Greetings to everyone who might remember me, and apologies for not having been around for a while. I’ve had a strangely unmusical couple of years, with most of my energy being sucked into one vortex of life chaos (er, transformation) or another. Nothing terrible, but many changes of perspective, but pretty much all for the better in the long run.
I’ve rediscovered my whistles this past week, and they seem to have aged well, because I’ve been discovering they’re all totally awesome. (It may help that during some cleaning purge I stuffed all the clinkers into the bottom of a box in the closet. What do you do with disagreeable whistles that aren’t worth selling?). I haven’t got anything super-fancy, but I do have a number of excellently tweaked whistles which have provided a very nice welcome back to playing.
Aside from having semi-forgotten all the tunes I ever knew, I’m also finding that things I’d been struggling with have somehow magically resolved themselves. Here’s the biggest one: when I left off I was still suffering from not having a good sense of where to put my ornaments. I had dealt with by carefully transcribing versions of tunes by my favorite whistle & flute players, and just learning to play them as transcribed (i.e. when confused, be methodical).
But now when I’ve picked up my whistle again, I find myself hearing the tunes in my head with ornaments just appearing where they sound good to inner ear, and then thinking of other different places they might go which also sound good (to me at least). Now, my execution of all of this leaves a lot to desired, since I’m totally rusty and was never all that great a player to begin with, but just having developed some rudimentary intution of what might sound appropriate is a huge victory for me.
And although I wasn’t playing much, I’d continued to listen to a lot of ITM, and I’m sure that helped to foster an increase in fluency with the idiom. Also I have no doubt that the transcriptions were energy well spent, and I plan to do more of that.
Squidgirl,
Welcome back to C & F. Though I am a new member to the site and was not likely a visitor when you were last on here, it is good to see that you are getting back to your whistles and involvement here.
I see that you are listed as living in Oregon, that should help in your perhaps being able to attend Fipple Fest 2013. That should be an awesome opportunity for you to reconnect to the world of whistle playing.
Good luck to ya! And to Steve Bliven, (good one) and it would be Sox for me.
squidgirl, another newbie welcome back, and nothing wrong with a little blip in life as we all get’em, hope its healthy. The whistle tunes are still in there, dig deep and whistle’em back, and ITM has its appealing connection as well.
and just to sidestep being stuck in that Boston & NY thang… its not Yank, its called an “O” so good a thang!
It all depends on who’s talking; these days absolutes have blurred. To me, the short form - Yank - is a US citizen in general, primarily when I’m speaking informally with Irish or UK citizens. To me, a Yank_ee_ is a US Northerner in contrast to a US Southerner. Of course it’s also a New Englander in specific (which is what it originally was), but that usage doesn’t come up very often where I live.
Just found this humorous aphorism (attributed to E. B. White) defining “Yankee” in Wiki:
To foreigners, a Yankee is an American. To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner. To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner. To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander. To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter. And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.
Another variant of the aphorism replaces the last line with: “To a Vermonter, a Yankee is somebody who still uses an outhouse.”
I just like the tune “The Returned Yank”. Plus we had a family story about when my father made it back to the town in Ireland from which his grandmother had emigrated during the Famine.
And I have derailed enough threads in my day that turnabout is fair play. There’s a lovely art to it
The unexpected improvement in your playing intrigues me. I wonder if it’s like learning a language through immersion techniques. Even when you know only a few words and nothing about the grammar, the frequent exposure gives you a feel for what sounds right and how it all fits together.
It’s more than an intellectual interest because personal matters have impacted my playing for several months now. I think I will bump up my listening time to compensate a bit until I can find more playing time.
Welcome back! I haven’t been around here (or even playing the tin whistle) long enough to remember you, but it’s great that you’re getting back into it!
I wish I could become a better musician by doing nothing! Actually that’s not true I love practicing, but you know.
Anyways I hope you’ll continue on to become an awesome player! Best of wishes!
I learned it under that name from Geraldine Cotter’s tutorial, where it’s the first jig in the tune collection, and also on the CD for the tune collection, which may be why it made such a deep impression on me. It’s also the first jig on the 2nd CD of the first volume of Ireland’s Best Tin Whistle Tunes (Claire McKenna/Walton’s), which no doubt re-enforced my absorbing it early on in my learning process under the name of TRY.
But Jerry’s Beaver Hat is definitely a more visually arresting image.
Happy to be whistling again 
Actually that’s not true I love practicing, but you know.