Reading music

[Tommy]

I use the book and CDs ''110 Irland's Best Tin Whistle Tunes volume 1.''
This will keep me busy for a long time. I would go nuts trying to play by ear 100%. There are some notes that come along and are gone before I find it. I listen to the CD and follow the written music before I play then go from there. The CD has a guitar player in the background. The book has the guitar chords in it also. It would be nice and fun if there were a CD with only the guitar chords to play whistle along with. I have found a few on the internet and burned them to a disc but that is very time consuming searching and then listening to all the versions before choosing one.

[Screeeech!!!]

Thanks for the info on ABC's i didn't know they could do all those things.

As for sight reading. It was always the act of taking a piece of unknown notated music and picking up your instrument and playing it perfectly as it is supposed to be played.

Example... in Royal School of Music grade exams, about half way through the exam the examiner dumps a piece of music in front of you. You have a quick look at it and then you have to play it at the speed stated without mistakes (and they don't give you a metronome either).

The pieces are graded in difficulty to the level of exam one is taking. You don't get grade 8 level music to sight read at grade 5.

It takes a very long time (years) to be able to sight read to a professional level with an instrument.

[John F.]

I don't "sightread", as in plunk it down on the music stand and play it at tempo--I'm just not there yet. I do "read" music though--a skill that I haven't used in 20 years, and have just trotted out again as I've picked up the whistle. In my college days, I got hit with music theory, and some exposure to the piano, and by then I'd been singing since I was in grammer school. I'm sure that this background has given me the foundation to pick up the whistle without the immediate need for an instructor. Then again, I'm a terrible player!

[Wanderer]

Thanks for the info on ABC's i didn't know they could do all those things.

Well, ABC's CAN'T really do all of those things. ABC is just a text format for describing notes. But there is a lot of software out there (free and otherwise) that can do all of those things.

It's especially good for changing things around, like others have said...you can open the text document in a text editor, or an ABC editor, change note 10, for instance, and then reprint sheet music if you're so inclined. With a graphics file, you can print the sheet music, and get out your Sharpie and mark the thing up instead

For the technically savvy, or those willing to invest time investigating the software required to mess with ABC's, they have a lot of advantages over image files...for those who couldn't be bothered with all of that stuff, nothing really will beat the simplicity of an image file on the web, which is why I try to make the files on my site as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

(Colomon: most of my 1-bit black and white gif files run about 7K. Smaller than what you're getting with PNG, but much bigger than ABC to be sure)

[Wanderer]

I use the book and CDs ''110 Irland's Best Tin Whistle Tunes volume 1.''
This will keep me busy for a long time. I would go nuts trying to play by ear 100%. There are some notes that come along and are gone before I find it. I listen to the CD and follow the written music before I play then go from there. The CD has a guitar player in the background. The book has the guitar chords in it also. It would be nice and fun if there were a CD with only the guitar chords to play whistle along with. I have found a few on the internet and burned them to a disc but that is very time consuming searching and then listening to all the versions before choosing one.

I'll have to verify when I get home, but I think L.E. McCullough's session tune book has the accompianiment on one speaker channel, and the whistle on the other..so to get rid of the melody instruments you just turn your balance knob all the way one way, and to get rid of the background you turn it the other way. Might be worth trying on your CD too.

[fearfaoin]

Thanks for the info on ABC's i didn't know they could do all those things.

Well, ABC's CAN'T really do all of those things. ABC is just a text format for describing notes. But there is a lot of software out there (free and otherwise) that can do all of those things.

I was just trying to resist posting the same thing... Yeah, ABC is just
the format that makes it possible for software to do those things. But
the ABC files are just data that can't really DO anything themselves.
Semantics, really, I suppose...

[Tommy]

I use the book and CDs ''110 Irland's Best Tin Whistle Tunes volume 1.''
This will keep me busy for a long time. I would go nuts trying to play by ear 100%. There are some notes that come along and are gone before I find it. I listen to the CD and follow the written music before I play then go from there. The CD has a guitar player in the background. The book has the guitar chords in it also. It would be nice and fun if there were a CD with only the guitar chords to play whistle along with. I have found a few on the internet and burned them to a disc but that is very time consuming searching and then listening to all the versions before choosing one.

I'll have to verify when I get home, but I think L.E. McCullough's session tune book has the accompianiment on one speaker channel, and the whistle on the other..so to get rid of the melody instruments you just turn your balance knob all the way one way, and to get rid of the background you turn it the other way. Might be worth trying on your CD too.

