Traditional whistle and flute resources for various teaching settings

A selection of repertoire taught at workshops

• FluteFling Workshop March 2012 Tunes (PDF): tunes taught by Gordon at the pilot FluteFling half day workshop in 2012, plus some others. | The Belfast Hornpipe/ The Duke of Gordon’s Birthday/ The Duke of Gordon’s Birthday Harmony/ The Torryburn Lasses/ My Love is on the Ocean/ Ciamar a nì mi an Dannsa Dìreach?/ A Fisherman’s Song For Attracting Seals/ Patrick O’Connor’s No.2/ Patrick O’Connor’s No.1
• FluteFling Workshop May 2014 – Gordon’s tunes: Tunes taught by Gordon at the day-long workshop in Portobello, plus some others. | Hoirrionn O! air nighean an àirich (The Dairyman’s Daughter) versions 1 & 2/ House of Gray/ Sidlaw Hills
• The Border Gaitherin’ Tunes 2012 (PDF): As taught at Coldstream in 2012 and also with the whistlers at Fèis Fhoirt 2014 | Scotch Mary (Irish Molly)/ The Cameron Highlanders/ Hoirrionn O! air nighean an àirich (The Dairyman’s Daughter)/ Micho Russell’s Slide/ Scattery Island/ Farewell to Lisseycasey/ Laridé de Portobello (9 parts)
• Fèis Fhoirt Flute Tunes 2014 (PDF): The tunes I had prepared to teach at Fèis Fhoirt 2014. These are the same as the 2012 pilot workshop and are here for reference | The Belfast Hornpipe/ The Duke of Gordon’s Birthday/ The Duke of Gordon’s Birthday Harmony/ The Torryburn Lasses/ My Love is on the Ocean/ Ciamar a nì mi an Dannsa Dìreach?/ A Fisherman’s Song For Attracting Seals/ Patrick O’Connor’s No.2/ Patrick O’Connor’s No.1

Resources and repertoire for Portobello Music School Traditional Whistle class for children that ran for two years.

Please note that most of these tunes can be found in Fran Gray’s Hands on Scottish Tin Whistle, which can be bought from various specialist places such as Coda Music in Edinburgh, Scotland’s Music and a version in Gaelic at Fèisean nan Gàidheal. I have tried out various books and found it to be very useful as a teaching tool for children starting out on the whistle.

This book and those mentioned below make a good introduction for adults as well.

The recordings below are of me playing some of the traditional tunes that were taught in the class and can be played or downloaded using the widget below.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Other whistle books

Following Fran Gray’s book, there are few other books that are specifically for the whistle. However, this isn’t a big problem as most traditional tunes fit the instrument well. Once the basics have been learned, it is possible to use other books and for Scottish repertoire, Combined First & Second Ceilidh Collections for Fiddlers, comes with accompanying CDs and is available in various outlets.

These were originally published in two volumes (there are four in total), but without the CDs. The tunes are well-known and of a wide variety of type and level of difficulty.

Other books to look out for include Geraldine Cotter’s Traditional Irish Tin Whistle Tutor and Robin Williamson’s The Penny Whistle Book. There are quite a few Irish tutors tutors as well, most of which will be good.

 

Friday whistles

Resources to support a Friday whistle group I ran a few years ago. 

Tunes covered to date (see below for recordings of these)

The beginnings of a sheet music resource for the group: Friday Whistle Tunes PDF.

Reels

• Stomach Steinway Man (Iain Lowthian, reel)
• Drowsy Maggie (Irish reel)
• The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Irish reel)
• Music for a Found Harmonium (reel)
• The Maid Behind the Bar (Irish reel)
• The Sally Gardens (Irish reel)
• The Flogging Reel (uses F natural)
• Sleep Soond I’da Mornin’ (Shetland reel uses G#)
• The Johnstown Reel (Rebecca Knorr, slow reel)
• The Trip to Pakistan (Niall Kenny, reel)
• Oot be East da Vong (Shetland reel)
• S’iomadh Rud A Chunnaic Mi (reel)
• The Ivyleaf (Irish reel; link is to an old recording of mine on Bandcamp)/  The (In)Appropriate Dipstick (reel by Phil Cunningham and Iain MacDonald) This was inspired by the solo whistle player of a young Irish band called Tumbleweed. It’s a bit too fast in the video, but the pace is set by the guitar player.

Strathspeys, Schottisches, Barndances etc

• Calum’s Road (strathspey)
• Crossing the Minch (hornpipe, rolls)
• Canadian Barndances (various)

Jigs and 6/8 Marches

• The Heights of Cassino (extended version)
• Sixpenny Money (Irish jig)
• Jackson’s Bottle of Brandy (Irish jig)
• Tripping Upstairs (Irish jig)
• Jig Runrig (jig)
• The Seagull (pipe jig)
• The Dusty Windowsill (Irish jig) link is to my Bandcamp page; free to download.
• Rory McLeod (pipe jig)

Waltzes, Song airs and others

• The Star of the County Down (song air)
  
• Glencoe (waltz)
• Circle of the Ocean (waltz)
• Johnny Faa (song air)
• The Little Heathery Hill (Slowed Set Dance with F natural)
• The Skye Boat Song (including cuts, strikes and rolls)
• Loch Lomond (by ear)

Technique focus

A reminder of some of the techniques we have looked at.

• Cuts
• Strikes
• Rolls
• Rhythm for reels
• Breath pulse
• Tonguing v slurring
• Moving away from the page
• Improvising and variation within tunes
• Options when the melody drops below the range of the whistle
• High c natural
• Crans
• Waltz decoration
• Traditional phrasing emphasis
• Using chords and arpeggios to help pick up tunes by ear.
• Learning by ear.

Photo: Frday whistles (c) Gordon Turnbull