We’re going back to where my wife grew up this christmas, and apparently at one point in her childhood, she tried to learn how to play the guitar, and still has the instrument somewhere at home.
Naturally, since I’ve been practicing an instrument around her lately, she wants to see if she can play something as well.
So, what I’m looking for is a small set of relatively simple pieces with accompaniment that would a) sound nice, and b) be fairly easy on both the whistler and the guitar accompniment.
And if there are any excellent sites with tutorials/refresher courses on what she would have to remember to do to play guitar along with me, those would be helpful too. I know absolutely nothing about playing the guitar, and I’m sure she remembers less.
I play whistle, guitar, and bodhran (not simultaneously, of course! ) at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. You need to drop in on Digital Tradition http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/ to look up the songs you want to play, and Google http://www.google.com to hunt down the sheet music if you wish.
Your wife needs to recall mainly G, D, C, F, A, Am, Dm, Em, F#m, and Bm chords to begin with. You need whistles in D and (optional) C. The D plays in D, G, and Em, while the C plays in C, F, and Dm
And if you are playing duets around the holidays, remember Christmas Carols are pretty easy and sound really nice. My Mom & I played We Three Kings and Auld Lang Syne from sightreading and it was beautiful. Most X-mas carols are not more than one octave and you can find some with only a few chords as well.
You will find Christmas Carols with printouts for the various instruments, including guitar and flute (click on Main link for each song) and this will give you simple notation for whistle or flute.
If your wife is picking up guitar just to play along with you on whistles, and if you are playing a lot of trad stuff, she might want to think about learning to play in DADGAD tuning. This will put the sound closer to the “traditional” sound of bouzaki. (It’s also an easy-to-play and very good sounding tuning in its own right.)
However, if she’s looking at the guitar for its own sake, then she should ignore the above advice and learn concert tuning first.
As for songs, almost anything with a simple “three-chord” harmony will do. You might pick up a guitar fake book, these often have simplified chord arrangements for tons of songs. Y’all can count on your fingers to transpose the chords into something doable on the whistle pretty easily.
I second the Christmas carol idea. I have found that at this time of the year, almost all music stores that have guitars also have books of simple carols with guitar chords noted above the staff. I have a 5.5"x8.5" booklet that I have used at every Christmas carol occasion since I bought it over 10 years ago. Just check out Serpent’s post above about keys and pick a book with arrangements in those keys. You can sound pretty good with a bit of practice.
Mike
I went to the local store today, and asked them to get this in for me. It appears to have guitar chords, and contains the christmas song I’ve been most interested in learning (The Wexford Carol).
Is there a review of this book around? It looks like it just came out this year.
) at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. You need to drop in on Digital Tradition 