I'm back and beginning again (was Midi file recommendations)

[KatieBell]

Hello all! I've been away for quite some time attending to family affairs. I've been really missing learning to whistle and have now gotten back to it. I'm teaching myself Mona's Delight right now and the little is doing MUCH better with Twinkle, Twinkle.

In the mean time, I've lost all my midis with a computer crash. I use them with Tablature Karaoke which shows penny whistle tabs from midi files. Do you have any midis you recommend?

Katie

*Edited to see if it lets me change the title since the thread doesn't really match it any longer.

[breqwas]

1) You'd better learn reading dots. It's more easy than fingering charts when you're used to it.
2) Then you can get tunes in ABC format - there are LOADS of them - and your ABC software will show you the dots and play them in midi.

[fearfaoin]

I'm not a fan of learning by MIDI (you miss out on a lot of the rhythms
that are important, so make sure you listen to recordings too, when you
can), but if you create an account on thesession.org, any tune you find
will have a MIDI link under the Download tab.

http://www.thesession.org

[MTGuru]

Ditto ... and ditto.

Katie, since you're starting fresh, can an experienced player convince you to dump the midis and whistle tabs, and stick to learning from real music and, if needed, standard notation (or ABC equivalent)? Please?

[KatieBell]

OK. I'm willing to learn. It isn't easy to re-learn, but it will only get harder later on.

Is standard notation different from "real music" as in 5-line scores? I know it is basic, but I want to make sure I'm on the same page from the start.

I'd forgotten that TheSession has Midis. I regularly get their updates, but don't ever check there. I need to make a new habit.

[fearfaoin]

Is standard notation different from "real music" as in 5-line scores?

Yup. Looks like this:

[MTGuru]

Well, by "real music" I actually meant that sound-waves-in-the-air thingy that a lot of people seem to like.

[KatieBell]

OK.

I can "translate" the scored music by saying "Every Good Boy Does Fine" on each note and making it a letter, but I don't yet know which letter corresponds with which holes, so I then make the letter into numbers by consulting an illustrated chart. I figured by ear and with illustrations I'd be doing better.

So what do I do instead? For instance, I'm learning the song Mona's Delight, which I first heard on Pandora Radio played by Golden Bough. So instead of searching out a midi and playing it, you'd suggest... what?

[jemtheflute]

Hi Katie - good to see you around! I'd wondered a few times what had happened to you and how the littley was getting on.......

I concur with the others - while the MP3 conversions on The Session and elsewhere are useful, that usefulness is very limited. Getting an ABC software such as ABCEdit or ABCExplorer (freeware!) installed and pasting in ABCs of tunes you want, playing them back with the midi players those programmes bring with them AND viewing the standard music notation they generate gives you just about all the flexibility you could wish for - and ABCEdit even has a basic whistle tablature option built in! Well worth investigating, I'd say, for your purposes.

[ahogrelius]

ABCEdit even has a basic whistle tablature option built in! Well worth investigating, I'd say, for your purposes.

That's true for ABCExplorer as well. It even has the options of generating tablature for whistles in all keys.

Cheers,
Anders

[fearfaoin]

I can "translate" the scored music by saying "Every Good Boy Does Fine" on each note and making it a letter, but I don't yet know which letter corresponds with which holes

You really need to memorize the fingerings that go with each letter name,
and with each printed note on the staff (without having to think of the
letter name in between). Try fingering a scale starting with all holes
covered, but instead of blowing into the whistle say the letter that goes
with that fingering out loud:

cover all holes, say "D"
lift your bottom finger, say "E"
lift the next finger, say "F#"
lift the next finger, say "G" (at this point, only 3 fingers are on the whistle)
lift the next finger, say "A"
lift the next finger, say "B"
lift your top finger, say "C#" (this is all holes open)

Now, go back down by covering the first hole and saying "B", etc.

You might also find it useful to take a sheet of printed music and drawing
in the fingering under each note. We used to do this in band class in the
5th grade to get used to seeing a note and thinking of a fingering.

[jemtheflute]

I forgot to say last post that I agree with the others who also advocated working from recordings.

Meanwhile, these may be helpful/save some work.....



and a very simple Welsh tune that mostly moves scale-wise in the 1st 8ve only, with a very simple structure - a near-perfect beginners' tune:



Here too is the ABC notation for it -

T:Y Crwtyn Llwyd
T:(The Pale Lad)
C:Traditional (arr. J Hammond)
O:Welsh
M:2/4
L:1/8
Q:100
K:Em
V:1
G>F ED | EF G2 | FA GF | E2 E2 :|] F>G AB | AG F2 |
F>G AB | AG F2 | G>F ED | EF G2 | FA GF | E2 E2 |]

Paste it into one of the programmes we suggested and you can play it on the 'puter to play along to.

