Can anyone tell me where to find whistle tab for an Irish song? 
The following site has it all:
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/1095
Well, that must be confusing … a link to a specific album … and no tabs. (Unless you two are in cahoots).
Pops, is there a particular song you’re looking for? And by tab do you mean tablature, or any kind of written form?
I am looking for tablature, you know, with drawings of holes covered and not covered. I can’t read music well enough to attempt to play from it. I have tablature for “Amazing Grace” and I can play that. I am just now attempting to learn to play whistle. I would like tablature for any traditional Irish song. I am amazed that no one on this whistle site has been able to offer a source for this. I appreciate your attempt to help.
http://www.whistlethis.com/index.php?content=YUc5dFpRPT0%3D
I think this is a nice website. If you go there, on the right-hand side you will see “Current tune” and “Previous tunes”. Click and then you will see that there is whistle notation for the tunes. Even better, is that you will see that there are mentors who play the tunes and you can hear a good rendition of the tune played by a real person instead of just a MIDI file. If you are just starting out, maybe you can find parts of tunes that are good for your level if they are too hard right now. I think the listening is going to be critical for you to play Irish tunes. Even if you read music, the listening would be just as critical—you can read the music and play a tune so it doesn’t sound the least bit like an Irish tune I can tell you from my experience. I would try listening to the tune many times and getting it into your head before trying to locate the notes using the notation—just a thought, no expert here believe me.
I don’t believe whistle notation is used that commonly, not like tab for guitar. So that may be why there aren’t as many responses as you might expect.
If you ask me, you’ll get a harsh answer… But I feel whistle tab is a waist of time to put it bluntly. No offense intended what so ever, but that’s how I feel. And trust me, when I first started on the whistle, I to was looking for whistle tablature like crazy, but as time went on, and as I found out in my experience anyway, a lot of (if not most) the traditional Irish tunes, don’t have tab for them, so I quit using it. Started to learn by ear, which is a more useful skill anyway. If anything, I might use sheet music, just to see which notes in a tune go which way if I can’t figure it out by ear - but I can’t take a piece of music on paper and play it, I just use the notes as guidance, let my ear do the rest. If learning tunes by ear is tricky, get a slowdowner software, or use the slow-down/speed-up function on Windows Media Player, (under View, under Enhancements, click on Play speed settings) and listen to the music extensively. Listen listen listen! Unless you’re gifted, I think learning by ear is a skill that takes time to really develop and mature.
Happy whistling,
-Eric
Whistling Pops, there is a very nice website called Whistle and Squeak that’s done by Mark Bell, a member here and other whistle forums. All the songs have whistle tabs. It doesn’t have a large selection (about 40 songs), but it is a good place to start.
Judy
Find an ABC and paste it here
http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html
download the midi file,
or look up ABCNavigator on google and install it,
and paste the ABC file into it. Save the midi file created.
Then look up
jansens “tablature karaoke” (on google too)
The tab’karaoke presents a whistle tab for midi tune files.
You can specify which track on multi track tunes.
You can slow it down, change pitch, change key etc
and print out the tab by copying to clipboard,
then pasting into your word processor.
A lot of people don’t like midi files,
but when you’re learning its a valuable tool.
If you cant read music, then tab is a valuable tool when learning.
Also try Midinotate - it displays midi as sheet music, so you could
learn to read music this way. Also edit tracks, and slow/speed up.
What ever works for you is right for you
I am not a professional musician, nor even a very good amature, but since I just went thru the process you are starting on, let me reflect on my experience while it’s still fresh…
Different people learn different ways, so do what works for you. The problem is when learning something new like the whistle if you don’t read music or can’t hear the music or don’t know your whistle well enough to turn heard sound into whistled sound, what do you do?
I learned to play guitar by ear many years ago, not well mind you, but I pretty much had to, because I was playing left handed, and even the songs that had tabs were backwards for me. The tabs did help when I didn’t know how to finger an obtuse chord because I didn’t have to look it up, I could just stare at the backwards fingering and place my fingers one at a time and then see what I was playing.
