Hi everyone. I’m a long time boehm-system flute player and I play in a decently sized church orchestra. I took up penny whistle last fall. We were reading music for a worship concert we were going to give and when the first penny whistle solo came up, he looked over at the flute section expectantly - like we have whistles in our flute cases. I took the bait and now have become the penny whistle player for the church it seems. During the past year I acquired D, F, G, Eb and Bb whistles. A few weeks ago he handed out the music for the upcoming season (through Christmas). I do believe he is in love with the penny whistle – because there are so many orchestrations with penny whistle written in for all or a portion of the flute part. And now for my general question: I am having trouble determining which key of whistle is needed. For example: a Lari Goss arrangement of Sing Noel starts out in the key of C with Bb as an accidental and the lowest note being a G below the staff. Any guidance? At this point I’m not that good with 1/2 hole fingerings but could perhaps learn. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!
If it’s in C with lots of B flats, you could probably play it on your F whistle. Then the lowest note, G, would be XXXXXO. If you want to read the music, move every note up 5 steps, so an F moves to a D, a G moves to an E and so on. Then play it as though you were using a D whistle.
Sounds like the best thing to do.
Wow, thanks for responding so quickly. Yes, I had gotten as far as the F whistle using the information on whistle keys from this site, but mine is a high F and this is very low sounding on the reference recording we were given. The subtitle is “with African Noel” and to me it’s almost native american flute sounding if that makes any sense. As I mentioned it goes to G below the staff (where silver flutes cannot go). I tried it on my F and of course the octave is off. I’m just trying to figure out what kind of whistle they used.
Could it have been the Andean flute or Quena? You heard it if you watched the “Flight of the Condor” on PBS, IIRC.
Possibly it was a low F whistle.
However, the low F whistle will probably play an octave above what the score indicates.
Titian,
I can’t answer your question but maybe someone on the Praise Whistle Forum can. http://praisewhistlers.proboards57.com/ Someone there may have already played it in their church.
Cheers,
Kathy 