One hitch, though - so far as I know you can't make either the ABCEdit or Explorer midi players observe the repeats (Can anyone help out here? The default settings certainly ignore dotted double bar repeat signs. Only ABCMus observes them properly and that's less easy to use.)

I've got this stuff to hand because of the Primary School project I'm doing with conduit-tube piccolos (made by the kids) - I just modified the fingering chart a little from the piccolo version......... I've got some very simple moving drone type harmony parts for Y Crwtyn Llwyd if you want them.

[walrii]

IMHO, when playing from sheet music, one wants to have the eye see the written note on the page then the ear hear that note come from the instrument without any intermediate steps or translations. The fingers should move automatically to their positions to make the note come out. Acquiring this skill is not easy at first but goes surprisingly quickly once you get started. I'd suggest playing the scale for your whistle (D scale - D whistle) up and down while looking at the dots. You already know how it goes: the lowest note, D, is all fingers down and you lift one finger as you go up each note. Quicker than you think, your fingers will begin moving to where they need to be as soon as you look at the dot.

Edited to add: if you are looking for tunes to listen to but can't wait for snail-mail to deliver the CD you ordered, try iTunes or one of the other online music stores. iTunes has a surprising list of Irish music and you can download them instantly for US$0.99 per tune or US$9.99 per album. iTunes has a back-up funcition that lets you copy your purchases to a CD so you have a physical copy in case you computer crashes. Real music, instant gratification, what could be better?

[lesl]

MT Guru said

Well, by "real music" I actually meant that sound-waves-in-the-air thingy that a lot of people seem to like.

and KatieBell said

OK. ... So what do I do instead? For instance, I'm learning the song Mona's Delight, which I first heard on Pandora Radio played by Golden Bough. So instead of searching out a midi and playing it, you'd suggest... what?

It looks like nobody directly answered you on this - I'll try. First - If you go here, http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind you can type in the name of any tune to get midis.

http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tun ... 0&thresh=5
shows a scad of Mona's Delights.

I would listen to the clip, be it a recording or a midi, and pick out the sounds on my whistle. I don't know the tune but a google brought up this http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/mus ... +Songs.htm - is that it?

The first note in this clip is below the whistle but you could play a corresponding sound, just higher, with your top 2 fingers down.
Then the tune itself starts after that first note, on all fingers down.
You play that sound twice like they do on the recording.
next sound is one finger off
next sound is 2 fingers off..

If you listen to the melody until you've got it in your head, then you can play it back slowly in your head while picking out the notes on the whistle. A tried and true method if you don't have someone to teach it to you directly. Since you use midi's I'm thinking you already do this?

walrii said

IMHO, when playing from sheet music, one wants to have the eye see the written note on the page then the ear hear that note come from the instrument without any intermediate steps or translations. The fingers should move automatically to their positions to make the note come out.

What I've described uses the music (the sounds) omitting the other steps. When playing from music (the sounds), your ear hears the sound and your fingers move to their positions to play the sound. It's a skill, so the more you do it the easier it gets.

Writing this out is much more complicated than it is.. Notation has its uses but I always learn a tune without it. When I write down a tune after learning it, I use abc for convenience. But you don't need it.

Good luck!

[KatieBell]

OK. I'm reading and re-reading to take it all in.

1. I'll practice my scales and arpeggios. Thanks for the recommended song, Jem!
2. I would like to learn music notation, so I'll use it when learning a tune.
3. I also like to play by memory, so I'll practice a piece I already learned that way.
4. Walrii, you said, "Real music, instant gratification, what could be better?" and I respond: free! LOL! I don't purchase music online because times are tough for all of us. But I want to learn, so I'm doing what I can with free tutorials, the awesome advice of those here, and practice.
5. Lesl, what I've been doing is identifying a song I hear as one I want to learn, searching out a midi of it, plugging the midi into Tablature Karaoke, and then playing along with the music as the little karaoke ball goes from one illustrated pennywhistle to another with the corresponding holes colored in. But now I'm going to download an ABC program and use that so I'll go from one note on a score to another instead.
6. I'm sure I missed some things and need to read again. How's this sound for now?

Katie