Hi! I’ve been playing traditional Irish tunes on the whistle for years, but I’ve got a hankering to try something different. Anyone have recommendations for other specific tunes that fit on the whistle (it’s range and diatonic limitations)? I don’t mind half-holing to get an f-natural or g-sharp now and then, but wouldn’t want to play tunes that require a lot of them.
I’m thinking maybe classical or early music, or maybe tunes from other traditions (I do know a few Scottish, Quebecois, and Shetland ones, but they’re very similar to Irish) ? Or, if there are any jazz standards that sound good as solo pieces.
Well, the tin whistle is a chromatic instrument, so there’s really no limitation by key. Range is an issue. Depending on the whistle, there’s two good octaves, or just shy thereof. Some whistles can get up into the third and maybe touch the fourth octave.
As for classical, any flute repertoire of the period should be fine. You might have to play some of the high stuff down an octave, but there are no technical reasons you can’t play Quantz or Mozart or Bach on a whistle.
A few of the classical tunes in my tune books:
Mozart’s Andantino in A (K298) is nice on whistle
Hummel’s Theme from Op.102
Handel’s Bouree from the G Maj Sonata
Fauret’s Sicilienne
Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca; Gavotte Les Petits Riens
Bach’s Courante in G
Couperin’s La Bourbonnaise
Bazzini’s Ronde des Lutins
Mendelssohn’s Andante con Moto (4th Symph.)
Hotteterre
Quantz
Etc.
I like to play early English country dance tunes (think Playford), also early French dance tunes, and the simpler medieval tunes i find by browsing on youtube and then looking up sheet music for a tune that strikes me, online. Early hymns can be very pretty on the whistle as well. Then for fun I sometimes try early American 1800s popular tunes, like from the Civil War/minstrel tune era. So many genres to explore!
Until this morning I would have said that playing Klezmer on the tin whistle is not a good idea (because of the accidentals and chromatic sequences) - and then somebody sent me this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KigvSmVioD0
So it looks like Whistlecollector is right and anything’s possible…
However, if you want to make life easier, and if you read staff notation, there is a wonderful website where you can choose the notes you can/want to play (start with Soprano recorder with sharps for a D whistle and pick your notes, not forgetting to make sure not to have a red frame around any note (by clicking twice on a note you don’t want to play). The red frame is for notes you want to practice specifically - it’s a site for learners - and will limit the selection of tunes to those who contain this note.) http://www.free-notes.net/cgi-bin/noten_index_main.pl?
I play a lot of whistle and very rarely play any Irish tunes. Have a look at (tune types in brackets are not exhaustive, just example generics for searching)
Central French repertoire of bourrees, schottisches, mazurkas etc.;
Italian (monferrina, tarantella)
Breton music (an dros, hanter dros)
Swedish (polskas, schottisch, langdans)
English (Morris, step dance, Southern reels and polkas)
Northumbrian tunes
Most tunes I play are Irish or Scottish, but just about any tune I like and can memorize gets played. That includes Renaissance, medieval, folk, Appalachian ballads, and even a Marlene Dietrich hit called,
Lili Marlene.
I am not hugely interested in irish dance music, but I really like the slow air(e)s. I play anything I can that I like, and my tastes are catholic (with a small c). Even spaghetti western movie music .
Yup, movies and video games have a vast repertoire that fits whistle well. The Shire piece and the Misty Mountain piece from LOTR series are pretty popular. Can find tutorials on YouTube. I play a piece from The Final Fantasy franchise called Sad Romance on whistle. It takes a bit of folding and such, but it is easily playable on whistle.
If you like a good waltz, there are lots of waltzes out there. There are three books by Mathiesen (sp?)that are good, if you do sheet music. I play a beautiful tune called Bakers Waltz by Alicia Jo Rabins (not in any books I know of) on whistle. Again, a bit of folding but extremely playable.
Rather counter-intuitively … it depends on the key of the whistle. I’ve found that using a Bb whistle (specifically a McManus blackwood) has allowed me to expand my repertoire enormously.
Tunes that I can now play include:
Girl from Ipanema
I will wait for you (Legrand)
Petit fleur
Ave Maria (Schubert)
Mission impossible
They are quite chromatic, devilishly so on both a standard D whistle and a low D whistle, but, for a reason I can’t fathom, playable on a Bb McManus (and probably on other top-flight wooden whistles too). Bb seems to be in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone between high and low whistles. And wood seems to be congenial to chromaticism … at least in my hands.
If anyone want to know the fingering techniques for those tunes, I’d be happy to oblige.
ITM is grand, but an expanded repertoire is more appealing to many listeners.
My whole musical life (over 40 years) has been the other way round.
Rather than acquiring an instrument and then asking myself “what sort of music might I play on this?” I have, over and over, become enchanted with a particular genre of music, then acquired the instrument(s) deemed appropriate for the music by the mainstream practitioners of it.
In the Introduction to his book Bagpipes Anthony Baines makes the obvious-sounding but profound statement
“Like any musical instrument the bagpipe exists for the music played upon it and for this alone.”
So when I became obsessed with Highland bagpipe music I learned how to play the Highland bagpipes, and when I became obsessed with Irish traditional music I learned the whistle, wooden flute, and uilleann pipes. When I began playing Bulgarian dance music in a band I learned the gaita and kaval.
Were I to want to get into playing, say, old New Orleans jazz clarinet music (which I dearly love listening to) I would learn clarinet.
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