This question has been kind of touched on in a couple of recent topics, but not really answered, so I’ll try to ask it a bit more specifically:
How do you play in keys other than D and G?
Say I have a piece in C. I can’t play it on my D whistle without having to half-hole the F natural, and there’s a pretty good chance it goes down to the C just below my whistle’s range. So I get a C whistle. The problem is, I’ve already learned and have a very strong correspondance between the notes on the page and the D fingerings for them. It would be rather hard for me to learn to go from the notes on the page to the C fingerings… especially if I wanted to be able to do the same with my Eb whistle.
Another option might be to learn to transpose the song in my head… so that I’m actually playing the song it D, and it comes out in whatever key whistle I have in my hand. But I suspect learning this wouldn’t be trivial either.
I know either of these would be possible, but I’m just curious as to what other people on this board do for this. Any suggestions?
I transpose on the fly for most of the more common keys but that takes practice. For more difficult keys I rewrite the music out in either D or G or whatever’s most appropriate.
Martin
For every step down in the whistle bell note, transpose the music one step up.
You have your tune that you want to play on a c-whistle. C is one step down from your normal d-whistle. So transpose the music one full step up, and play it on the c-whistle as if you were playing a d-whistle.
(quick and dirty guide to transposing: For every full step you are transposing up, add two sharps (or delete two flats). So, if you are transposing your tune in C up one step, add two sharps (f# and c#) and write every note one step higher. Voila.)
Anyone ever heard of the nashville number system? It is a means of writing sheet music with numbers that would correspond with different notes depending on the key you are in. It was created for guitar but it sounds like you could use it for the whistle.
Cai, it isn’t as hard as it sounds…let your eyes get a bit blurry, and just play one note higher than what you see on the page. So, its written in C, you have a D whistle in your hand (or a C, or ANY…but I’m going to talk as if its a D) where you see the C, move it up in your head and play a D. The phrase GEC comes out being AF#D…and so forth. It really isn’t as difficult as you might think.
You’ll find, as soon as you do it once or twice, you can read one thing and play one-off.
Or transcribe it to a key you’re comfortable in, then pick up the whistle that gives you that key.
Be forewarned…there are tunes out there that look like they’re in a key that you can’t play, but it turns out they aren’t an issue. A lot of them look like they’re in A, but there are no G#s to worry about anyway.
Someone mentioned a neat trick to transpose some A tunes on a D whistle just by moving all your fingers up one position and playing as if it is in G.
What I would do in this situation is transpose the music to D, print out, then play it on my C whistle. I use the D fingerings, but the notes that come out of the whistle are in C. This would work the same for every other key. If I play the D sheet music on a Bb whistle, the notes come out in Bb.
The Nashville system was designed to notate (tabulate?) rhythm, not melody. However, it might work, if you augmented for melody and learned music from tablature (like a lot of guitarists do) rather than notes on a staff.
According to my teacher, learning tunes in various keys is absolutely the best for your chops. Have the tune well set in your ear, and then start experimenting from there. Some keys will be more do-able than others, but that’s okay. Try changing from major to minor or vice versa, too. Also, he advocates changing jigs to reelsetc. And in my experience, he’s dead right. I’m still taking baby steps in this arena, but you will be amazed at what this kind of stuff does for your playing and your ear – plus, once you can play a tune in different keys and different forms, you’ll be amazed at the new variation/ ornamentation options it starts opening up, too.
I have a somewhat similar question. When I look up sheet music online (ABC files, generally), the songs that are supposed to be in the key of C (my whistle is a C) have notes that are beyond the range of my whistle (from middle C to the next octave up). what can you tell me about this?
Thanks.
You are going to have to fake it, perhaps by playing a harmonizing note. For example, when I play “Puff (The Magic Dragon)”, I play E whenever I come to a middle C.
That’s what I’ve been doing so far. My hope was that at some point, I’d be able to sit down with a group of musicians playing “regular” instruments and be able to sight-read along, regardless of the key. Is this even something one can reasonably expect to be able to do?
That would depend on the one you are talking about. You better not expect this one to be able to do that.
I can “read” the music if it has one or 2 sharps and doesn’t go below the first space below the bottom line of the treble cleff and above the first leger line above the top line. It takes me longer to “read” it than it does for me to learn and play a tune by ear.
