colomon wrote:s1m0n wrote:Unless he's updated it, LE's method is 25 years old or more. When he published it, his was the only tutor for the whistle available.
My copy says "First published and Copyright 1976. Ths editon published and Copyright 1987."
Cool - so we can also have a competition about "who's got the oldest McCullough".
Mine says "<<copyright symbol>> L. E. McCullough 1976". The back cover has a note saying that an accompanying cassette tape is available from the publisher for $4.
The layout is interesting: pages are typewritten in Courier font. Headings are emphasised with underlining*. Chapter headings are show by three complete rows of asterisks. All paragraphs start with a indentation. Musical notation is all handwritten. Many parts read like an essay with pictures, I presume due to the difficulty of making sub-headings stick out.
This layout has a certain charm (reminds me of learning to touch-type on manual typewriters 25 years ago). But readable, it aint. So unless later editions are more reader-friendly, I'd recommend anything else.
(FWIW, I'm a newbie - note trad spelling! - have been playing for 2 years, but due to limited practice time I really only have about 6 months experience. Basically I'm "sh*t" ... but I get a lot of enjoyment from it, and that's all I do it for. Mostly I work on pub-standard tunes, so that I already know the rhythm, and just have to learn the notes. I learned enough about cuts and taps from McCullough to articulate some notes, beyond that I'm not worried about ornamentation at all. Maybe this will change in 10 years or so
MaryC
* For those who remember, "Underlining is for typewriters" was mantra from the book "The Mac is not a Typewriter" Some of us learned all we now know about layout from this wee gem.