Hi, fairly new to these boards, been reading but not posting, and I thought somebody here might be able to help me.
I’ve been looking for whistle tabs, however most of the sites I’ve found, through google and links on various sites, have either disappeared or, although they claim to have tabs, only have sheet music.
It’s not that I can’t read music, when I’m playing my keyboard I can read music fine, however when I try it whilst playing the whistle it all falls to pieces. I have the same problem with my ocarina. I’m left having to use tabs or listening to the tune and trying to work it out by ear.
Anybody got any tips on helping me read music whilst playing, or links to sites with tabs on?
I couldn’t read dots six months ago. I used whistle tab but encountered the problems you have found. There are programs that accept ABC and display whistle tab, but after reading several comment on this forum I decided to try without. (Hey guys - see I can take advice). After a month or two (ok maybe three or…) I have reached a state halfway between reading the dots and memory. If I play without the dots I get my currently-being-learnt tune wrong, but there is no way I could play tune from the dots only. Maybe another few months will see a change, though extracting rhythm from the dots is still too much of a mystery.
With your musical background you should overtake me in a few days or weeks. Remember I had no musical background when I started.
Learn to sing or play new tunes on the keyboard, and then transfer to whistle by ear?
Or more likely, spend a few more hours solidifying the note-dot-fingering connection and never have this trouble again. Or think about tabs. Tabs are useful on a mandolin, guitar or cittern where there are many ways to make the same note or chord, but they’re silly on a whistle, where there’s only one way to make all the good notes.
Get a whistle tutor like Bill Ochs’ The Clarke Tinwhistle, and work through it tune by tune and reading the music. It’ll take you slowly and stepwise through learning to comfortably read music on the whistle.
Although I was already a good amateur recorder player, when I wanted to learn whistle (which included re-learning fingerings and ornamentation) that’s what I did and it made the transition easy.
I used to draw a finger position diagram under each note (after making a copy of the sheet music so I could draw on it). Now, since I’m not a fast reader of the dots, all I do is put a letter symbol under each note with lower case letters for the second octave notes. Timing is not an issue since I can read timing and rests well enough. I have to say this is helping with my note reading and speed as I learn the names of each note in relation to their home on the stave from this exercise.
Though I agree that it’s much better in the long run to make the association between the dots and the whistle fingerings, there is whistle tab out there. Try these sites:
I agree with the perservere post. Do you remember how long it took you to associate the the sheet music note “C” with the actual note “C” on a piano? Now imagine if the piano music that you could already read was written in piano tab. Quit laughing.
You’ll figure out the fingering in time. It takes a but a bit of time and dedication studying and practicing. Much less time than it took with the piano. And don’t forget, you’re only playing one note at a time.
I take the lyrics of a song they know - something simple.
Then I print that out wide spaced and above each word or syllable write the fingering, having worked it out so it is in a key that requires no sharps or flats.
I use numbers 6 to 0 and then for the upper octave 6’ to 0’.
I have never failed to have someone playing a simple tune within 30 minutes using this method.
Then they can start writing up their own tunes and learning to play by ear.
I can play from music and being a trumpet player I have the ability to transpose from concert pitch parts to a whistle in any key but for folk music this is rarely necessary.
Another trick I use is to write down the name of the tune, the key of whistle I am going to play it on and the fingering for the first note, so I know where to start.
This is often enough.
I’m new to the whistle and to reading music sheets, even having played e-bass before, i did it with tabs.
My method for the whistle is listening to the tune (more than once), then i pick up the sheet and the whistle and start figuring out note by note, when I have 8 notes i try to play them from memory of the song i listened. In a bit i start realizing where everything fits, and that’s it!
So: for starters: listen to the song → sheet → whistle
This way i learn the notes on the sheet (which aren’t that dificult), and i start to figure out the tempos because I listened to the song previously. A mix of by ear and by sheet. One day i’ll be able to read sheet only, and ear only, i hope
If you download ABCNavigator or ABCexplorer you can look at the dots while the music plays. This is handy. You find you learn the dots without making a conscious effort.
Some kind soul posted a whistle font a while back. You might find it in the archives. If you can’t, PM me.
Just paste your ABC tune into word, and then set the font to be your whistle-tab. Presto-changeo! You have your tune in whistle-tab. You might have to increase the font size a few times to make it legible.
If you can already read music, which you say you can, then you should know what pitches the dots on the stave represent. It’s then a matter of learning the fingerings for those pitches. It should be easier than the piano as you only have one stave to deal with and not two.
As others have already said, it’s then a matter of taking it a step at a time and plenty practice.
My view is that it is easier to learn staff notation on the whistle by treating the lowest note of the D whistle as C (although it is concert D). Then you can transpose up and down for different keys of whistle and the fingering for a C will always be 6. Otherwise the fingering for concert D on a D whistle would be 6 but on a C whistle would be 5.
I just realised that thats probably doesn’t make any sense at all, but it does to me!
No, it makes perfect sense. Except that whistles are generally treated as transposing instruments relative to D fingering, with six holes down always D (i.e. the D whistle, not C whistle, being the canonical concert pitch instrument, as you obviously know). So just match D to the first note immediately below the staff and move up from there.
Calculating transpositions from the D scale is really no harder than from C if you think in terms of scale degrees instead of note names.
