I’ve been dabbling with the whistle for about a year now and can play a few tunes by ear but I basically suck. I haven’t had much time to practice and I’m really not sure what the best way to learn is. I have the Clarke Tin Whistle Tutorial with whistle and CD by Bill Ochs but haven’t had much luck using it. I find most of the tunes on the CD a bit hard to remember and not really very “catchy”. It’s much easier if you can remember the tune!
I’ve been thinking about getting another tutorial (Grey Larsen’s Toolbox) but I don’t really know if that would provide a different result. I can read music slowly but I wonder if I should just keep trying to play songs I can remember by ear until the fingering gets to be second nature and forget about tutorials and/or sheet music.
I’m not in a position to get a teacher so I’m open to suggestions from you. I seem to be stuck.
Mike
p.s. I think I have all the whistles I need (Clarke original, Soodlum’s Mello-D, Generation, and a Susato)
OK, I’m admittedly the last person in the world who should be giving you advice since I play very poorly myself. But from your post it sounds like you’re not having fun, and since I am having fun, that’s a big difference. If you don’t like the tunes in the tutor book, find tunes you DO like, first of all, either on traditional CDs you enjoy (that’s what got you interested in the first place, right?) or get one of the tunebook/CD combinations and go thru it and make a list of the tunes that you enjoy hearing. Pick those to learn. I only play tunes I like (but there are a lot of those, more than I’ll ever learn, I’m sure), which means that I play songs I’ve learned by ear, such as Star of the County Down, By the Rising of the Moon, etc, as well as jigs and hornpipes I have heard. If you enjoy hearing them, you’ll enjoy playing them. And I’d also say, if you don’t have time to practice, that’s going to impede you drastically. There’s no such substitute for practice. Listen to tunes/songs you enjoy, them practice them.
Starman, I think Blackhawk’s got it. Just find some CDs with tunes you like and learn them. I might add that since you learn by ear you really should get the Amazing Slowdowner http://www.ronimusic.com or something like it to help you learn the nuances in the tunes you are trying to learn. It slows down any tune to whatever pace you need without changeing the pitch unless you want it to. The demo is free and you can do the 1st song on any CD right away. The license for the whold program is $39.95. It’ll open a lot of doors for you. FUN!
Get a slowdowner (like Amazing Slowdowner (expensive and easy) or Audacity (free but more complex))
Learn the tune is small chunks. Use the slowdown function to help you learn the nuances. Concentrate more on emphasis and rhythm than ornamentation to start with.
Get so you can play the whole tune along with the original - at say 80% speed.
Speed up a bit
Try recording yourself (Audacity can do this). Leave the recording a few hours or a day or two. Play the original… now play yourself back… try and hear the difference.
All this - and you should get a tune you are happy with!
Start again — with another tune!
OK… so i’m being a little didactic so forgive me. But I think the key things are - learn by ear, learn a tune you like - played in a way you like, and listen to yourself on tape or pc - its not fun (at least for me), but its enlightening!
I don’t have the whole answer but, if you’re not already doing it, you should listen, listen, listen to the music. Listen all the time, whenever you can. Surely listen to recordings of the tunes you are trying to learn. I always have better success learning a tune if I can already sing/hum the melody before I try to learn it. I think that creating the mental “image” of the tune is at least as important as learning where to put your fingers and when to blow into the whistle. Good luck and hang in there!
Mike
I knew a guitarist and teacher who said that he knew when he’d learned a tune well - because he’d played it so much he was absolutely sick of it and never wanted to play it again
Thanks for the suggestions guys. So far I would gather that learning by ear is probably best for me. I have increased my traditional Irish music collection a lot lately and have been listening a great deal. Hopefully that will help. In the last few weeks I’ve even converted my favorite Cd’s to MP3 files and listen to them on my PC while I work. Now if I could just get my cubicle mates to let me whistle along! Yes, I need to fit in more practice.
So I shouldn’t spend the money on another tutorial but buy another whistle instead?
starman, I’ve got the amazing slow downer too, it’s really great. get it. then buy three other whistles. you will feel good. do you not want to feel good?
Play every day. This is the number one way to get better, put in time. Five or ten minutes every day is more effective than two hours on the weekend. Half an hour every day is more effective than eight hours once a week.
