I have been listening to Baka Beyond-which is like an accustic Afro-Celt Sound System- They have a lot of good rhythms with accustic guitars, mandolin, fiddle and an occasional whistle. Fun stuff to listen too while at work.
Joe
What lives on my CD player currently is Iona, Connie Dover and Vanessa Mae.
I am new to the whistle. My main instrument is electric guitar. I’m on the church worship team and we play a lot of Hillsongs, Tommy Walker & Maranatha songs. I played jazz in college & studied flamenco guitar.
My musical compositions are new age/classical/pop instrumentals.
Did I mention that I love the blues? I play slide guitar ala Elmore James. I also play keyboards. I have a Wurlitzer 200A E.P., An Ace Tone Top 1 transistor organ (Her name is “Wheezy.”)and a Roland Juno 6 synth, 3 Stratocasters, a Les Paul, a set of bells, 4 whistles, an autoharp, a clarinet, a classical and a folk guitar.
All these things will be combined to make a unique & original joyful noise to The Lord.
On 2002-05-29 16:45, fatveg wrote:
Anyone experimenting with C20/21 classical, anybody using the whistle as a chromatic instrument?
I’ve been tinkering around with this a bit, and find that it is really not too hard to play a whistle chromatically. I have found it easiest to use a key of C whistle and to get all of the accidentals by half-holing. At least for me, this seems to make it much easier to keep up with what you are doing, and allows notation to be played in the proper key, if you use that sort of thing 
, thus making it easier to interface with other instruments. I think my Eglish-teacher son would call that a run-on sentence. Anyway, this should open the possibility to play about anything that suits your pleasure on a whistle. There is no particular reason, beyond tradition, to relegate the whistle (or any instrument) to one genre. If the result pleases you, then it is good…
Yeah, I broke into “Besame Mucho” last night on the Burke, much to the puzzlement of my tired and irish-music embittered SO. You can do it.
There is a young man in the Bay Area who has been playing jazz pennywhistle in his highschool performances and absolutely blowing peoples minds with his ability. Haven’t heard him yet and I don’t know if he is a C&Fer. Last name is Countryman.
Hey all, thanks for all of the info. I’d love to hear snips of some of the non-trad stuff some of you are playing (or the trad, I love that too).
Regarding blues, I assume you have to play the mode starting on A (Mixolodian???) on a D whistle, much like you do on a harp? How do you sharpen the 3rd and 7th (or whatever the right ones are – I don’t have a whistle by me so I can’t check it out).
And as for Hymns, I’m not a Church type (long story…) but I’ve found in the few weeks that I’ve been playing whistle that the whistle has chosen to play the old hymn ‘Lord of all Hopefulness’ (does anyone else find that their whistle suggests tunes on its own?). I think the tune is a trad tune called ‘Slane’ or ‘Slade’ or something – anyway, it sounds great on the whistle.
\
Never trust a fat vegetarian
[ This Message was edited by: fatveg on 2002-05-30 20:01 ]
I’ve been playing whistle that the whistle has chosen to play the old hymn ‘Lord of all Hopefulness’ (does anyone else find that their whistle suggests tunes on its own?).
Either that, or Somebody’s trying to tell you something? 
“Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm,
Whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm,
Be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray,
Your peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.”
Amazingly, this is exactly the same tune used for “Be Thou My Vision”…the one I mentioned was my favorite.
Kim
Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo
[ This Message was edited by: Kim in Tulsa on 2002-05-30 20:48 ]
Well, in addition to being a long-time lover of folk music (both Irish and American), I’m a major fan of Renaissance polyphony (Palestrina, Tallis, Byrd, et al), and classical choral music in general. I’ll occasionally twiddle around picking out soprano choral parts on the whistle…some of it works quite well (FWIW, it’s quite-well suited to Gregorian Chant!). I’ve also experimented a bit with improvising around Taize chants.
Redwolf
A note about “Be Thou My Vision/Lord of All Hopefulness”…it’s not at all surprising that it works well on the whistle, given that it’s an Irish tune. The tune name is “Slane,” and it’s used for several hymns. Lovely, isn’t it?
I also play a lot of hymns. Many of the tunes in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982 are of Irish or Welsh background, and work very well on the whistle. “Hyfrydol” (“Alleluia, Sing to Jesus”) is another favorite.
Redwolf
Hey Redwolf:
Writing about your expressed interest in Early music.
I have played a lot of Renaissance Lute and vihuela music in my day and several things have come to mind since I became obsessed with Irish music.
One is the uneven rhythm of reel eighth notes. I think there is some historical evidence that some instrumental scale work in those old days was not metronomically even and I kind of wonder if the Irish reel lilt isn’t actually an indicator of the older way of doing things. On lute, some fingering schemes for scales, like thumb forefinger alternation would inevitably be a little uneven. I don’t think we can assume people played scales perfectly even.
ANother thing is the tactus, and in this sense the overall 2 with halfnote beat rather than modern 4/4/ time sigs. I have found a few irish things that have a larger underlying tactus beat, like Lord Inchiquin. I had discussed this in context of hemiolas on another thread.
I find that playing some of this music circles me back to the days when I was playing a lot of that music myself.
And, for those who like movie tunes…
One that I’ve found works beautifully on the whistle is the theme music from the '70s movie “Day of the Dolphin.” It’s slow and dreamy, and the whistle gives it a lovely, haunting character.
And for those who like hymn tunes, St. Patrick’s Breastplate and Amazing Grace are two other favorites of mine.
BTW FatVeg…I’m a veg too and…er…shall we say somewhat tending toward what used to be euphemistically called “full-figuredness”
Sounds like I have similar interests to several of you. Hymns certainly tops my list, but I agree that Handel, Bach and Telemann work quite well on whistle, too.
Funny that this topic should come up; I was just in Salzburg, Austria and had a wonderful time attending some chamber music performances. There was a man and woman on Violin that played like they were at a Céilí . I’m surprised someone didn’t get their eyes poked out. We also saw a wonderful quartet. Both played mostly Mozart (Salzburg, besides being the ‘home’ of “The Sound of Music” is also Mozart’s birthplace).
So in honor of Julie Andrews: http://www.tullberg.com/soundofmusic.mp3
Erik
[ This Message was edited by: ErikT on 2002-06-01 14:46 ]
I enjoy playing Irish slow air. In additional to Irish music, I like to play “Moon River”, “Three Coins In The Fountain”, “The River Of No Return” and other romantic songs from old movies. I also play Chinese and Taiwanese folk songs as well as Chinese popular music. Tin Whistle is a perfect instrument for Chinese folk music and Chinese romantic songs. A lot of Chinese songs are C, G and F. Right now I am using my Burke’s Al Pro D to play those Chinese songs and the listeners’ responses are very good. I am waiting for my Burke’s Al Pro C (it also can play F key) and Al Low G (it also can play C key) whistles. I believe the sounds of Chinese music will be even more beautiful by using the whistles with C key and F key.