I know Mudcat has an extensive collection of whistle tunes with tabliture. Are there others sites as well? I am having a hard time reading sheet music and playing at the same time
Nick,
I don’t know of any other sites with tab but you might try a trick I use, it goes like this:
Take the lowest note in the sheet music and write 6 under it then each note higher 5,4 3,2,1 respectively. For the notes in the second register I put an underscore under them to denote the second octave.
It works really well for me, as I am noting the fingering by number and not trying to figure out which note is which, after doing it for awhile your sight reading skill improves too.
The](http://www.thewhistleshop.com/catalog/tutorials/whistlesongbooks/deluxesongbook/deluxe.htm%3EThe) Deluxe Tin Whistle Song Book by Patrick Conway and published by MelBay has whistle tablature for all its songs as well as standard notation. It has a lot of the standard tunes. The above link is to a description of the book at The](http://www.thewhistleshop.com/%3EThe) Whistle Shop. For under $7, its a nice book to have.
Enjoy Your Music,
Lee Marsh
[ This Message was edited by: LeeMarsh on 2001-11-08 16:14 ]
Do yourself a favor Nickster, learn to read ABC notation, it’s easier than standard and there’s a ton of free trad music available on the web in ABC.
Loren
Has no one written an ABC to whistle tab converter? That should be fairly straight forward.
–
Keith
Look for your tab sites, but in the meantime, start learning “real” notation. In the long run, it will open up literally thousands of tunes to you.
Would someone be so kind as to indulge a beginner here and explain the terminology?
tabliture
ABC notation
And what is the purpose of writing numbers under the notes?
TIA
liz
On 2001-11-09 09:45, Lizzie wrote:
Would someone be so kind as to indulge a beginner here and explain the terminology?tabliture
ABC notation
And what is the purpose of writing numbers under the notes?
Liz, I’ll take a stab at it:
The dictionary definition of tablature is:
" A system of notation using letters, symbols, or other visual cues instead of standard notation to indicate how a musical piece is to be played." Guitar tablature (or “guitar tab”) usually consists of a picture of the strings, with the finger positions noted. Whistle tablature would consist of a diagram of a whisle with the open/covered holes shown. When we say that you can play C natural on a D whistle like this: 0XX000, that’s a kind of tablature…a crude diagram of a whistle.
ABC notation was invented so that people in text-only (at the time) newsgroups could pass tunes around. It’s a type of musical notation that is text-only, and therefore quite easy to disseminate over message boards. You can find a more complete description and example here:
http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/
ABC notation might look like this:
T:Paddy O’Rafferty
C:Trad.
M:6/8
K:D
dff cee|def gfe|dff cee|dfe dBA|dff cee|def gfe|faf gfe|1 dfe dBA:|2 dfe dcB||
~A3 B3|gfe fdB|AFA B2c|dfe dcB|~A3 ~B3|efe efg|faf gfe|1 dfe dcB:|2 dfe dBA||
fAA eAA|def gfe|fAA eAA|dfe dBA|fAA eAA|def gfe|faf gfe|dfe dBA:|
There’s also a FAQ and a long list of ABC-notation software packages.
Writing numbers under the notes would be an even cruder method of tablature. My beginning piano songbooks do this…it’s a quick-and-easy way to see which note you need to play, as numbers are generally faster for a new person to recognize than the note position on a staff. You could also instead write down the note underneath the staff, which is what I did when I first started learning sheet music.
Greg
I agree with Loren. The tabliture will become a crutch that really holds you back. Use it to memorize a few tunes so you can concentrate on your playing technique. Then force yourself to read the music. If you start with really simple tunes, it’s not that difficult. You’ll be surprised how fast you pick it up when it’s all you’re using.
Thanks Greg for this detailed explanation…I appreciate the time you took.
There is a lot to learn when you enter a new area, and people on this forum are amazingly helpful.
Luckily I can read music from having played piano so I havn’t bothered to try anything else.
Liz
I would think the tablature for whistle would be more trouble to learn than it’s worth. It makes sense for stringed instruments due to the different structure, but I don’t limit myself to it there either.