Play and listen to music that moves you, that has meaning to you. Tutorials can sometimes be dry and uninteresting. A person is going to much more motivated to learn something that is interesting and stimulating. MIDI files are an okay way to find tunes to learn. They lack the ornamentation and fine points of rhythm, but again, a song that moves you will motivate you more than a traditional tune that means nothing to you.
Record yourself. Audacity is a freeware program, though your PC and mic may not be suitable to quality recordings. Even an old cassette recorder can be a useful tool.
Another whistle will probably not improve your playing much. It may motivate you to practice more, and in that roundabout way improve your playing.
Most of all enjoy your music. It is a not a chore, not a job, it is a fun diversion. Keep it fun.
Mike, as scary as it can be, getting up the confidence to play in public can be a good thing.
I’m far from a good player, as anyone who’s heard me play can testify But I AM getting better. And I do a lot of my practice at lunchtime - outside if it’s not too windy, in an enclosed stairwell at work otherwise. Sure, I get odd looks - but I also get the occasional compliment. I travel on business, and I’ve also played odd spots like the top of a 22 story building in Seoul, in front of my hotel, in corners of airport lounges . . .
The thing is, as weird as it feels, sometimes you just need to ignore people and play. You WILL get better (and the audience may help you focus), and it gives you a lot more times and places to play. And if you can play a tune, any tune, without noticable hesitations or squawks you’ll probably get the occasional compliment. (It feels weird, when you are busily reviewing all the things you need to do better - but it happens. You’re often your own worst critic.)
What helps me also is remembering a whistle busker I once heard in Cork - even then, I could tell she wasn’t expert (I think I play much better than she did that night). But the hat she had out was half-full of coins. I dropped some in, too - she sounded good enough, and hearing her made the evening more pleasant.
She’d have had much more success with the GHB. Later that same night, the pub we were sitting in (a small pub, with a single door to the street) was invaded by a couple selling raffle tickets for a charity. She circulated the room selling tickets, while he stood in (blocked) the doorway playing the GHB at full volume - the windows and pint glasses were rattling. We all paid up immediately so they’d move on. Extortion, pure and simple.
Wow, my story exactly. That tutorial is very helpful in the beginning then gets boring really fast.
Like you, I know I suck but I don’t really care. I’ve been “playing” for a year this month with no rhythm whatsoever I’ve played outside Lady Footlocker, homeS for seniors, the frozen food section at WalMart, and most recently at a buffet down the Strip. (now that I’ve listed it I’m actually embarrassed, hehehe )
I think, when you feel better about it, that’s when you actually get better. I used to worry about my playing so much I used to say to myself, “gosh, surely they don’t play it like that in Ireland.” Now it’s “damn that was good.” Who says you’re not getting better? Stop listening to him.
That’s the basics, right there. It’s no good randomly lurching thru tunes you can remember but don’t practise enough so that the autopilot has been able to kick in for you. Once you get to that point with a tune, it’s very satisfying, and you’ll be able to improve on it from there.
I just downloaded the unregistered version of The Amazing Slowdowner to play with-pretty cool. It only lets you listen to the 1st 2 tracks on a CD but if they are 2 tracks I want to learn then why do I need the $40 version?
As for playing in public, I have to be a little careful here in DC. I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a terrorist with a pipe bomb hiding in a stairwell or something.
I am by far no expert on the subject but you might want to check out Scoiltrad.com. Others on the list have spoken well of the program. They have online whistle lessons with Conal O’Grada. They recently had a bit of server trouble but it seems to be sorted out now. My husband bought me a set of lessons from Conal. When the system was down he went out of his way to talk with me via emails to ensure that I got things sorted out.
The lessons are well layed-out audio-video. You can loop the tunes and play them at slower speeds for practice. When you feel you’ve got it down, you can send your own recording to Conal for assessment.
I think the slowdowner idea is also great. And what I learned in a very revealing lesson with Bill Ochs is that there are wonderful tricks and shortcuts to ornamentation as well as different schools of thought on the subject. If sticking to a traditional style is important to you while you’re learning the details of ornamentation, the suggestion I received is to listen to (and practice via the slowdowner route) the traditional players like Mary Bergen.
But I AM getting better. And I do a lot of my practice at lunchtime - outside if it’s not too windy, in an enclosed stairwell at work otherwise. Sure, I get odd looks - but I also get the occasional compliment. I travel on business, and I’ve also played odd spots like the top of a 22 story building in Seoul, in front of my hotel, in corners of airport lounges . . .
)
Who says you’re not getting better? Stop listening to him.
