having in the last year become a keen whistler I am at home mostly24/7 to look after my wife…no complaints here…but I found that playing the whistle alone one thing I missed was playing the tune and being accompanied…I particularly missed the minor harmonies that seem to contribute so much to Irish music…of course one can play in a minor key on the whistle but I did and do miss the backing of good harmonies…I recently got an accordion as well and found my Irish and folk trad came into its own…still use the whistle of course…Anyway, I got hold a disk titled 10 Top Ceilidh Tunes 1…its a tutor CD …10 tunes…each divided into 3 -parts…it comes with a small music book which includes chords…part 1 of each tune is a simple slowly played melody, part 2 has chords played on a guitar,part 3 is full speed with backings by violins etc, the first bit playing the tune and backing then it goes on to drop the melody line, allowing the player to play this withtthe provided backing…It has Irish, parts may a little folky BUT it is good fun for those of us who are in there Irish Trad(and folk) infancy…Its about £12 with postage and well worth it…I think there is a need for more backing CDs…well known Irish trad etc would come to life for many people like me and the experience would be invaluable to learners…this CD tutorial comes from www.tri-folk.co.uk. I find it great for the whistle and accordion.
Yes, truly… better to play with a group than to play with yourself… 
I have a DVD called Jam Acadamy - Celtic. I have not done much with it as of yet, but it seems fairly flexible if a little bit corny.
Les, that sounds like a nice deal! I agree, it’s nice to have CD’s that have backing, or other instruments playing the lead melody.
Thanks for the tip.
I am enjoying the Irish Session Class CD’s by Dan Compton. His tutorial CDs are played by himself on fiddle and/or guitar, and that’s a pleasant accompaniment to the whistle or flute.
Mary 
Yeah..I’ll take playing in a group any day 
Where can they be obtained, Mary?
They are available through this website:
There used to be (I’m sure there still are if I took time to look for them) great tutors like this for Jazz players done by a fellow named Jaime Abersold. You could jam with the likes of a Duke Ellington band. Pretty effective stuff for improv.
What you need is a group of top quality musicans playing backing to your brilliant whistle playing…with the sheet music displayed so you don’t have to memorise the tunes…
try the BBC session page. It gets quite addicitve, especially on the faster tunes
Wow, that is nice! Thanks!
Mary
Its a pleasure
I’ve been looking at some multi-trak recording software that would let me put in guitar, fiddle, bass, whistle and (synthesized) drums, harp and various pads. Of course, this becomes a major project, which is probably why I’ve been thinking about it without doing it for over a year. (Actually, I was thinking about doing it before being bitten by the Irish Trad bug.) Another alternative is to go the all-midi route and just sequence accompaniments without bothering to record other acoustic instruments. I don’t have the chops to make a guitar patch sound like a real guitar accompaniment, but the harp, piano and drum stuff sounds ok.
One thing I used to use to practice solos on the guitar for other styles of music was Band-in-a-Box. The version I had was ancient, but it was a good way to practice even on the Windows 3.1 version, and required only mimimal effort - all you had to do was put in the chord changes, select a style and set of instruments and you were good to go. It used some artificial-intelligence to generate appropriate drums, bass and comping for the changes you put in. I googled it recently, and it looks like it’s come a really long way since I used to use it. Does anyone else use this? Are there Irish Traditional styles available for it? It’s not perfect, but may beat playing solo all the time.
Band In A Box was made for constructing music-minus-one, and there’s old versions out there to run on any operating system (DOS, Apple, Mac OS 6, 7, 8, 9, 10+, Windows 3.1 on up, I don’t know how it runs in LINUX, but I’ve seen it run in UNIX).
The BBC session, however, rocks like crazy.
Other recordings are easy to slow down and manipulate in Windows Media Player. I have mixed feelings about doing this: it’s really cool, but 15 years ago I spent thousands of dollars on recording gear for pitch manipulation that didn’t work as well as a couple of mouse-clicks on my kids’ computer. Oh well.
I play alone all the time, because I live deep in the country, and also because I prefer the sound of my whistle coming through a nice sound system. It was Jaime Abersold’s tapes that gave me the idea to create my own Celtic-y version of his. When I learned to play the flute, I just loved playing over his music minus one tapes. So, I’ve created a whole set of drones, starting with just a cello playing a root/fifth and then getting a bit fancier (vocal overtones, synth, guitar, harp). Also, I have a whole collection of great Celtic CDs that are perfect for adding another line of whistle–so I get to play with some of the finest musicians in the world this way. I’ve also taken my favorite cuts and pitch-shifted them (in my recording studio) so that they are in better keys, or at standard pitch. This makes playing along with them even more fun.
That is cool. I can’t believe I’d never seen it before…
Thanks for the link.
! My keets are going wild over it!
glad to hear that Lambchop - but what exactly are keets?
I believe you call them budgies. Parakeets. Budgerigars.
The music stopped. Both of them stopped dead in their tracks, looked suspiciously toward the computer . . . sat there in silence a moment . . . and realizing that no more music is forthcoming, have now burst into complaint.
I wonder if you can set it to repeat automatically . . .
sounds wild! the only animal here is my cat - she always has a look of total disdain when I am playing.
My dog lies down on one side .. ear to the floor .. puts paw over other ear and whines … doesn’t do much for the ego 
Jim