new and confused

Whistle
1

I am new to the tin whistle and I am having some difficulty.

First let me say, I have had musical training literally my whole life–about 30 years now. I have played piano, flute, oboe and saxophone. I have also played the recorder since I was a kid, so the whistle isn’t far off as far as fingerings and such. I also understand what the keys are, how the whistles are tuned and why, but all of this isn’t helping with my problem.

So here’s the problem. I have been playing with an upstart celtic band and right now all I have is a D whistle. The band is playing music that is not in D (or G for that matter) to accommodate various members. Some of the songs I can’t even figure out the key. Sometimes we have changed keys in the middle of the song. It has been easier (somewhat) to play the recorder, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I was going to order a couple more whistles, but I’m not even sure which ones to get. I am very confused. Short of having a whistle in every single key, how does one adapt?

2

You have a whistle in every, or at least in many keys, or the other band members have to adjust. On a whistle in any given key, you can’t play more than 3 major scales comfortably (base key, fifth above that, fifth below that, and I’m not sure about the second), and then you might still run into problems with the range of the tune. This is a diatonic instrument, after all.

Welcome :wink:

Sonja

3

I figured as much. I guess I didn’t have a problem as much as I needed someone to reinforce what I already assumed. I guess I either need to start a whistle fund or refuse to play in anything but D. I will from now on be called OWP. Obstinate Whistle Player.

Now, can someone tell me how to figure out what key a song is in. Let’s say you’re listening to a song and you want to jump in, do you just go through your whistles until you find the right one?

4

It’s not a bad idea to have whistles in a few keys. D you already have. C would also be a good idea to have on hand. Depending on what keys this band generally plays in, you might also find yourself wanting an Eb or a Bb, or possibly even an F.

Most whistles you can easily get two major keys and their relative minors without a lot of half-holing. So on a D whistle, you can play in D and G major very easily (you can also play in A major if you’re willing to half hole one note). You’ve also got E minor and A minor. With a C whistle, you’ve got C and and F majors covered (G if you’re willing and able to do that half hole), as well as Dm and Gm.

To know what whistles you’ll need, you do have to have some idea as to what keys your band favors (or get really, really good at improvising harmonies). Does the band work from written music? If so, do you know how to tell the key of a piece by the key signature? If not, it might be a good idea to pick up a really basic theory book, such as the poorly named “Music Theory for Dummies,” and give yourself a crash course. If you all are working by ear, you may have to fiddle around with different whistles and fingerings for each tune until you find one that works for you, unless someone in the band can tell you (or you can figure out by watching or listening to the other players) which notes predominate. You may eventually get to where you can “guestimate” by ear…or you may not (I never have been able to).

If they’re changing keys mid-tune (not unusual), it helps to know WHERE they’re going so you can adjust. You may have to reach for a different whistle, go into a harmony part, or drop out after the key change, depending on what you’re most comfortable doing.

This may be obvious, but if you’re the only one in the band playing a non-tuneable instrument with a fairly limited range, it might be worth asking if they can adapt to YOU occasionally (you mentioned that they favor certain keys because of other band members)…at least until you get a few more whistles (not to mention more experience with them) under your belt.

Redwolf

5

What are the other keys they’re playing in?
Tell us that and we can probably tell you what whistles
you need.

6

Stick to Generations if you really don’t have much money to spend, they are available in D, C, Eb and Bb (and high F and G, if you want to play for dogs and bats). A little bit more expensive would be Susatos and/or Dixons, both available in many keys. I don’t have any experience with high-end whistles, but I seem to remember that Burkes, Copelands, Overtons etc. are all available in lots of keys.

Now, can someone tell me how to figure out what key a song is in. Let’s say you’re listening to a song and you want to jump in, do you just go through your whistles until you find the right one?

There happens to be a thread over at the ITM board right now: http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=14041

cheers,

Sonja

7



Now, can someone tell me how to figure out what key a song is in.

I think I’m missing something here.

8

:confused: I missed something too. Our harper has had music training (it was her major), but she is now starting to get over it and is learning to use her ears. She still uses the dots to learn tunes and I think it slows the learning down.

I am glad that I learned to read music after I got my first whistle. I can now read music in the treble cleff with either one or two sharps (and sometimes 3 sharps). :laughing:

I would have thought an oboe player would go for the uilleann pipes. You can make them chromatic if you can afford all the keys. :smiling_imp:

9

To be fair: traditional music uses modal scales that are not used in popular or classical music, and hard to hear and recognize if the musical training focused on modern major-minor tonality. Any musical theory book, or a book on Jazz improvisation, should be a good introduction to scales. Or, of course, either an organist or a Jazz musician in person, if you have one at hand.