Having just moved to the whistle, I didn’t find tabs all that helpful. Once you learn one written note - the note that is all fingers down - you’re free from tabs. And that’s a good thing.
If you look at the tab for a song and then look at the notes, the notes are a much cleaner (easier to digest) form to convey the same information. In fact they convey more. You are going to have to learn one or the other, and the notes have more to offer.
Like an analog clock vs a digital clock, the glimpse of an analog clock tells you a lot more than the time it is now. It tells you how close it is to the top of the hour, how far it is from noon or midnight etc. When you glance at a digital clock, you have to do math or otherwise place those numbers in relation to the rest of the day mentally.
Same with music vs tabs. Not only do the notes tell you what the tone is, it tells you about the tone before and the tone after - are you moving up or down in pitch? How long should you play that note? Should you slur or make a seperate note of it?
In hindsight I really wish I had learned to play the guitar right-handed. So many fine guitars have passed thru my fingers that I could not play because I took the short-cut of playing left-handed. It was easier for me to make progress at the time, but in the long run was limiting. I regretted that decision.
So too with music and tabs. If you just learn the names of the lines and spaces on the staff -
Every Good Boy Does Fine
FACE
Or just learn that the lowest line is E, or the note that is hanging below the staff, just touching the last line is all fingers down, you can slowly, painfully figure out each note by counting up from there. I think if you invest the time to do this, you will find that soon your fingers jump to the note when you see it without your mind making a translation. It will come about slowly at first, just certian notes will be automatic, and when you see them you will smile because you know you will play them easily. You will also see your enemies approaching, and dread that change from C# up to D. For a while, until your fingers learn that too.
Then you will find yourself playing the right notes, but it’s not a song yet. The durations are all wrong. Then the durations will start to make sense, and you will play something like the song, but not really the song. Then you will listen to the song probably slowed down and without reference to the music you will play a few bars then stumble. Look at the music to remind yourself where it goes next and start again. Slowly you will work through the song until you reach the end without looking at the music.
Now you are ready to start playing THE SONG. Feel the music and play away. Each time you play it you will play it differently. Sometimes you will be playing right along and then all of a sudden your fingers forget where to go next. But start over and next time let them play without thinking and they will play it fine. Let your mind think about how the music you are making sounds, and let your fingers worry about making the notes.
So yes, playing by ear is the best place to be, but if you are like me you can barely tell one jig from another by listening at first. So use the music as a way to hold the notes in front of you while your fingers learn where to go. I also use a slow-down (ABC) when learning a tune because I can follow the music by eye more easily on the paper at a slow speed. Then I play it at a slow speed. Only when I can play the tune end to end without looking at notes (or tab) do I worry about speed. And even then I don’t “worry” about speed, it just comes. Or not, if it’s an aire. Most important is to play the song correctly at any speed so you engrain the right movements rather than making bad habbits within the song.
This process took me a couple months to achieve, but now I can add a song in about one week. As I get more familiar with the whistle I’m sure it will become faster.
Sorry to ramble on so long. I hope you have as much fun as I have had!
Thanks to all who offered help!
Judy,
Thanks so much for the link to this site. This is exactly what I was looking for!
I suppose you could just take a tune you want to learn, and make your own tab for it if you really wanted…
I agree that learning to read music is worth the effort of learning, but in the meanwhile, if you want whistle tab, you shall have it – oodles and oodles of it. To get it, bookmark this:
Yet Another Digital Tradition Page
Look up a tune (check the parenthesis in your search result to make sure you pick one that says “with tune” or “tune only” – some are just song lyrics)
Click on your tune, and you’ll get sheet music without whistle tab… but under that, there’s a links to get the tune in various formats. Choose “pennywhistle notation”, and voila! You’ve got your tune with whistle tab.
Happy Hunting!
Squidgirl,
Thanks for the link. I checked it out and there is literally years of music there. Also, today I found a book entitled "Mel Bay’s Deluxe Tinwhistle Songbook Irish Music and Ballads by Patrick Conway. It also has many excellent songs in tab.