I’ve been whistling for a few weeks now, and completely by ear I’ve picked up Swallowtail Jig, Kesh Jig, Off She Goes, Rakes of Mallow, and last night I picked of Sheebag Sheemore (or whichever spelling you like) in about 2 minutes. That is completely, totally, 100% unprecedented for me. When I’ve tried it in the past on the mandolin, it’s been very slow figuring out each and every note, but with the whistle, once I get the root note, everything else just seems to fall into place.
So what’s the deal? Is it me, or is the tin whistle suited well for ear playing? Maybe because it’s not chromatic..?
I’ve noticed the same thing. I think it’s because of a combination of reasons.
a) you know the song won’t have many chromatics
b) I think it’s very easy to visualize the notes- every time you lift a finger it’s the next highest note until you put them all back on again
c) Especially on older style whistles (Gens, Clarkes, etc.) of any key, I can hear a note and know what fingering is being played (not necessarily the note because of the different keys). Each note seems to have a different timbre. XXX XXX has a very core tone, XXX XOO seems a tiny bit shallow, XXO OOO is brilliant/shimmers, OOO OOO is very week, etc.
When I listen to a CD with whistles I can tell what note is being played at any time (unless it has been digitally altered for special effects, etc.), but in Celtic Band, I can’t tune with an A from a harp. I can “hear”
notes from wind and bowed string instruments, but I cannot “hear” the notes from plucked string instuments or from percussion.
I dunno if that made any sense, but it works for me!
I can’t really explain why, but I too have found it very easy to play be ear. I have only done it with GREAT dificulty with any other instrument. I think that is partially why a whistle is quickly becoming my favorite
Tina
I find that if I have the notes in my head, I can normally go right to them on the whistle. (Being able to render those notes up to speed and with good technique is an entirely different matter.)
At last night’s mostly-Bluegrass jam, I had gotten out the Busman Delrin at the request of one of the non-musicians, and we were trying to think of something to play. The banjo player got a little bored with the discussion and broke into “Fireball Mail” (in G), and I was able to play along and improvise without hitting what I would consider a wrong note. I had not only never played the song on the whistle, I’d never played the melody on any other instrument before. I just knew how the sung melody goes.
Now I’ve been playing for almost a year, but I could do this right from the beginning. My first tunes on the whistle were all Old-Timey and folk songs that I already knew. Sometimes it a while to figure out the best key and find the starting note, but once that was done, the melody generally just sort of flowed out.
I find it a bit mysterious, since I’d previously only dabbled a bit with whistles, rcrd*rs, and flutes–and that was more than 6 years back. I understand why I can do that sort of thing on the guitar after playing it for almost 45 years, but to be able to do it on the whistle right from the beginning was quite a surprise.
I’m sure that the fact that it’s diatonic helps a lot, but I can do much better with the whistle than with the mountain dulcimer, even though I’ve played that off and on for about 30 years.
Maybe everyone has a certain instrument that they relate to easier than the rest, and maybe it isn’t really a quality of the instrument, but a quality of those who gravitate toward it.
