Trad School tin whistle book review

Whistle
1

I recently got the intermediate tin whistle tutor book from tradschool.com. I would consider myself an intermediate player with only a few years under my belt, so you may take this short review with a grain of salt.

First off, its quite big. At 250+ pages it seems he probably has all his bases covered. The book is broken into units, each dealing with a differnet type of tune. It begins with jigs, then hornpipes, reels, etc. Each unit starts off with 3~4 tunes of that type. And youre encouraged to study those songs before moving on. In the unit, he spends a good amount of time covering the rhythm and especially accenting the off-beat. Then he goes into phrasing and gives breathing suggestions. There are units dealing solely with ornamentation as well.

One thing I like are the audio tracks for everything. Tracks for the tune, tracks for accenting the off-beat, tracks for breathing in different ways, tracks for tonguing, bare bones tracks and ornamented. Quite helpful.

The formating is clean and crisp, too. No fluff. No picture of tin whistle Tim or whoever. Just a load of well organized information.

There is finger tab for all the tunes and example tracks, which some may enjoy having, but I find it to be a crutch that should be left behind as early as possible. Hard to learn new songs if youre sight reading is terrible.

So that carries on for a few units till you come to Unit 11. Which is basically a tune book. Good songs in there of course.

In addition to the book and audio tracks, he has quite a few videos up on his sight. Again, no fluff. Just a close up of his whistle as he plays the songs. Which is great to watch in slow mo after you find yourself saying, “Now what in the world did he do there?” Then, “ah ha!” :slight_smile:

So in conclusion I find the whole package quite informative and while Ive picked up a few things, I think it will work even better at a course book to teach new students. And for the price (30$) its got good value. I havent yet gotten Mary Bergin’s new tutor book, and the main reason is the price. 110€ is just outta my league.

Hope this helps anyone out there looking for a good learning resource.

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On their site they sell it for €39… still a very fair price probably.

They’ve also put lots of (free) mp3s online, all played in a very clean and uncluttered way by Stephen Ducke. I think it’s a quite good resource for learning tunes; and I assume the book is certainly good as well.

Edited to clarify that I don’t have the book myself.

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I got mine on a CD last 2012. The price is cheaper as I won the item on ebay.

I agree with the reviews above.

It is very friendly for sight readers, for tab readers and for those, who play by ear because of the MP3.

It has improved my listening skills for the internal rhythm which inhand improved my ornamentation execution as well.

I do recommend this specially if you are from a classical background.

4

I had the Trad school tutor and thought it was very good but it isn’t in the same league as Mary’s books. Admittedly her tutors aren’t cheap, but she is far more thorough in her teaching e.g. tonguing patterns taught for each type of dance tune and shown as part of the ornamentation in every tune. Add to that buying a book entitles one to access her forthcoming on-line “club” where she will be providing more tuition and playing tips for free. Plus they are good quality books and when one is done with them, I think they will fetch a reasonable second-hand value. I recently sold Book 1 so what I ended up paying was well worth it, i think. I’m not knocking the Trad school tutor here but making it clear you get a lot more from Mary admittedly for a higher price.