What do you do with an E flat whistle?

Whistle
1

Has anyone else, like me, bought a Generation E flat because it was cheap, and then found it doesn’t get used much in a folk context? I only know 3 folk tunes (all Carolans) in relevant keys: Miss MacDermott, where you have to fudge a few notes where it goes off the bottom of the range - but if you can do that it sounds lovely - ; Mrs O’Rourke, which I can’t get to sound like a whistle tune, it just sounds as if it should be played on a harp; and untitled No 175 in the Complete Works, which is a lovely lilting tune that sounds great on the whistle.
Of course there’s plenty of hymn tunes & similar in E flat and related keys: Harington, Duke Street, Hereford, Rockingham (though that sounds & plays better on a B flat whistle), Lasst Uns Erfreuen (Mr Bean’s favourite); Ebenezer, a beautiful F minor tune, and Fortitude, an A flat tune typical of many from the Moody/Sankey style & period: How marvellous; Now I belong to Jesus; Follow, follow; For I know whom; In my heart there rings etc.

Any other ideas?

I’ve ended up writing my own just to have something that’s intended for that whistle: a couple of examples newly uploaded on the C&F Fb page: http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?oid=2229480589&view=user#!/media/set/?set=o.2229480589

and links to one or two others:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=615523&id=402323480386

2

Maybe shake off the idea that you can only play tunes that are written in keys appropriate to the key of the whistle.

That should be a good first step toward broadening your musical horizons.

You may even find you can play anything you like on it.

3

I was at a session once where a fiddler and a flute player, (both very good, I thought), played a couple of sets in E flat. They had never met before but the flutist had an E flat foot for his regular D instrument and the fiddler took a few moments to retune to him. The tunes sounded very lively and it was fun to hear the difference. If I had an E flat whistle I would have joined in on the ones I knew.

4

Are you thinking in terms of playing with others in common situations (sessions, etc.) or just what key a tune is recorded/written in? I play an Eb just for kicks sometimes because it can be a nice change. I’ve known quite a few flute players who keep an Eb on hand. You’ll also find recordings (Matt Molloy, Mary Bergin, etc.) who have recorded in that key.

5

Possibly less of an issue in an all-instrumental (or solo) environment, but if you include a vocalist who prefers Eb or one of it’s associated keys for a particular number … think of it as a capo for your D whistle :wink:

6

Often Irish flute players like to play with their tuning slides all the way in which results in an Eflat tuned flute instead of a D (i.e Matt Malloy on his solo albums). At first it bugged me that I had some CD’s that I couldn’t play along with with my non-tunable D whistles, so that’s where an Eflat can come in handy.

7

Often Irish flute players like to play with their tuning slides all the way in which results in an Eflat tuned flute instead of a D (i.e Matt Malloy on his solo albums).

That’s incorrect.

E flat flutes are being used though, like Molloy’s Boosey band flute (which is in space right now) or Micho Russell’s e flat flute.

8

Don’t suppose that session might have been in Phoenix, AZ in December, 2009 at Tim Finnegan’s pub? If so, I was the flute player.

9

If the ball had bounced a bit differently last night, we could have been playing in Eb in a heartbeat. Just gimme an excuse to bust out the Eb…

10

Don’t suppose that session might have been in Phoenix, AZ in December, 2009 at Tim Finnegan’s pub? If so, I was the flute player

That’s the one! I’m hoping to attend that same session on the first weekend in March. Maybe I’ll see you there, (still don’t have an E flat whistle, though).

11

Have you tried playing a D whistle on a motorbike?

12

I can see your game Hoopy, And Really see what Corrse the thread might take…

13

re - several posts above, yes of course you can have fun with playing things not in their original key, and part of the fun is that the same tune takes on a different character in a different key, though the difference may be only slight. Several of the hymn tunes mentioned in the initial post can be found in different keys in different hymn books, and most of a congregation won’t notice except when they find it easier or harder than usual to hit the top note.
But equally there can be quite a noticeable difference. ‘Link him Doddie’ as an A minor strathspey sounds good; but I think it sounds really wild in F minor on the E flat whistle. Or am I just imagining that?
My own tune ‘Caoles Castle’ (link on the initial post) I also transcribed from A flat into G in the fond hope that somebody else might actually play it. But to me it only sounded half the tune in G, so I still play it on the E flat whistle.
What I was wondering when I started the thread was whether anyone else had found things they really liked on the E flat whistle - whether originally written for that or not.

14

In Irish music, most of the tunes are traditional, and no one can know who originally wrote them, or in what key they might have been played by the composer.

