

Whistle
1

Hello!

I’m still a beginner using a D whistle. I came to the tune called King of the Fairies but there are notes that are to low to be played on my whistle. What kind of whistle would I need to play this tune?

Thanks!

2

Hi Stephane! Welcome to the board. You’re whistle is just fine for King of the Fairies. The trick is to change or drop the notes that you can’t play because they’re too low. Instead of a C, for example, try just leaving it out, or going up to E, or for a real jolt (I’m not sure I’d do this on this particular tune) jump UP to the higher version of the note you don’t have. It gets to be a bit of an art when there are more than one note in a row, but there is always a way around it.

3

I assume your music shows K of the F starting on the b below the whistle’s lowest d. I start the tune an octave above, and then jump down to the e (as Tyghress suggested).

Great tune.

4

Another option being to play it on an A whistle (if you have one). There are a couple of tunes I’ve come across in key of D that I play on an A whistle because of the range involved.

This particular song, however, I’ve seen different notation for that does not go below the low D.

http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/gettune?F=GIF&U=http://rigel.csuchico.edu/~pubscout/tunes/fairies.html&X=1&T=KINGOFTHEFAIRIES&N=KingOfTheFairies.gif

5

Thank for all your answers. It helps a lot.

6

The trick is to get a fiddle. Then you’ll be able to play anything a whistle can play. :smiley:

JP

7

Everyone in the house is asleep right now (so I can’t play it right now to try it), but I think that if you really wanted to get that low B note in King of the Fairies, you’d run into the least amount of half-holing using a G whistle. You could then start the tune on xxx xoo (the note that would normally be an F# on a D whistle). The problem with this is that you’d be going up to the first few notes of the 3rd octave for a few of the highest notes in the tune…

I just do as was suggested in previous posts, playing the B an octave higher, then dropping down to correct octave for the rest of tune.

Thom

8

On 2002-09-08 23:37, JohnPalmer wrote:
The trick is to get a fiddle. Then you’ll be able to play anything a whistle can play. > :smiley:

JP

Ya know, I just tried to do that on my own fiddle but I can’t figure out where to blow on the darned thing to get the same notes as a whistle! Could you post some pictures please? Thank you.

9

Hey John,

What do you think those two big holes on the side the that thing that holds up the strings are for?

JP