Ok, so I have been playing for a couple of days now, and have some questions… again
First, I got my whistle I believe last saturday, and can play a few basic songs (when the saints go marching in, brahms lullaby etc.) and I think I am making fair progress, I am practicing about an hour total a day in 15 minute incriments, should I increase my practise time? How many hours a day did you practice as a beginner? I just can’t help feeling I could be getting more out of my whistle playing, but am afraid I will burn myself out…
Second, It isn’t that I am in a rush, or worried about ‘creating music on the fly’ but what kind of time frame would you say it takes to become relatively proficient in whistling? (With above said amount of training a day)
Third, should I worry about learning to read music notation? I have been reading some of the posts on this board, and am getting the idea it really isn’t that necessary for irish music? The tutor book I am using (that came with my whistle) has little pictures showing what holes are covered and which ones are not, and am ashamed to admit that is what I have been using, and have completely neglected the note part of my whistle learning.
What are the picture hole notation thingies called? Is this the abc notation I have read about?
How does one train by ear? Just play the CD a hundred times, trying to pick out each note?
and Finally, My main inspiration for learning to play the whistle came from a CD, it was two songs by a group called Finbar & Eddie Furey they were named “Dance around the spinning wheel” and “The lonesome boatman”
found on this CD http://shopping.msn.com/specs/shp/?itemId=1415627
Can anyone tell me what kind of whistle they were using (key) where I could find sheet music (the picture holes if possible ) Or how I would go about listening to hear what kind of whistle they had? Like can one theoretically play a ‘G’ on a ‘D’ whistle and some how or another figure out what they are playing? Or can these be played on any whistle? (I have a ‘D’)
I am sure all of these questions seem pretty dumb to all of you who have been playing for a while, and sorry for being so 'noobish, but if you don’t ask, you don’t learn, right?
When I first started whistling, I whistled for sometimes 6 hours a day for the first couple of years. I had a clarke original, with the wood block fipple, and the wood grain would suck the moisture out of my lip, and then my skin would rip off when I pulled the whistle away from my mouth.
That’s probably a bit extreme.
It took me 3 years or so before I felt proficient at the whistle. It took me another three years or so before I started feeling comfortable with all the complex ornaments and the like. Now, I’m starting to get comfortable just learning tunes on the fly. I imagine I won’t consider myself a really good player for another 10 years or so.
But then again, I have set high standards for myself.
There are pros and cons to learning by ear vs sheet music.
By ear is the recommended traditional method. If you learn this way, you’ll learn to pick up tunes on the fly much faster than me, and I’ve heard you’ll have a better grasp of the music itself, and be better at variation sooner, etc. The cons: You can only learn tunes you’ve heard. That big book of 1001 tunes from O’Niel will be closed to you.
Many people read sheet music: This makes a world of tunes accessible to you instantly, including the many thousands of free ones on the internet. Also, if you hear a tune you like at session, you can ask “what was the name of that tune?” find the sheet music, and learn it, without having a recording of the tune to go by. It’s almost universally accepted here that even if you learn by sheet music, you should only use the sheet music to get the bare notes, and then use your ears at session or with recordings to flesh the tune out and give it style. After you’ve been at it a while, and begin to understand the irish ideom, you’ll be more able to add the irish style just by looking at the sheet music alone. It’s been said that if you primarily learn from sheet music, you won’t have as easy a time with variation and improvisation..I know I struggle with this myself. Also, unless you use your ears in conjuction with sheet music, it’s awfully easy to play irish music completely wrongly and not realize it. Some people are practically superstitious about sheet music and think it is inherently bad and will somehow harm you if you learn it. I think that’s silly.
That’s called Tablature. ABC notation is a different animal..it is a textual representation of sheet music. It’s really it’s own musical notation language, and looks like this (ABC courtesy of Henrik Norbek’s site):
X:3
T:Banish Misfortune
R:jig
D:Tommy Keane & Jacqueline McCarthy: The Wind among the Reeds
D:Chieftains Live.
