I am excited to announce the release this week of a new book/CD package, “150 Gems of Irish Music for Tin Whistle”. It should be in print by this Friday, March 22, on Mel Bay Publications. For info on the book and free excerpts, please visit http://www.greylarsen.com.
This is the first of four books I am putting out in 2013. The others are:
150 Gems of Irish Music for Flute
300 Gems of Irish Music for All Instruments
Down the Back Lane: Variation in Traditional Irish Dance Music
I saw the announcement of the release here, and so I went out and took a look at the book. I am the type that doesn’t read music real well, so having a companion CD is essential for me to help me figure out the more complicated parts.
I like Irish music and what I felt I needed was a collection of tunes to work on to keep from getting bored.
Honestly I have only been playing the Whistle for a week. However I have been playing guitar semi-professionally for many years, so I am not new to playing music.
So that is how I decided on Gems, it isn’t the only book of tunes that I will buy.
Since the only person who mentioned “Gems” before I asked was Grey, I’m believing that is who I was asking. I see what max was thinking though but that’s a whole different question.
A book title has a lot of information in it. I was nosey.
A message to newbies, neophytes and intermediate whistlers.
This book/cd package is the most important thing to happen to the whistle tooting community since Grey’s definitive “Essential” guide was released over 10 years ago.
What gives over here in the Dale Wisely community? This thread should have a 100 posts in it by now!
If you want to sound trad (ie play in that lean, economical, dynamic style pioneered by Mary Bergin, etc.) and you don’t have a master on hand to tutor you than you can do no better than to seek out and study the material presented in this book. Don’t be another whistle hack who thinks playing Irish whistle is simply a matter of stringing notes together and flailing under the misguided assumption that what you think is a roll, actually is.
Buy this book. All the “tools” are here. This is your chance to get it right. It will most likely take years but you will get there if you put the time and effort in and study this book and listen carefully to the cd’s.
I should’ve placed this order earlier but I just did so today. I hope the CD’s help because all I have for music tutorial cd’s are actually tapes from a Clarke’s Original C Whistle kit, and I thought I would just stumble on a tape player somewhere but haven’t so far…
