can anyone fill me in as to what this is ???
cheers,
joe
The note the piece usually begins and ends on. Kinda the coming-home note for the piece, and usually the one it focuses on through the piece. Kinda like a I chord minus the chords, you might say?
Is it safe to say that the tonic note defines the key in which the song is played? This is a question kind of directed towards the spoon man as I’m not sure myself.
Well without chords it can get kinda vague- different motives, melodic movements, can push it towards one tonic or another- sometimes- usually- obviously so, sometimes not. Obviously so would be Morrison’s Jig or O’Gallagher’s Frolics; not so obvious would be The Connaughtman’s Rambles or the Butterfly (and as a pretty cool exception to my I Chord analogy there, I like to end the Butterfly on B but end with an E minor chord).
Oh ok thanks. The Butterfly is a good example though, it doesnt really have a easily noticeable tonic throughout the tune. I’ve just always taken it down to an E to end it.
Usually a tune centers more or less around a sequence of notes too, or note-pattern if you will.
When you get the grip of that note-pattern the tune gets easier to learn.
Here’s a tune that I posted on Youtube that centers around a well defined note-pattern.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM14gh8vkaQ
The Tonic note is the key note a piece of music is centered around. In the Key of D the Tonic note is D, Key of C the Tonic note is C and so on.
The Tonic note is the key note a piece of music is centered around. In the Key of D the Tonic note is D, Key of C the Tonic note is C and so on.
That’s it in a nutshell!
A tune often starts on the tonic but nearly always ends on it.
Some people don’t like to think of it this way, but for me there isn’t always just one tonic to a tune, necessarily. Take tunes in which there are key changes: The Cup of Tea, for example. The first part is in Em, and the next two parts are in Dmaj for all practical purposes. So how many tonics does it have, then? For me, two.
Exactly, each Key you are in has its own tonic note, it changes everytime the key changes.
Exactly, each Key you are in has its own tonic note, it changes everytime the key changes.
That’s true too. Or take the Jig of Slurs as well, y’know- first two parts are in D, and the second two are fighting between E and G, but end up in E.
EDIT: Tho come to think of it, since it was composed for GHB I doubt there’d be much question of the tonic being in G.
thank you verry much!
to add to my question, would you use say a G whistle to play a song that is based around a G note? or an A whistle for an A tonic note?
that brings me to - why would you play a whistle of a key other than D ?
sorry i am such a newb.
No need to apologise; the bad questions are the unasked ones. 
You could use whistles based on the tonic, but in the case of Gmaj, you might as well use a D whistle anyway as G is an easy key to play on it, plus the added benefit of being able to play notes below the tonic. If you play a whistle based on the tonic, you can’t play any lower than that. Now, if you wanted to play in Dmaj and be able to play notes below the tonic, you’d want an A whistle for that, and play the fingerings you’d use for G on a D whistle. You couldn’t play in Am easily on an A whistle, but it works perfectly on a D whistle. If you want to play in Dm - ITM fiddlers often love that key - a C whistle is an easy choice (just use the Em fingerings you’d use on a D whistle). So, it all depends on what you’re trying to accomplish, and there will be a good deal of experimentation for you - or more questions - to sort it out.
As for the “why” of other-keyed whistles in general, sometimes it’s just because you might like the tone. For example, I have a Gen soprano F, and I love the sound of hornpipes on it for as highpitched as it is; it actually sounds sort of sweet and fairy-like (no jokes, please 
). Some like Bb for the mellowness. C whistles lend themselves well to solo playing, I think. Also, especially if you’re playing with a singer, you’ll probably need a variety of choices to be able to work with the singer’s natural comfort range.
But: if you’re just playing with ITM musicians in the general way of things, for example, all you ought to need is a D whistle. And maybe a C for those pesky fiddlers. 
Since the tune has two foundations, you could try the alternate tonic A. It’s the one basic note that sounds good with the melody in all three sections.
I’ll have to try that; it hadn’t occurred to me. Are you speaking in practical terms of a drone-type base? If so, after just doing a bit of playing around on the whistle, it works well on the B and C sections, yet sounds a bit “outside” on the A section for me. Not wrong, necessarily, just different in a way I hadn’t conceived. But I’m always up for new ideas.
I’d have to see how the cittern sits with that.
I personally like the 1st section with the basic A. Yeah, the tune could be played well on a D chanter with A drones, maybe even with B drones throughout much of the tune. Pipe on the Hob is another one that may have three different tonics. Even though it’s really basically an Am tune, D drones sound great against it as a foundation, although I use A a lot, but E also sounds good. Personal taste, but I like tunes that lend themselves to the alternatives.
BTW, the cittern, or full chords, doesn’t always work everywhere because of other conflicting notes within.
I’ve always been open to the notion of a “moving tonic,” as in Cup of Tea. I think it’s a very important aspect of Irish traditional music. The same sort of thing crops up in less noticeable places, as well. Take Banish Misfortune. The B part has a nice little thing where for two measures it’s on D as a tonic, then is moves the whole thing a scale degree down to use the same melody, but on Cn as a tonic for two measures. This kind of thing comes out of the modal nature of the music, I’d say.
I agree with that. I often like to start out with the obvious thing and develop it from there as the limit of my smarts allows me.
Here we’re getting into accompaniment and what the melodic tonic of a tune implies for it. Accompaniment or drones can change the apparent tonic, and therefore the character, of a tune.
The band I’m in does a slow, swung version - sort of like a lazy march - of Pipe (we call it “Piper”, in reference to the putative hearth cricket) on the Hob with just low D whistle and me doing easygoing rhythmic arpeggios, for the most part, on the gizmo, and the bodhran doing just a muffled, slow “bump-bump” sort of heartbeat thing. Very sultry-sounding. I start the A and B sections’ signature runs in C and resolve to A, and leave the C section basically centered around A, and conclude the last, finishing notes in D to wrap it all up. The effect is sort of like an ellipsis mark, in a way. Not particularly inspired, but I’ve never heard anyone else do it that way. Don’t go stealing my ideas, now.
Yeah, that’s why I seldom use full chords at all - just three courses at most, usually - and tend to open combinations that can be either major or minor at the same time. BTW, when it comes to cittern, for me the chords are just D, A, what have you. I’ve been asked if I was playing a major or minor chord, and have been met with incomprehension when I’d say, “Neither.”
Never understood the rationale that if you paid for all those strings, then by God you ought to use 'em all at once. Less is more, for me.