I went and tried that but there is guitar and whistle on both sides. Let me know if the L.E.McCullough's will do that.
That seems great. I had not thought of it being done that way, and it would be a good selling point for any that wanted a guitar or whistle accompianiment. Greg your web page is the first I go to for music to read it and hear. I know there are many that appreciate all that you do for whistlers. Thank you.

[Celtic983]

I just verified that L.E.McCullough's book does seperate tha accompiament and the melody on different channels. Just happened to have one of the cd's from it here at work

[Tommy]

I just verified that L.E.McCullough's book does seperate tha accompiament and the melody on different channels. Just happened to have one of the cd's from it here at work

Thanks Matt, I'll go see if the Whistle shop has it.

[Wanderer]

Thanks for the info on ABC's i didn't know they could do all those things.

Well, ABC's CAN'T really do all of those things. ABC is just a text format for describing notes. But there is a lot of software out there (free and otherwise) that can do all of those things.

I was just trying to resist posting the same thing... Yeah, ABC is just
the format that makes it possible for software to do those things. But
the ABC files are just data that can't really DO anything themselves.
Semantics, really, I suppose...

yeah..only reason I wanted to point it out was because I could see someone reading this thread, going to JC's, getting a ton of ABC files, and going "these don't do anything!"

Thanks for the verification Matt!

[shadeclan]

Pursuant to an interesting discussion in another thread . . . I've begun to wonder how many of us in whistleland are comfortable, or proficient sight readers of music.

Count me out. For my 14th birthday, I asked my mother if I could STOP piano lessons. Basically, I'm a "decoder". I have never had any desire to play a musical instrument or to learn to read music until I came across the tin whistle.

Does reading music matter - is it an important skill? I have assumed so, but am I wrong - at least in the context of Irish folk music?

On the other hand, I would think regular music notation would be important to preserve the music for others to play. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe any other type of notation is as sophisticated as regular music notation in communicating the original intent of the author.

The importance of a written language is to preserve and transmit (as closely as possible) the original intent of the author. Civilizations which had no written language are all but lost to study. Certainly, music as beautiful as Irish music demands a language which can transmit and preserve, as closely as possible, the music as it was originally intended to be played.

I await my education...

You and me both!:D

[colomon]

(Colomon: most of my 1-bit black and white gif files run about 7K. Smaller than what you're getting with PNG, but much bigger than ABC to be sure)

I don't use 1-bit black and white, I use grey scale so I can get proper anti-aliasing in there. Which is why my music has far fewer visible jaggies than yours does.

[fearfaoin]

I don't use 1-bit black and white, I use grey scale so I can get proper anti-aliasing in there. Which is why my music has far fewer visible jaggies than yours does.

Oh, so it's not a resolution problem, it's a color depth/aliasing problem.
Interesting. What do you use to output greyscale files from abc? I
don't see such an option in abcm2ps, which is what I use, because
less jaggedness would be lovely.

yeah..only reason I wanted to point it out was because I could see someone reading this thread, going to JC's, getting a ton of ABC files, and going "these don't do anything!"

Too true.

[Wanderer]

(Colomon: most of my 1-bit black and white gif files run about 7K. Smaller than what you're getting with PNG, but much bigger than ABC to be sure)

I don't use 1-bit black and white, I use grey scale so I can get proper anti-aliasing in there. Which is why my music has far fewer visible jaggies than yours does.

Agreed That's the trade off I ended up making to compromise file size and image quality as best I could. I'm not terribly unhappy with the results. I originally was running greyscale gif converted from 96dpi TIFF, about 20-30K in size, but had a few complaints from dialup users. I imagine that'll be even less of an issue in 3-5 years.

At the time I made the choice, PNG wasn't well-supported in IE, and, well, I think the images look good enough to not go back and redo all thousand-or-so of them now

[Crysania]

I've been a lifetime note reader and sight read on D whistle at speed (including ornaments) very well. It's a rare tune I completely stumble over. Since I play clarinet, I can sight read well on G whistle without thinking much (it's like the lower half of the clarinet).

I can sight read to some degree on other whistles, but I have to jump through hoops and start seeing them as scale degrees (in my head: do, re, mi, etc.) in order to do it.

Usually the easiest for me is to dump it into finale, transpose it to a key I'd play on D whistle, and sightread from that.

~Crysania