Sonja

10

traditional music uses modal scales that are not used in popular or classical music

Exception: 20th c. classical music by composers such as Hovhaness, Grainger, Vaughan Williams, Bartok, Kodaly,…

11

If you have a new band, with mostly non-irish trained musicians, you might want to have them work through the common Irish modes. They may be playing a tune in A major that should be in A Mixolydian, they might only be a note off, but it will be noticable to many who are more familar with Traditional tunes. A good place to start is Irish](http://www.geocities.com/novairishsession/modes/modes.htm%3EIrish) Modes and the “D” Tin Whistle By Jos H. Hindriks. (You may have to got to the NoVa](http://www.geocities.com/novairishsession/%3ENoVa) Irish Sessions home page first to get access due to geocities homepage usage standards).

Jo’s page is a good presentation of modes and how they carry to whistle. You may also want to discuss how “traditional” you want the group to be. It may mean playing tunes in the modal keys instead of the simple major and minor keys.

However you play it …

12

If you have a new band, with mostly non-irish trained musicians, you might want to have them work through the common Irish modes. They may be playing a tune in A major that should be in A Mixolydian, they might only be a note off, but it will be noticable to many who are more familar with Traditional tunes.

This might explain why I’m having trouble, when I’ve been musically trained and yet can’t find the key. For example, I was given a CD with an instrumental number to learn. When I worked out the melody, it contained C#, D# and A# (or Db, Eb and Bb). Is that the key of Ab using natural A? It seems every time I think I’ve found the root note, it just doesn’t sound right according to how I THINK the scale should sound. I don’t know, it’s been frustrating.

As far as the band goes, we got together to play mostly for pleasure, but also to play at local festivals when the opportunity arises. We have been working on a couple of traditional songs and there are several others we have played around with, but that’s it. None of them seem to be in the same key. I’ve listened to Celtic music for a long time, but never thought much about how it was put together or performed. It sounds simple, but it’s not. The other members have limited music-reading ability and we have not been working from sheet music at all. I’m sure I have been most hindered by thinking “inside the box.” Is there a total immersion whistle program somewhere? :slight_smile:

By the way, I didn’t even know what uilleann pipes were until a couple of weeks ago. :astonished:

13

That’s a tough one. It’s Bb melodic minor. The scale is Bb, C, Db, Eb, F, G, A, Bb. The usual key signature would be that of Db major (5 flats), using accidentals (naturals) for G and A.

14

Lee, that’s a terrific resource!

Thanks so much!

Best wishes,
Jerry

15

You do know that the tinwhistle is a cheap gateway drug to the hard and expensive drugs of bagpipes and flutes, don’t you? :boggle:

I know nothing about basketball music (aren’t the Celtics a basketball team?) :laughing:

If you gave the specifics of the CD and the instruments used, we could be more specific. Are there Great Highland Bagpipes involved (sharper than B flat, flatter than B)?

Rather than “whistle immersion”, perhaps some “musical imersion” would help. Have you found out about Ceolas yet? Are you playing ceol beag or ceol mhor? :smiling_imp:

16

No need to add to what Rinseard said about this particular key. A more common problem would be to fail to identify tunes as being in mixolydian mode which is very common in Celtic music. This mode has a major scale but with a flattened seventh. Sometimes the seventh might seem to ‘float’ in between natural and fully flattened tonalities. So a tune that looks to be in G major or one of it’s relative minor counterparts (from the key signature) but seems, from the melody contour, to be in D something is almost certainly in D mixolydian.

BTW, if you play in certain keys to accommodate particular instruments, those who play the instruments should be able to tell you what those keys are. How otherwise did they communicate their preferences? Of course, if you are playing modally without realising it, there might be considerable confusion about what key you are actually in. Even tune books and teaching manuals commonly get modal tunes wrong IMO, but once you familiarise yourself with the commonly encountered modes, you won’t be confused by any of this stuff.

17

Of course, you don’t have to buy loads of different whistles to play in a wide variety of keys.

I normally play my Laughing Whistle in C, and any of the tunes which I can play, regardless of key, I play on this whistle, whether the tune is a standard in D (with two half holes) or G harmonic minor (with three half holes).

