Hey, everyone!

I'm a beginnig whislter--I recently got mine over a birthday after searching years and years for what the beautiful instrument I loved so much in Irish music was. Anyway, I've been looking at tin whistle tutorials, and have the very basics down. i can produce a good tone, and understand basic ornamentation. But I don't have anyone who can teach me, and there isn't anyone who plays around where I live at college. I'm wondering a couple of things. Are there any exercises I can do on the whistle regularly that will increase my proficiency in practice and performance (scales, ornament exercises, etc)? And what songs are good for a beginner like me to learn? How should I go about learning songs? (I should add that I am blind and cannot read print music, so I will need to learn songs by ear.)

THanks for any help anyone here can give!

Well, learning by ear probably is best anyway if you want to play Irish music. Playing scales is also good exercise. That being said, for learning tunes, if you are having trouble learning by ear, there is another resource you can use. Do you know about ABC notation. I assume your computer either translates what is on the screen to either braille or to speech. Anyway, ABC notation literally writes tunes like that so you should be able to figure them out.

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Bill

First, welcome to the world of whistles. Secondly, what college do you attend or area do you live in? There may be someone here who could recommend a near-by teacher or a learner session.

Best wishes.

Steve

There are a few other whistle players in the Nashville, TN area, as well as a session (I think).

Sean Cunningham is one of them: http://www.whistletutor.com/

Hi
Have you come across the Ryan Duns tutorials here?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRfw1w4sE4Y

I have found him a very inspirational character.

All the best
Andy

I traditionally learn everything y ear. I guess I'm wondering what songs would be good to start with and if anyone has any tips besides "practice, practice, practice". (Being a music major it's hard to practice the whistle as much as I'd like, since it's not my specialty and there are other things I have to concentrate on.)

Also, any tips on how to play a C with a good tone on a D whistle?

half-hole. It works with any whistle. If you want a cross fingered solution, experiment -- some whistles take different cross fingerings for optimal sound. Some whistles are better than others. My Mellow Dog plays a nice sounding, in tune cross fingered C.

As to your general question. Pick a tune you like (one that's not too hard) played by someone you like, and slow down the recording. Learn to play it note for note, with all the ornaments. Eventually the ornaments will come automatically.

On Youtube, Elizabeth Velez Urie demonstrates how to play the whistle solo from Lord of the Rings ( Concerning Hobbitts) It is a very easy tune for beginners to play but sounds really nice. You might enjoy playing this.

I'd never thought of playing scales on a whistle. Perhaps someone with more experience could comment on whether this is a useful exercise or not.

Scales are ALWAYS useful exercises! My freshman year, 1st semester as a piano major, it seems that all I played was scales, arpeggios and Hanon exercises. By the time my senior recital rolled around, there wasn't much that my hands couldn't keep up with.

Scales done well (evenly) are great for training your fingers to do what your brain tells them to, no matter if it is for piano, whistle, or tuba.

Scales may be useful exercises on chromatic instruments, but I'm no so convinced of their value on whistes. A whistle is very different from a piano or a tuba.

Very difficult to half-hole a piano.

I thought there were a hundred or so threads here with suggestions of tunes for beginners.
Here's a few from me:

Peg Ryan's Polka.
Johnny Mickey Barry (Polka). These two go nicely together, too.
Time in Arrears. - Nice tune, you can play it fairly slowly and it still sounds jaunty.
Cock of the North
My Darling Asleep
The Spanish Lady.

It is probably useful to play scales on whistle to learn to play even and steady. Especially if one alternates them with arpeggios. I wouldn't spend a lot of time on it though. No point to develop technique in isolation from music.

I must admit, I wouldn't bother with scales on whistle at all. Partly for the reason that hoopy mike says - diatonic instrument, so you can only go up and down, which isn't hard - and partly for the reason that h-p says - which I would paraphrase as "Why not just practice the tunes?"

Polkas are often thought of as 'beginner' tunes, and a lot of them do fall under the fingers nice and easily, but you can spend a lifetime perfecting them. Other than that, I would suggest practicing the most common sessions tunes, at whatever speed you can play them steadily without mistakes.

I found practicing the G scale helped get the Cnat fingering down for passages with runs across registers but other than that I don't know how useful.

The problem is that this music doesn't always follow western scales. Many of the tunes are hexatonic or heptatonic with pentatonic sections.

Ok, that hurt my head. I think I'll have a ginandtonic.