Okay so I’m fairly new To the tin whistle. Have only been doing it for a year and a half and I’m only just now starting to make progress now that I’ve found some books to study.
I have started to Braille a few songs that I like so that I can reference note order if needed but mostly learning by ear. Something I’m running into though is that there are so many versions of each individual tune.
I have OCD which can be frustrating at times, but I can usually notice when it’s dictating things
The problem of having trouble getting by is what is the right tune setting. There are tunes in different keys which that I can understand but there are versions of tunes where just three or four notes are different and I’m having trouble wrapping my head around. What is the right one? I’ve been doing my best to try and go off the one that sounds right to me, but I don’t have the experience needed to make that call.
So my question is how do you choose the correct one? This is one of the problems I had with thesession.org. There were so many versions of each tune. It’s not a source I’m comfortable using much less navigating that particular website is a bit of a pain with a screen reader. I’ve been using learntinwistle.com and the Kings Street sessions tunebook as well as still referencing my Gray Larson books.
Generally speaking here isn’t really one right version of a tune although in certain circumstances, like playing with others, there may be one for that particular situation.
Mind you, that doesn’t imply it’s a free for all where anything goes, there are also many ways that are wrong.
Good players vary tunes with each playing, variation is the lifeblood of good playing. In other words, a tune is never a string of notes learned by heart, it moves, it shifts shape,it breathes, it goes in different directions. Listen closely to great players and you’ll get it, eventually.
I suppose this is where the old ‘learning by ear’ comes into play. You learn the shape of a tune and find, as I like to call it, different ways through it.
When playing with others you need to adapt tp find common ground. All that sort of thing. It comes with experience and being in the presence of good players.
Probably more than you want to hear at this point of your learning but there you have it.
You could choose the one you like best, or the one that best suits your instrument?
I nearly always choose the simplest. I don’t want someone else’s ornamentation written in, I want the bones of the tune so I can make it my own. Before I start learning I’ve already listened to several versions of it, so I have a sense of whether a transcript is a fairly typical account.
The one thing I do look into is the key it’s most often played in. I never feel I’ve really learned tunes until I’ve played them enough times with other folk, so I need to know that.