Z:First bar also played |^fed cAG|
Z:id:hn-jig-3
M:6/8
K:Dmix
=fed cAG|AGd cAG|~F3 DED|~F3 GFG|~A3 cAG|AGA cde|fed cAG|Ad^c d2e:|
|:f2d d^cd|f2a agf|e2c cBc|ece gfe|f2g agf|e2f gfe|fed cAG|Ad^c d2e:|
|:f2g e2f|ded cdc|~A3 GAG|~F3 ded|c3 cAG|AGA cde|fed cAG|Ad^c d2e:|
Pretty much. a lot of folks use slow down software too. Part of learning irish music is hearing irish music. You can play “basic songs” easily already, not because they’re particularly easy, but because you’ve heard them all your life. Try the same with Christmas tunes. I bet you pick them up amazingly easy. Heck, a couple of years ago, I learned maybe 7 or 8 Christmas tunes in one day. Now think about irish folks who’ve heard irish tunes their whole lives. It’s a lot easier for them to play those tunes by ear. The more you hear irish music, the easier it will get for you too.
Finbar originally played Lonesome Boatman on a bamboo Ab whistle/flute thing. He broke it and later got an Overton in G (thus spurring the birth of the modern low whistle craze). I don’t know what’s on the CD you have, so I can’t say what he played on it. I’d guess the Overton.
More about Finbar and Overton here: http://www.soarmusic.demon.co.uk/whistle.htm
I’ve only been playing for two weeks myself, but it is a seriously addicting little instrument, i have hardly touched my guitar in these two weeks!
http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/aidx/tidxA.html
this was a good site for showing whistle TAB as it’s called …‘The little black dots’… stuff, but it seems to be down right now??? maybe someone else has a link to that site that works??? it was a good site too
Personally i am also using my whistle to learn music notation & it’s partly why i took it up, as the notes are quite simple to play, it is a great tool for learning. Like a lot of guitar players i am very lazy when it comes to learning sheet music.
I think you become proficient…when you feel you have become proficient…everyone told me it was pretty easy to play whistle, but like anything, if it was easy everyone would do it
I can play a few things now, but I’m still forgetful and slow in a lot of passages so I reckon i have still a long way to go…six months plus before i would play in front of anyone? but who knows how long really???
In my opinion it’s a mistake to set yourself a time frame for getting “good.” You’ll just get frustrated. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Practice when you feel like it, for as long as you feel like it. Have fun with it, and listen, listen, listen. Like any other instrument, it will probably take years for you to become proficient and then really good, but really learning and learning about Irish traditional music can take a lifetime.
Remember when practicing that it’s better to play 10 minutes a day than 8 hours in one go. Pick the whistle up a little bit a day. Pick a goal to go toward (a new song for instance) and work on that one goal all week. Even if you get the song down on the first day, keep at it. Play it every day for the rest of the week. Learn the song entirely until you are completely comfortable with it.
Don’t forget, as your songs increase, you will need to play them to keep them. After you get 3-4 songs down, you can play all of them each practice and then start working on new songs.
For Irish music, most people start with Airs. I’d recommend NOT doing this. On the surface, they seem easier to play. However, to make an air sound truly good requires a knowledge of ornamentation that beginners simply don’t have. Start out with a polka (Egans is a good starter one, or Maggie in the Woods). The pace can be slow and it’s a great platform to start learning your first ornamentation on.
After a short while, you will figure out for yourself what works and doesn’t work for practice. If you try to rush yourself, you will simply get frustrated and quit. Remember, it’s the ride that’s the most fun here…not the destination.
stay away from tabulature! by the time you get used to following it you can be reading sheet music.go to the fingering chart ,print it enlarge it a bit and have it laminated thats every thing youll need to know about reading music .im just learning myself and i wasted alot of time getting used to tabulature then using the letters then sheet music
I have been playing almost a year and people notice a lot of improvement. Now, when people don’t like my playing, it’s because they don’t like the whistle sound itself more than because of my playing.
