I’m pretty sloppy still when it comes to jumping around from octave to octave. I am looking for some tunes that go back and forth a lot, (not just up and down the scale) to practice with. I’m not fond of “exercises”, so I was hoping there are some songs out there that would help me work on that.
I am open to suggestions in both D and G.
Thoughts?
Do you mean like playing down low for a bit then jumping up high for a while then back down again? Or do you mean actual octave leaps (like f-F e-E d-D…)? If you mean the latter, lots of tunes offer such calisthenics. Look for the Maple Tree Jig (in G), which has lots of octave leaps. The Jolly Gaypedlar is even better. The College Hornpipe / Sailors Hornpipe is famous for its leaps.
Of course, don’t restrict yourself to octave leaping: all sorts of other intervals are good exercise. Up & Down and Money Musk require some gymnastic skills as do Lady Harriet Hope’s Reel, Fisher’s Hornpipe, the Bath Carnival, the Cincinnati Hornpipe and about 59,436 other old dance tunes of the sort! 
If you’re not married to ITM, try Bochherini’s Minuet (tis in A, but not hard for all that) or Bazzini’s Ronde des Lutins (lots of nice octaves there! 
And it’s in e-min, so only one sharp! ) There’s also a nice little Allegro by Haydn which is in D for some nice and comparatively gentle gymnastics. Beethoven’s Ecossaise (in B, but rolls right off the fingers no worries!) offers some moderate opportunity for leaping practice
Cheers
Yes. This is closer to what I mean (but I will look at your other suggestions as well!) Songs that go back and forth between registers.
That’s good. Play the tunes. It is all you will ever need. There’s little point to exercises IMO.
(Note: We sing the “songs”. We play the “tunes”.)
Give a listen to these two to see if they have what you are looking for.
Caliope House is a lovely tune, not too hard to play and you get some jumps.
Dusty Windowsills, when addressed in parts, is doable. The third part is the one with the neat jumps.
There are hundreds more. But those two just came immediately to mind.
Feadoggie
Yes… I am working on the lingo. I come from Christian worship ministry, where all the music has words! 
I will take a look at those suggestions. Thank you kindly!
Me too. I’m retired from ministry but still play praise music with a few groups. Have you found the Praise Whistlers yet?
Keep in mind that the facility of playing across the registers is naturally learned by playing tunes that use the entire compass of the instrument - those that go from the lowest D to the third D or just the high B as part of their melody. So playing most any tune that has a nice range of notes will get you to where you need to be over time. The tunes with the noticeable jumps are neat but not necessary to develop the skill of hitting the notes when you need them.
So listen for tunes you like and learn to play those.
It’s all about how much you play. And it all comes in time. So have some patience. Have fun. Remember it is called “playing” for good reason.
Feadoggie
The Tarbolton is an Edor reel with lots of quick register changes, including octave jumps.
In looking at the tunes I like to play a lot, and including the ones I mentioned before, it seems they all spend some time wandering between the octaves. Not many tunes remain in one or the other predominantly. That one I mentioned, the Maple Tree Jig, that one stars out in the lower octave then switches to the upper. I’d still suggest the Bazzini – that’ll keep you jumping around in all three octaves!
I don’t fully agree with the exercises are pointless mindset – they exist for a reason, and that reason is to improve one’s technique on the instrument. There are certainly exercises that are useless on a whistle, many piano exercises for example that involve chords and hand over hand and fingering tricks. But there are many exercises that any whistle player could benefit from: scales, of course, and in many more keys that you’re likely to find in the usual repertoire; arpeggios, interval leaps, tonguing (single, double, triple), slurring, ornamentation. Even long note exercises have their use: tuning, exploring whistle / air stream interactions, etc. You said yourself that you’re “sloppy” in some aspects of your playing – perhaps a simple exercise that combines interval leaping with octave changing would actually be helpful? Concentrate of tightening up whatever you perceive is going wrong, then you encounter that same thing in a real tune, it will no longer be troublesome! I recently got a couple volumes of Czerny’s “School of Velocity” for the piano – lots of lovely exercises many of which cover range jumping, intervals and so forth. Not all the exercises are appropriate (or even playable on) the whistle, but certainly many of them are!
Cheers
Haste to the Wedding.
http://thesession.org/tunes/582
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g0-gmTOcmNw
This is a tinwhistle forum. Isn’t it?
You don’t have to agree. We apparently come from different cultures. If the point of improving one’s technique is to play the music, then play the music. It’s all in there somewhere. Every technique you could learn is in some tune or another. If that logic is lost on you then there is no sense discussing it further.
And yes, exercises exist for a reason - to keep a certain type of teacher banging their cane on the floor. Cha-ching, cha-ching, let’s hear the cash register ring.
