Hello everyone.
Well. I’ve been asked to teach some whistle classes and although I’ll be teaching by ear I want to give people a written reference as well. I’d like to give the students copies of tunes with whistle tab under the dots.
In the past I’ve downloaded a whistle tab font and manually cut and pasted that under the notes but I’d like to move up-market, like.
Any ideas? Any software out there that will do the dots and the tab underneath (preferably free or not costing an arm and a leg)?
Tabledit does at least some of this - and provides a free trial version (or did last time I looked).
I used the program for a while - but wise folk on this forum discouraged reliance on ‘whistle tab’ and I moved away from it to learning to read (well sort of) standard notation.
http://www.tabledit.com/index.shtml
The free version only saves 16 bars of music - so you would need to save in chunks. Its irritating to use after having used abc notation - though it will import abc (IIRC). It claims extensive print options but I never used those.
Things may have changed since - their web site seems to have been improved.
One nice feature was a moving cursor showing the position in the music during playback. Well, it was nice on one of my computers but out of sync on the other. YMMV.
ABCEdit offers it as an option. Comes up in correct places etc. automatically - quite neat. Doesn’t allow for my preferred C nat fingering though and rather small for clear reading.
I have made use of fingering tab (had to do my own piecemeal to get the fingerings and size I wanted - a bit laborious) on my conduit tube piccolo making school course, but only with absolute beginners in a group teaching context where they won’t necessarily “get” things in class and need broadly accessible materials to encourage independent practice… but I too would avoid it once pupils start to get the hang, and wouldn’t let them refer to it in live class situations if at all possible - it is too slow to read fluently even at that level - better to get them doing things by ear/finger-patterns by rote - and I also get them to sing the tune being taught by calling out the finger-numbers (i.e. number of fingers on, from “0” = all open = c# to 6 = all on = D, etc.) at correct pitch - and I can then sing thus to them while they actually play, and so on… so I put the fingering-numbering above the tab too on the crib sheets…
I’ve only got the things I did as Word Docs at present so can’t readily post up sample images here - can e-mail to you if that would be helpful.
Doesn’t abcm2ps have an option to do this?
It sure does! Looks pretty good, too (if you like tab). In earlier versions (prior to 5.8.0) the -W switch outputs whistle tab below the staff. In later versions, the -T switch in connection with the %%tablature directive gives even more control.
Follow up: I’ve been using an older 4.12.15 version of abcm2ps, and whistle tab is easy-peasy. Just add the command line switch -W1D and you get nice D whistle tablature.
To test the newer approach, I just tried the latest abcm2ps 5.9.3. Oof! Now you have to bring in the tab PostScript via a format file, and there’s a complex interaction betwen the -F and -T switches and %%format and %%tablature directives. Sometimes better ain’t necessarily easier. 
The simplest approach now seems to be:
Ignore the -T switch; don’t use it.
Insert the following line at the top of your ABC file to bring in the whistle tab format file:
%%format flute.fmt
%%tablature pitch=D 63 tw_head tw_note
This sets D whistle tab at 63 points below the staff. Change the pitch if you want transposed whistle fingerings.
Now just run abcm2ps normally. Here’s a low-res example of the first line of Sally Gardens:
%%format flute.fmt
X:1
T:Sally Gardens
M:C
K:G
%%tablature pitch=D 63 tw_head tw_note
G2DG B2GB|dBeB dBAB|d2Bd efge|dBAB GEDE|
P.S. In theory, this should also work with the Concertina.net converter. But it’s apparently not set up to find the flute format file. 
I recently re-discovered that ABCExplorer 1.3 has a whistle tab function. Just click on a button and the tune is rendered the same as the example given in the previous post.
The program is free (at least it was the last time I upgraded it).
Well, that puts my observation powers put to shame - I use ABCExplorer a lot and never spotted the tin whistle tabs until you mentioned it.
Probably uses abcm2ps under the covers which is why it looks very much like MTGuru’s example. Simpler to drive than command-line options as well.
Gentlemen, thank you. I shall fiddle around with those things.
As I said, I’m going to be teaching by ear but the tab proves a useful aide memoire after lessons, and evidently so for those that don’t read the dots. It should help start 'em off, if nothing else. I’ll be preparing some CD’s too, I hope.
Yes, that’s exactly right.
Wrong forum. You’re looking for this one. 
Two questions :
ABCexplorer works (with whistle tab) on my laptop but not on my desktop or on the desktop of my teacher. It does produce the notes but as soon as I click on the Whistle Tablature button and choose a whistle, screen underneath jumps to the logo of ABCexplorer and nothing more happens. Any suggestions ?
Does anyone know how to get whistletabs in Finale (the 2006 version). That’s the program my teacher uses and it turns out tabs for about everything (incl. sitar) but not for whistle. Again : any suggestions ?
Thanks in advance for all your expert opinions…