Whistle notation

[sugarfoot jack]

A friend of mine has told me about a system of notation used by Irish trad whistle players as an alternative to written music.

I have never seen an example of this or understand how it works, and my friend has no examples either - can anyone here shed light on this subject?

sfj

[Redwolf]

It's probably whistle tab. It's a diagram of the six holes of the whistle, with the holes to be covered in black and the uncovered holes in white.

Although, to be honest, most trad players either learn by ear, learn to read music, or both.

Redwolf

[Cayden]

this form of ABC notation would be common, especially in teaching context.
' to denote high octave _ to indicate a cut, the half moon symbol to indicate a roll.

[Loren]

Doesn't get any easier than that, nice having some basic ornamentation written in as well. Hey Peter, how many pages of ABC do you have in that book



Loren

[Cayden]

It's actually my son's this is one from his first whistle classes with Brid Donohue, he has stacks from his concertina classes with first Edel Fox and for the past two years with Noel Hill. This form of ABC works quite effectively.

[carrie]

That's how all my notes from my very first whistle class (with Larry Nugent) looked. Perfectly workable.

Carol

[sugarfoot jack]

That's the one Peter - excellent way of getting the tune across.

Is there a resource on the net anyone knows of for this stuff?

sfj

[Loren]

just type "ABC notation" into google.

[Blaydo]

That's exactly how our whistle teacher taught us here in Dublin. Though the rolls were marked with an R under the 3 or 4 notes to be rolled. High notes with the ' and brackets for variations and longer notes with _ after them.

[Bretton]

this form of ABC notation would be common, especially in teaching context.
' to denote high octave _ to indicate a cut, the half moon symbol to indicate a roll.

Mary Bergin used similar notation in a workshop I attended.

-Brett

[brewerpaul]

I'd still suggest learning to read "real" music. It's REALLY not any more difficult than these other forms of notation and once you know it you have access to thousands and thousands of tunes in all genres in print (paper or electronic)

[Cayden]

Well the question was 'is there a system generally in use among trad musicians' and yes there is and this is it. It's widely used and extremely practical in use. It's an extention of learning by ear as it serves as an aid to memory. But yes, staff notation is more versatile and has a wider use. All my students though read ABC notation and can't really be bothered with staffnoatation (even while msot of them are actually familiar with it)

[Jens_Hoppe]

Yes, it does look suspiciously like the shorthand Mary Bergin used in a class I attended some years back. Not quite ABC, of course, with the implicit lengths of non-default length notes being the hardest for me to get my head around (I still prefer "real" ABC for that).

[Wanderer]

I suspect that just writing out the note values is a lot quicker to do by hand than to make up sheet music, and probably a lot easier to read without a lot of additional practice or training. I had a friend who played ocarina who couldn't read traditional notation, and came up with a system very much like this to help himself out.

Either way, it's a form of "sheet music" as far as I can tell: you are using a piece of paper to guide you as to what notes to play. Whatever gets the job done.

[Cayden]

(I still prefer "real" ABC for that).

This system was referred to as ABC notation long before the internet invented the other one so 'real' is a relative thing