It takes a bit of practise getting used to half-holing, and I’m still not good at half-holing the C# (that’s the Eb fingering for all you D whistlers out there), but it’s fun doing mad runs playing the Basso (an A minor gypsy tunes) with a quick lick with F’s and G’s followed closely by F#'s and G#'s. :boggle:

This method has the benefit that I don’t have to change whistles in between tunes and you can save a bit of money (perhaps a pointless pursuit given that so many of our illuminated number are given over to the excesses to WHoa).

On the topic of modality, I’m also learning to play salsa on my whistle, which is mostly in the keys of C, Bb and Eb (all relatively easy to play, not too many half-holes, even for Eb) but in modes such that the tunes start and end on C (I can’t remember the names of the modes, don’t really care, but I guess the tunes in Eb would properly be said to be in C natural minor).

Happy whistling,
TTFN.

18

Attention: I am now reviving my own thread. :slight_smile:

Okay, I went to the page that Lee suggested about the different modes and that’s confusing me a lot. I am working through it slowly.

I have also received four whistles in the mail. (I was previously using borrowed ones.) I now own a Clarke Original in D (not tweaked), a Sweetone in C, a Meg in D, and a Generation Bb. I like the Meg the best and I like the Sweetone second best. The Clarke Original sounds very breathy and the Generation sounds like crap. (I should say here that I picked the Bb at random, just to have another key & whistle to play around with and had no idea how far apart and large the holes would be.)

So I’ve been reading around here about tweaking whistles and the Whistle Shop website mentioned the tweaked Clarke and the tweaked Little Black D and my new question is this: is it standard procedure to buy a whistle and then tweak it? Understanding of course that things do happen in the studio to enhance the way instruments (and voices) sound, when I listen to recordings of whistles, they always sound so pure and clean, not breathy at all. I tell you, I can’t get a decent sound out of the Generation, while the Meg sounds near perfect to me.

By the way, our celtic festival is in a couple of weeks and I will be stalking any and all people holding whistles for the entire weekend. Fair warning, if you live in Amarillo, TX.

19

Three questions here I think.

No it isn’t standard procedure to buy a whistle and tweak it but for cheap whistles it is fairly common.

Some whistles are pure, others are breathy. A lot of people like that Clarke sound and look for high end whistles that are breathy.

Generations do vary a lot and if you’re getting acceptable sounds out of one cheap whistle and shite out of your Generation it is almost certainly not your fault, despite what a tiny minority around here would have you believe. The Generation you bought sounds as though it needs tweaking. Even after tweaking, not every whistle is up to scratch.

20

Well, I’ll get slaughtered here cuz I don’t have any formal musical training beyond “E_very G_ood B_oy D_oes…” :smiley:

All I wanted to throw your way is that I play D, C, and G… and that’s about it. Sometimes A whistle just for the ease / tone of it, and F very rarely. I play every Monday night at the local hoolie (jam session & party) and we play all sorts of Celtic music… Welsh, Scottish, Irish, heck a bit of Ozark Mtn., etc. you name it. I’ve never had any trouble learning and playing along, but then again I can only play by ear. (I can’t read sheet music fast enough, nor do I understand the symbols other than the types of notes. abcdefgABCDEFG and in between is about it.)

I record every single session, and if there’s a tune I don’t know and just can’t get while we’re playing it, then I just play along with “highlights” and I learn it for next time listeneing to the recordings I’ve made.

I’m sure that other keys of whistles would make my life much easier when playing some tunes, I don’t know, but I play all sorts of keys on my D whistle I know… like last night we played Red Haired Boy which we played in A, Butterfly which actually changes keys and is a slip jig; anyway A, G, E minor, D, G, etc. I all play on a D whistle; in many cases a C whistle is the only way to go for a C tune (although some C tunes can be played on a D whistle!! and can even end up being preferable because of the fingering!!), some tunes are just plain easier to finger in their named key whistle. And half the time I have NO IDEA what key we’re playing in, nor do I know by the end of the song without asking, so there you have it!!! :smiley:

I hope that helps out a little. My main point is that you don’t need an arsenal of whistles to play an array of keys. Just learn to play your whistle and you’ll be fine. Hop onto a good website that shows you how to cross-finger and half-hole, then later on - slide, tap, cut, roll, cran, etc. (if you don’t already know all that stuff) and take your time, practice and learn along the way and you’ll really enjoy what you’ll accomplish. 90% of the time all I use is D. You can survive on D and C alone in my humble opinion and play trad. Celtic / Irish tunes w/ ease.

Upon going back and reading my own post, it’s even a bit confusing to me! but it’s the best way I can think of to explain it, so I hope it’s at least minimally helpful.

Take care,
John