The abc might be good for tune-sharing on the computer, definitely easier to write, post and send. But Loren is right, in the long run conventional notation gives you more options if you ever want to play any other instruments, or if you play with others who use regular notation.
I thank you all for the input, I know I should learn to read music, but am a lazy bum, and the music is so often written quite small and is hard to read. I have made myself flashcards , but have yet to work with them much. Also the fingering is different for whistles of different keys and that is also rather confusing.
The suggestion of writing the numbers under the notes sees like a fine Idea and I will give it a shot!
Thanks again!
Nick
Yet Another Digital Tradition Page(http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad) has a ton of tunes and can render them with whistle tablature.
Regarding fingerings, from one perspective different key whistles do have different fingerings, but from another perspective they all have the same fingerings, the D whistle fingerings. If you pick up your C whistle and play any tune that you learned on your D whistle, it comes out automagically transposed – D => C, G => F. Using a Bb whistle, D => Bb, G => Eb. It’s great. So, I learn tunes in D and G on my D whistle, then pick up a different key whistle when I need it. I’m not sure what other whistlers do.
Now, I admit it would be nice to be able to play a C whistle while reading a score in C, but when I try it, my fingers get all twisted. Maybe one day I’ll get it.
~ Thornton
[ This Message was edited by: ThorntonRose on 2001-11-09 13:07 ]
I didn’t mean to imply that anyone is a “lazy bum” for not reading music, quite the contrary–I was just wondering how whistle tab would work. You still need a way to show rhythm and notes like C natural and G sharp that are off the beaten path, so to speak.
Stringed instrument tab does this, but it gives fret numbers, and it has ways of indicating rhythm. Does the whistle tab give fingering diagrams or numbers of the holes you cover? This would seem more confusing to me than just seeing an A and thinking how to play it.
My point, if I can coherently get it out here!–the complexity level of regular notation wouldn’t be much, if any, more than that of a tab system. Of course, that’s what I’m used to, so maybe I’m lazy! I haven’t seen any whistle tab and don’t know how to read abc–I need to learn that to give me more choices for tune downloads too.
Enough of my blathering!
http://www.guitarnut.com/folktablature/index.html
http://church-of-the-holy-ghost.freeyellow.com/Flutes.htm
and TablEdit claims to do whistle tablature:
– Scott T.
The nice thing about the Digital tradition pages are they have the tabs right under the regular notes, so you see the value of the note, and the tab showing fingering of it at the same time, I imagine the Mel Bay Book would be the same.
Without the traditional notation tabs would be of little use, as you would not know the value of a note, when to slur etc.
I might have mentioned it to start with. SO I guess what I am looking for is the format of the DIgital Tradition Pages at any other sites. If they are out there I supose somebody would have told us by now.
Thanks for the input.
PS a question about the number notation what do you write for D’ and C natural while using a D whistle?
Nick
I personally use TablEdit and find it a useful program (and easy to use) which has the ability to generate whistle tablature. You can have notation, or tab or both together and you can play the tune back via midi to check your setting/arrangement.
It will read midi and ABC files and can export as tef, midi, abc, html, rtf, and wav files.
The author is always ready to listen to ‘experts’ (i.e. you) for suggestions on improvements or new capabilities (I suggested whistle a few yerars ago and it was incorporated within teh program within 3 weeks).
There is a demo version available for free on teh web-site as well as a file viewer (TefView) again for free which will read and play the current library of files but will not let you develop new files (for that you need the full product).
Give it a whirl
Cheers and keep on blowin’.
This has been a very great tab page for me is http://www.abacci.com/music/tabinstrument.asp?instrumentID=6
I am much like you and find tab easier to work with (for the moment). BUT I am slowly learning ABC which, I agree with the others that say it would be better to learn to read the ABC’s. It’s much more readily avaliable and just a better pratice than using tab.
I never cared for tablature, I thought the time spent on finding that could be better spent actually figuring out how to read the written music. I still can’t read it fluently enough to read as I play but it helps when I’m learning new songs. I use:
to find my tunes… it’s a fairly large collection of tunes and there are midi clips to every song to help you learn if you play by ear like I do.