I heard somewhere that if one plays a G and a C whistles in the same fingering they will harmonize and sound lovely together (assuming both whistlers are caplable of lovliness 
)
Is this true?
If so, can the same thing be done with other keys?
Thanks,
Doc
A bunch of people have said playing an A whistle with a D is good, so the G with C should be the same. My self-taught theory is very rusty, but I believe itâs that A is the 5th in the key of D, and G is the 5th in the key of C.
Tery
It works because they are a fifth apart, so everything you play will be a fifth apart. Sounds OK, but can be kind of boring compared to a more sophisticated harmony part.
âCHeers, Nancy
Actually, playing a 5th apart is called parallel harmony, and is a big no-no in any music theory class. Why? Because it doesnât sound lovely to our ears. Try playing any melody on the piano, five notes apart, and it will sound as if it came from another country, where that sound isnât as foreign to them. But, if you were to study our musicâs roots, you would learn that as far back as the 9th century, a 5th sounded ok to those people.
Experiment: pick up a G and a C whistle and play them, one in each hand, using the exact same fingering. See what you think of the sound? JP
We use a B flat and an E flat together and play very nice harmonies, but we arenât playing the same fingerings note for note. I didnât do the arrangements and I donât fully understand the theory, though.
John, Does that mean the A whistle is not a good choice if other people are playing Ds?
Tery
The prejudice against parallel fifth is a very Western/classical thing, that doesnât apply in other cultures and is viewed differently even in Jazz.
But the point is not so much that itâs a fifth, just playing the the same interval to every note in a tune is pretty awful, if you ask me.
for instance, The Sally Gardens reel starts
G2DG B2GB | dâŚ
That is clearly a G-major chord (G-B-D), and if you want to play harmony to it, you could just play a G for the whole bar. (I wonât go into the quesiton whether one should want to play harmony to the Sally Gardens reel.)
If you just use another whistle to play fifth (an A whistle), youâd be playing
G2DG B2GB | dâŚ
D2AD F2DF | aâŚ
So, on the second beat you get B and F# together, which sounds like B-D-F#, or B-minor. That is the minor parallel of the dominant fifth chord, or D-major. Itâs a bit of a statement because one would expect D-F#-A instead (which is what the start of the second measure might mean, if only we had a third).
Itâs is a bit ludicrous because this kind of harmonic approach isnât appropriate for Irish tunes, but I just want to demonstrated that you suggest chords and harmonic relations when you play two notes together. If you just play fifths throught a tune (and you are a âWestern/Classicalâ listener) all you get is harmonic gibberish.
P.S. âWesternâ means ânot Easternâ, and not Country/Western.
Another basic approach to harmony is to play thirds â D-F#, E-G, etc. Again, like fifths, it can be boring, but with some augmentation it can sound neat. I have heard it done with whistles and it is done in a fiddle style called twin fiddling:
In twin fiddling, one fiddle plays the melody as written, the other fiddle plays in parallel a third above (sometimes a fourth depending on the chord). Twin fiddling was poular in western swing and country bands in the 50âs and 60âs. The style has also been employed in old time and bluegrass fiddling.~ Thornton
[ This Message was edited by: ThorntonRose on 2002-08-05 15:09 ]
On 2002-08-05 15:08, ThorntonRose wrote:
⌠(sometimes a fourth depending on the chord)âŚ
Thatâs the operative phrase.