After spending well over a year with Bill Och’s whistle book (awesome!) and various traditional tunes found in various tune databases on the internet, I listened again to some more modern recordings.
Traditional tunes often have a “traditional sound”. I’m sure most of you listen to modern artists, and I think you’ll agree with me that many of the artists play music that doesn’t have a “traditional feel”. I like a styles that have a sound similar to an Air played quickly with various ornaments, VS, say, a Jig.
I’ve also found that my style starts to mimic the tunes I learn. My favorite tunes are of “beautiful and haunting” variety, and it takes a lot of digging to find that type of sound in traditional tune databases, even when searching for Airs.
Does anyone know where one might find music books, or tune transcriptions from more mainstream artists?
And does anyone know of (or have) CDs that have the “beautiful and haunting” flavor? (I don’t buy much music…)
I, too, like the haunting music more than jigs & reels (I don’t play much Irish Trad). I find the slow airs are nice, and lots of Irish waltzes can have that haunting sound.
Some cd recordings that might correspond to what it sounds like you’re describing:
Aine Minogue ‘Between the Worlds’ and ‘Mysts of Time’
Cynthia Wyatt ‘Celtic Harp Traditions’
Loreena McKennitt ‘The Visit,’ ‘Book of Secrets’
There are several Irish slow airs books available w/ accompanying cd’s of all the tunes. Some of the airs are composed to be deliberately ‘beautiful and haunting’ and you can make even more of them sound that way if you work at it. “Ireland’s 110 Best Slow Airs” book is the one I have.
Tony
Since I’d guess you’re probably aware of them, I feel a little silly mentioning two of my favorite sites that have some nice slow airs, Mick Woodruff’s at http://fingertrip.net/whistle/ and the http://www.tinwhistler.com/music/songtype.asp?songtype=1 page on the Wandering Whistler’s site. There aren’t as many as I’d like, but a lot of what’s there sounds really good, and the written music is included on both sites.
A few of the tunes on the Wandering Whistler site have only MIDI sound files, but on the other hand, several songs have both high D and low D whistle sound files.
I reckon it’ll take me a couple of years just to get the basic tunes down to those.
Good stuff guys! I’ve found some very good tunes to work on, thanks to the links. I’m still wondering if there are artists out there who sell scores to their music. I guess a lot of it is spontaneous, but I’d still like to find original sheet music from well known artists.
A few touring groups MIGHT sell songbooks. The Battlefield Band does while on tour but they can also be had in music shops. BUt in their case, you would get some of the dreamy stuff, but a lot of fast pipe things too, complete with notated ornaments. I think they have released two songbooks.
The beauty of slow stuff is that you can cop the whistle part off the record. The dreamy accompaniments have to de-constructed enough to hear the harmonies underneath. And the problem with that is that if they are using a DADGAD tuned guitar and bouzoukis (and harps, synthesizers whatever), you can’t really put your standard-tuned guitar up to em and grab chords. Too many notes. Takes a lot of listening skills to approximate em. Plus, they might not really have ever been inclined to think about what it would look like on paper…they just do it. So availability of said material may be doubtful.