Bear with me; newbie. I’ve learned several tunes on my high D. Yeah. I even understand that in order to learn Julia Delany (D dorian) on my C whistle, I would take the “normal” sheet music in D dorian and put it into E dorian so, when I play my C, it comes out D dorian. Yeah.
Here’s my question. I plan to learn Coleraine on my C (it’s in A minor), which raises (for me) the following question. If I plan to learn the tune from sheet music, which is the better approach for a whistler:
Since whistles all refer to D, first put the sheet music into Bm and then play the sheet music like you’re playing a D whistle; it’ll come out Am. Pro: refers to D, which is the universal whistle language. Con; have to transpose the entire tune up a whole step.
Since I’m already playing the correctly-keyed whistle, just play it. Pro: no transposition. Con: have to associate all new notes with the usual D-fingering.
Probably an obvious question to many, but very new to me. I appreciate any wisdom, thanks.
Common subject - you could search through some recent posts where we have dealt with this. You have the basics worked out in your mind though. I would offer a couple of suggestions. Take them for what they cost you. First, learn the tune and ditch the sheet music. Commit your tunes to memory so that you can lilt them and then so you can play them in your sleep. If you learn a tune on one whistle (any whistle) you just have to know how to play it on that whistle and then use the same fingerings when you pick up a whistle in another key. Forget about transposing sheet music. Just one opinion.
You need to learn the tune and ditch the music as was suggested, the crux of the matter is how to most easily learn the tune.
And that depends on you!
If you can read well and associate the dots with fingerings (as I do from years of playing the oboe) then the easiest route would be to transpose the tune to Bm, learn it, ditch the music, and then play in any key as desired by picking up the appropriate whistle and use the same fingering.
If you can read and transpose at the same time, or at least transposing doesn’t slow you down too much then just go for it - I could probably do this but it would require more thought, but that is good for you.
Well, the obvious thing to say is that the Coleraine, in A minor, fits fine on a D whistle. So, personally, I’d just play it on that, and forget about playing it on a C. Problem solved.
Except that Am doesn’t really sit well on the whistle because of the F-nat. (Maybe you’re thinking of A Dorian, Ben?) And Coleraine is in A harmonic minor, which adds a tricky G# leading tone. So Bm may actually be easier, since the only required out-of-scale note is then A#, which is easily cross-fingered in both registers on most whistles.
Fifthtry: In an case, either Am on a D whistle or Bm on a C whistle will give the proper result. For the latter, transpose it in advance on the page (OK), or in your head as you play (better). You seem to understand the basic idea of transposition quite well (25 words or less - yay!).
Nope. I know what key/mode it’s in. It’s just that that particular tune happens to be easy to play on a D whistle, even with the F nats and G sharps - they fall in a nice, easy place. Give me a few minutes and I’ll post my ABCs, which are slightly different from those on the session.org and are, I think, what is normally played. And, as I say, they’re easy enough on a D whistle.
Now, what’s hard about that? Oh, and please do roll those C nats! (Great effect on a whistle.)
Now, there are some who are going to say I’ve cheated - but I learnt this tune first on fiddle, and that’s the way it was played. No issues on fiddle as to whether it’s played the session.org way, or my way as shown above.
[edited merely to note the cross-post] [in this comment here - “cross-post”]
Transpose the tune up or down the required number of steps (the text will stay selected while it transposes). Then copy and paste the transposed text to here:
This site will put the ABC file into dots which you can then print. The pdf version prints the best. Once you’ve got the two sites in your favorites and navigated them a couple times, it takes less than a minute to transpose and print the dots.
I hope I beat MT to the punch on listing these sites - thanks MT for finding them those many moons ago.
When I first started playing Coleraine, I
tried transposing it for C whistle, but it
turned out to be much easier to play on
the D whistle. There’s too many F#
accidentals. The only Fnat in the tune
you can slide up to from the E (and back
down again), and the G# is going to be
difficult in either case.
But then you miss the lowest note on your pipe because the D is now transposed to E if you do it with B tonic.
This may be more salient in fluting but I like to tap he lowest note on the instrument as much as possible.
Thanks for pointing out the harmonic minor thingie - I had been searching for same for some time.
(please see revived topic in Irish trad forum).