(one uncharitable comment: “It sounds like a cat being strangled.”)
Yeah, that one hurt.
I had a college student teach me to read music because I didn’t want to be dependent on CDs. However there are plenty of books of songs that offer CDs now. I find with reading notes, I give the proper time to each note, but when just listening, I tend to give each note equal time, like a political debate. Therefore, reading notes helps me. But I memorize the song as fast as I can, then leave the music behind. To me that’s a big advantage of the whistle–I can play anywhere, anytime, without dragging a music stand with me.
However, the faster jigs and reels are still beyond me. I play them, but never without mistakes. Worship music, polkas, airs and ballads come out sweet though. And because these are my favorites, I don’t feel too handicapped.
What I am trying to say is, don’t attempt to rip out those jigs too soon. Enjoy what you can play!
I’m repeating pretty much what others have said here, but I’m in the mood to chat!
An hour a day is a solid amount of practice if you keep it up regularly, in my opinion. You’ll make fine progress.
Well, yes, you are in a rush, just like we all are. So stop it. You’re going to make progress if you keep up your practicing. Like Susan said, it’s like any other instrument. It is difficult to play well. So concentrate not on what you will be able to do someday, but the little tiny steps you make from week to week. I have seen it recommended to tape yourself playing every six months or so. Then you can go back and listen to the tape when you start thinking you haven’t made any progress.
Reading music can come in handy. Whistle tablature isn’t nearly as commonly used as is tablature for guitar, say. So at some point you won’t be finding the tunes you want to learn in whistle tablature. There’s no shame in using it, it’s just that it’s a relatively small number of tunes that have been converted to it as far as I know. But you are going to have to listen to Irish music, not just whistle music, any kind, a whole lot to be able to play Irish music on the whistle. The sheet music is sort of a skeleton of the tune. It can’t really convey a lot of subtle things that give Irish music its particular character. Really advanced musicians, for example, play a tune with variations each time they repeat a part. The sheet music won’t be showing you these things. So however you learn the tune, you still need to listen alot. I would set aside a certain amount of time each day, even just 15 minutes, to listen. That would be part of your practicing.
Here are three articles which talk about ways you might go about it. The first one helped me alot because it talked about the most common structures of tunes. That helped me understand what I was listening to a lot better.
When you’re on your own you really have to find someone to ask. The books are great, but there are always things they don’t talk about. We’ve all asked plenty of questions, don’t worry!
I’m just going to list some on-line tutorials. The first one has slow and faster MP3’s of the tunes, so it is easier to learn those by ear. They all have some simple tunes and either midi’s or MP3’s. I’m not suggesting you switch tutorials, just that if you need a few more simple practice tunes you could check out these places.
I started by picking up a whistle at an inlaws house after a weekend of hitting Irish pubs. Bought a Guinness pack of whistle with CD and whistle tablature songbook.
That was 4+ years ago. When I was 49…
I practice/play about an hour a day in increments, mostly scales early on and learning beat and breathing later. I practiced a lot of scales while watching TV.
I also played along to tunes I downloaded as best as I could. I hit the wall a number of times and put the whistle down for a week, finding I played better when I picked it up.
I got into the over-ornamenting thing without realizing it (after hearing a self-recording) so now I try for purity of tone thru breath and an occasional slide.
I never learned to read music because it was too much of a pain. I rather prefer to play by ear. I felt it helped because I could pick out tunes I had never heard a lot easier.
Biggest payoff was last St. Patty’s Day when I played with a fiddler who played St. Mary’s Reel and I kept up with her. Without ever hearing the tune before.
Cant wait to start playing this weekend.
You can do it. Just practice your arse off, take a break when needed, and practice some more.
) Or how I would go about listening to hear what kind of whistle they had? Like can one theoretically play a ‘G’ on a ‘D’ whistle and some how or another figure out what they are playing? Or can these be played on any whistle? (I have a ‘D’)
