Ashokan Farewell/playable on a whistle?

[old duffer]

Greetings Folks - I am a newcomer to this forum and have been sitting "on the sidelines" for a fair amount of time. But now I have a question or two that I hope can be answered by those that have more knowledge than yours truly. The Civil War series by Ken Burns had a mournful beautiful song/air entitled Ashokan Farewell. Needless to say the song/air really moves me and I would like to be able to play it on the whistle. I have found the sheet music on the internet but various parts of the piece seem to be out of the range of a whistle. Some questions:

# Is Ashokan Farewell truly in range and can it be played on a whistle?

# Are there any recordings of this piece played on a whistle?

# If playable can any of you musicians put this tune into sheet music form? (ABC method is a technique that I have not yet mastered)

Peace/Peter

[Denny]

this should cover the first two
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_t ... ry=0&page=

an' da 3rd

[highland-piper]

Ashokan Farewell is invariably played in the key of D by fiddlers, as shown in the music above.

It obviously doesn't fit the whistle that way, because too much of the melody drops off the bottom, and the tune really doesn't work without those lovely arpeggios that walk up from A and G. Played up an octave, you loose important stuff off the top.

But if you transpose the tune to G it works. IIRC, there is one note that doesn't fit, but you can substitute around it satisfactorily.

[s1m0n]

If you use G fingering on a whistle in A, the tune ends up back at D again and you can play with fiddles, or play along with a recording.

[narrowdog]

this should cover the first two
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_t ... ry=0&page=

Just to add to Denny's link here's a link
to the finger chart to go with the youtube clip,
Ashokan Farewell is near the bottom of the page.

[HDSarah]

(ABC method is a technique that I have not yet mastered)

You need this link, the ABC Convert-A-Matic:
http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html

If you find on the net, or someone sends you, abc notation for a tune, you can paste it into the box at the above link, hit a button, and see the tune as sheet music. There's a further button to get a clean PDF file of the sheet music, and another button if you want to hear a midi version. The downside is that the print is pretty small.

ABC is really easy for jotting down simple tunes -- that's what it was designed for.
John Chambers's ABC Primer at
http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/d ... rimer.html
is a good introduction and can have you writing out simple tunes pretty quickly. I don't own any music notation software, so on the few occasions when I want to produce standard musical notation, I just write it out in abc and use the ABC Convert-A-Matic.

[Denny]

ABCs click the ABC tab

[brewerpaul]

Ashokan Farewell is invariably played in the key of D by fiddlers, as shown in the music above.

It obviously doesn't fit the whistle that way, because too much of the melody drops off the bottom, and the tune really doesn't work without those lovely arpeggios that walk up from A and G. Played up an octave, you loose important stuff off the top.

But if you transpose the tune to G it works. IIRC, there is one note that doesn't fit, but you can substitute around it satisfactorily.

Yes, to play it in G, where it works just fine you need one low C note. Matter of fact, that note in that tune was what gave me the idea to make my D+ whistle. As noted above, you can easily work around it in several ways.

[apack]

Sure, this works. There are ABC's for a whistle/flute version of this tune on thesession.org. Take a look at the discussion at http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/4997. The version posted by ceolachan works just fine for me. Turns out very well on a whistle.

[JTC111]

T:Ashokan Farewell
M:3/4
L:1/8
K:D
Ac|:d3 c BA|F4 EF|G3 F ED|B,2 D3 B,|A,2 D2 F2|A2 d2 f2|
|1 f3 g f2|e4 Ac :|2 A2 c2 e2|d4 FG ||A3 F D2|d4 A2|B3 c d2|
A F3 E2|F3 E D2|B,4 G,2|A,6|A4 FE|D2 F2 A2|=c6|
B3 c d2|A2 F3 D|A,2 D2 F2|A2 d2 F2|E2 D C2|D4 Ac :|

Can someone please explain to me how to read/play from this kind of notation?

[MTGuru]

http://abcnotation.com/

http://www.lesession.co.uk/abc/abc_notation.htm

[I.D.10-t]

Since different keys were mentioned Jens Wollschläger's ABC-Transposer might be of interest.

X:1
T:Ashokan Farewell
M:3/4
L:1/8
K:G
df|:g3 f ed|B4 AB|c3 B AG|E2 G3 E|D2 G2 B2|d2 g2 b2|
|1 b3 c' b2|a4 df :|2 d2 f2 a2|g4 Bc ||d3 B G2|g4 d2|e3 f g2|
d B3 A2|B3 A G2|E4 C2|D6|d4 BA|G2 B2 d2|=f6|
e3 f g2|d2 B3 G|D2 G2 B2|d2 g2 B2|A2 G F2|G4 df :|

You need this link, the ABC Convert-A-Matic:
http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html

If you use this be sure to add an X:1 above the title line or it will not display. See above example.

[pancelticpiper]

I first heard this tune on the Civil War soundtrack, and it sounded so Scottish to me that I assumed it was a traditional Scottish air.

It was full of the typical Scots fiddle air stuff, the "Scotch snaps" and turns etc.

However the sheet music above, and the way I've heard Irish fiddlers play it, removes all of that stuff and rounds it out into a waltzlike thing.

I play it on an A whistle and preserve the snaps and turns like I originally heard it.

To hear what I mean, follow the YouTube link above but scroll down to the videos that use the Civil War soundtrack version. The pair of pickup notes are slightly snapped, the third beat of the first bar is snapped, and there's a fat turn in bar two, and so it goes.

[Innocent Bystander]

I play it on an A whistle too.

I saw an interview with Jay Ungar saying he liked how the Scots and Norn Arish played it, with the snap, and that the Southern Irish musicians didn't give it that extra edge.

[david_h]

To hear what I mean, follow the YouTube link above but scroll down to the videos that use the Civil War soundtrack version. The pair of pickup notes are slightly snapped, the third beat of the first bar is snapped, and there's a fat turn in bar two, and so it goes.

Ah, thanks for pointing out that clip. I have squirrelled away the first two times through for future 'study'. I had read Jay Ungar's comment somewhere but found his own playing of it available on youtube a bit too fancy to for me to want to follow. Played as a waltz (or as syrupy as the orchestration at the end of that clip - but it does contrast well with the photos) I can see why many people don't like it. Do many traditional tunes have things like that almost two octave rise though ?