I was going through my bookshelf this weekend and to my total surprise found a brand new copy of Mel Bay’s Complete Irish Tin Whistle Book. I have no recolletion of ever buying this, but there it was.
Anyway, I’ve skimmed through it and it seems to be a decent intro type book for the whistle, with lots of whistle tabulature in key places to emphasize the lesson plans, which is good for those who dont read music very well. Lots of tabulature on short and long rolls.
At the end of the book there is a series of tunes which are covered twice, once with the basic tune and once with ornamentation, kinda like L.E. McCullough’s FIST, but with this book notated versions of both the basic tune and the ornamented version are fully laid out on the page, and apparently there is an accompanying CD that plays the tunes.
Has anyone worked with the CD/CDs that go with this book. Are they any good? If they are, I might consider getting them, but I already have L.E.'s FIST and CDs, so I wonder if enough is enough. Anyone have any thoughts, opinions, etc?
i’ve got that cd…em..what can i say..???it hasn’t got all the songs on it…just 13 or 14 or what…but anyway…they are well played,and it demonstrates a few more difficult tunes in the book..i really want all songs to be on the cd because after u’ve heard the cd u can play much much better..u know the style,the tempo and how the songs shold be played…
how much does it cost???i don’t really know cos it came along with the book and this made a total of 31 sth US dollars…quite expensive i can say…i would recommend it to intermediate players
I have the book and cd. The cd, like stated, is incomplete by a long shot. The whistle parts on the cd are sometimes drowned out by electric guitar or whatever. Kind of frustrating. I don’t remember what it costs, but if you want it, I’ll sell it at 25% off what I paid. (I’ll look it up.) I’ve gotten away from using accompanying cd’s (like McCullough’s) as I’ve grown more comfortable reading printed music.
Tony
On 2002-07-18 15:01, TonyHiggins wrote:
I’ve gotten away from using accompanying cd’s (like McCullough’s) as I’ve grown more comfortable reading printed music.
That’s funny, I’ve done exactly the opposite. After four or five months playing whistle, I could sight read sheet music at pretty darn close to standard tempo for jigs, and a reasonably fast clip on reels. Now that I’ve been playing for three years, though, I find it easier to learn a tune from a recorded version, particularly one slowed down a bit like LE’s 121 FIST CDs.
In fact, as I type this I’ve got a hornpipe I want to learn on infinite repeat in the background. Which is the glory of recorded sources – your brain can learn the tune while you’re doing something else. Then it’s just a matter of figuring out how to play the tune you can already hear.
Hiya, Coloman.
I to quit reading music to learn tunes, after not having played whistle too long(favorite early session memory,sitting at the local session with my tin whistle book on my knee, trying to flip thru and finding the tunes as they were being played,ha ha)
You actually learn tunes by ear with a different part of the brain…the recall is totally different than music learned from the written page.
One good thing about the CD is that it has labeled on each tune what kind of whistle was played. There is a good sampling of low-end and high-end whistles.
The style of the tunes is more varied than just purely IRTrad; a lot of the tunes are fusion trad with different other elements. If you think that’s a bad thing, you wouldn’t like the CD.
I have the Mel Bay’s “You can Teach Yourself the Tinwhistle” book, which has a fairly complete CD, but does not get into ornamentation very thouroughly. I really hate the CD, cause it has a really cheesy electronic keyboard backup for the whistle player.
On 2002-07-18 22:15, janice wrote:
You actually learn tunes by ear with a different part of the brain…the recall is totally different than music learned from the written page.
Could you explain more about this? I’ve read here that many consider it harder to play by ear than by reading it… which is strongly untrue in my case. I am hardly a musical genius so I had wondered what made me so special that I finding playing by ear relatively easy, at least compared to sight reading. So, know any more about it?