Play the tunes. It’s all anyone needs. In more than fifty tears of playing and teaching I have not found a better way to develop students or to learn myself.
It’s called “playing”. Just play.
Have a nice day.
Feadoggie
I can see the value of both arguments.
I play guitar, and I know I’ll never be Eddie Van Halen if I don’t practice my scales.
On the other hand, if exercises are the roadblock to your personal enjoyment, chuck 'em until you decide they are necessary.
Tunes are great and exercises will help you play them better.
The thing about exercises, why they exist, is that they address the very skill that needs to be improved in the most efficient and direct way possible, with minimal waste of time.
So if you’re OK with doing exercises you can try:
(played absolutely legato with NO tonguing and NO breaths or breaks of any kind between the notes within each three-note group)
D E D… D F# D… D G D… D A D… D B D… D C# D… D d D… D e D… D f# D… D g D… D a D… D b D
in other words playing up the scale, alternating Bottom D between every note. This will build tremendous breath control, especially going from Bottom D to high b and back with no tonguing or break in the airstream.
As far as octaves go, you can’t beat
D d D… E e E… F# f# F#… G g G… A a A… B b B… C# c# C#
likewise with no tonguing or break of any sort within each three-note group.
These will help prevent you relying on tonguing as a crutch or escape hatch to help you from developing good breath control.
As for tunes, there are many as people have been suggesting!
How about these parts of The Gravel Walk
4/4 | A2 a A g A f# A ’ | A2 e A B A G B | (practice it without tonguing or breaks of any kind in the airstream except the one indicated by the comma; you can ‘loop’ these two bars as an exercise)
and the following workout for switching between the crossfingered C natural oxx ooo and various 2nd octave notes
4/4 | Cnat2 g Cnat a Cnat g Cnat ’ | Cnat2 g Cnat B A G B | (you can ‘loop’ these two bars as an exercise)
I must admit that I’m different from many people in that I actually enjoy doing exercises! Maybe it’s coming from Highland piping. When I was at a particular piping school there was one exercise we had to do for 30 minutes each morning before breakfast, and another exercise we did for a full hour each night. Our fingers got very supple, very quick, very accurate due to that. Simply playing tunes could never have accomplished as much.
In my opinion that tends to produce people who are miserable to play with in a session. A large number of people I’ve come across (Here in the USA) have all the tunes but none of the technique. Like, they could play for month without repeating a tune, but the session turns into an unspoken search for a tune they don’t know. Worst part is, you ask them how long they’ve been playing, and the answer is always, “Oh, about ten or fifteen years.” And whistlers, unfortunately, tend to be the most egregious in this category.
Bottom line is, if you can tune your instrument and play with good (or at least inoffensive) technique, then go right ahead and just learn tunes. But I don’t think you can assume tuning and technique will come automatically from learning tunes- like anything else, you have to work at it.
Not trying to start a flame war, just making an observation.
But I don’t think you can assume tuning and technique will come automatically from learning tunes- like anything else, you have to work at it.
To an extend it will though. When the recommendation is to play tunes instead of doing exercises, which help to move around your instrument with relative ease (i.e.the dreaded scales, arpeggios, intervals etc) tuneplaying will do the job nicely.
Now, if you move to a further level, how to approach tunes, developing style etc, you will need your twiddly bits and knowledge how to use them. And I think that’s what your getting at when you talk about people with loads of tunes but no technique. No content is probably a better way of thinking about it, I think. There are reasons why this situation comes about. The urge to play at sessions and hide in big groups, without much pressure to develop your playing in any great detail, would probably be the most obvious one. Playing in massive groups is detrimental to developing style and vision. And that’s just for starters.
So, while I won’t completely agree with you on tunes being useful when getting to know the instrument, I couldn’t agree more with you when you say you need to work on it. No point in doing it in a half-arsed way.
Well said- that’s what I was trying to get across.
I do spend time working on techniques -like getting the hang of rolls- and maybe I do turn parts o tunes into “exercises”. Like the first part of the Kesh jig. For whatever reason, playing the rolls in a place where they belong in a tune helps me get a feel for them. I will nibble on a bit of a tune like that for some time. Hence the requests for tunes that stretch the finger gymnastics. I am a lifelong musician though, having played simple winds here and there over the years, so sounding in tune and musical is not as big a challenge for me as it may be for someone who has taken up whistle as a first instrument.
I can play a few simple itm tunes at this point, and I have the hankering to sound Irish at it for sure!
Thank you all for the input again. Nothing better that seing both sides of the coin.
Just one last comment: yes this ìs a tin whistle forum. But I don’t remember reading in the Charter that this is a “tin whistle forum where only certain viewpoints are acceptable, where only certain people are allowed to express approved ideas and where any suggestions ad contrarium are to be personally attacked”.
Cheers
and for good measure-