Moreover, Irish traditional musicians probably couldn’t care less.

The keys hymns appear in, in hymnals, is based on what keys are thought to fit the range of the average congregation or choir. So there’s no inherent “correct” key; the key is selected pragmatically. Many hymn tunes are old folk tunes and again nobody knows or cares what keys they might have been played in before they were used for hymns.

About Carolan, all the various sharp and flat keys that you encounter his tunes in, in print, couldn’t have been the “original” keys. The old harps were diatonic, and if Carolan or any other ancient harper had his harp tuned in C, then every Major tune he played would be in C.

The concept of a universally agreed-upon fixed notion of what pitch an “A” is didn’t exist in the old days anyhow.

Anyhow play anything you like on any whistle you like! (But not at sessions, where each tune usually has a customary key. “Customary”, not “original”.)

15

A question phrased like that could get some very strange - if not uncomfortable - replies, but happily no one’s gone there yet :slight_smile:

Eb has several uses.
Although it was more common in the 70s and 80s, you do still occasionally come across sessions in Ireland where all of the instruments are playing in Eb, so if you want to join in, you’d need your Eb whistle.
I quite like playing the Eb whistle I have if I’m ever performing solo.
Mainly for me in Scotland, if I want to learn a Highland bagpipe tune from a pipe band or solo recording, I need an Eb to play along if I’m learning by ear.
Also as mentioned above, quite a few recordings of Irish traditional music have the instruments pitched up to Eb, so again, an Eb whistle is needed to play along.

16

i’m about to go out of town again :frowning: but if i ever do make it down there to a session i’ll be sure to bring my Eb; thanks for the head’s up. :slight_smile:

cheers,
eric

17

Here’s something you can do with an Eflat whistle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOwAD5UQnzo

Finnegan just kills on that little thing.

18

In Irish music, most of the tunes are traditional, and no one can know who originally wrote them, or in what key they might have been played by the composer.

Moreover, Irish traditional musicians probably couldn’t care less.

But I wasn’t only thinking about the Irish tradition (this is the whistle forum, not the ITM forum). In the Scottish tradition, thousands of tunes have known composers, all the way back to the eighteenth century. I’ll be taking part in an RSCDS workshop in a couple of days - of 79 tunes to be practised, only 21 are ‘Trad’ - that is, composer unknown. (Of course all of them are traditional in style.)
Many Northumbrian tunes have known composers, as do many other English tunes, not to mention Welsh tunes, French tunes, and Swedish tunes.

The fact that all these traditions honour their creative talents, rather than preferring to forget which individual wrote a tune, doesn’t mean that we have to play their compositions in the keys originally written; of course Gow, or Purcell, or Pigg, or Jonasson, aren’t going to turn in their graves if we play their tunes in a different key. But there was an original key.

Granted, the keys we have today for Carolan tunes reflect performers’ preferences at the time those tunes were published, long after Carolan died. But the whole concept of key signatures was around long before Carolan was born: Dowland and Byrd wrote in specific keys - or if that seems a little too grand, Playford’s Dancing Master 1st edition in 1650, 20 years before Carolan was born, has quite a variety of key signatures (but nothing for the E flat whistle).

So I come back to my original question - apart from just playing everything you would normally play on a D whistle on an E flat whistle instead (and of course you can do that), are there any tunes actually written for that instrument, or any that sound really good on it?

19

Yes you have a valid point there: I was coming from the standpoint of traditional music (both Irish folk and hymns using folk melodies) rather than Scottish music by known composers.

You’ll find that folk musicians usually aren’t persnicketty about keys and might play anything in any key. Uilleann pipers from Willie Clancy to Paddy Keenan have been known to play the same tune in two or three different keys. And pipers and whistlers and fluters might have a number of instruments in various keys and the music comes out in whatever key it happens to come out in on the particular instrument they have to hand at the moment.

Even “classical” music can be like that, well Baroque music anyhow. In the Baroque they weren’t persnicketty about keys at all, and the same composer might arrange the same piece in various keys depending on the instrumentation.

In short, the notion that any piece of music has a “correct” key is an entirely modern one.

Anyhow, at a gig, whenever a thing I have to play on is in three or four flats I grab an Eb Low Whistle and see how it fits. I also have a Ab whistle for four or five flats, a Db/C# whistle for five or six flats, and even a Gb/F# whistle.

20

nice video. Finnegan rocks, and i love the old guy tapping his foot in the background. :slight_smile:

cheers,
eric