Whistle While You Workshop

Hi,

No need to be able to read music notation. This workshop is not designed to be a typical sight-reading play-along session. The goal is to help free you from being stuck on music notation and to make you more comfortable with improvisation.

With all mics muted but mine I’ll play short examples of various fundamental musical theory principles. After each example participants will have a little time to experiment on their own. Pertinent questions, comments and whistle related discussion are welcome at any time.

I will be playing on a D whistle most of the time but since mics will be muted each participant is encouraged to have all of their favorite whistles in any key available to experiment with.

We’ll be playing around with major scales, minor scales, pentatonic scales, modes, arpeggios, and such. As we go we’ll be hanging lots of ornaments here and there to fancify our playing.

We’ll be touching base on whistle techniques such as tounging, slurring, as well as half-holing and cross-fingering to flatten a note, switching octaves, etc.

Towards the end of the session I’ll demonstrate whistle tweaking techniques I use to quickly improve the sound of a whistle. I'll be deburring the finger holes, and attempting to sharpen flat pitches for individual finger holes using a pocket knife sharpener. With the help of a magnifying glass and a small pocket knife blade (the shorter the point the better) I’ll be scraping away the flash (mold seams) from the mouthpiece's windway, windway exit, as well as the window sidewalls and edges.

I’ll be demonstrating my tweaking procedures using a brand new $5.99 Waltons Little Black Tin Whistle in D. If participants are interested I'll also tweak an $7.99 Key of C Waltons Irish Penny Whistle. When performing with Debby in the key of D I usually play a $16.99 triple nickle plated brass Oak Classic Pennywhistle in D. Guitar Center offers "Free delivery for orders over $25.00" so consider purchasing all 3 of these whistles.

There is no book available from us that supports this workshop but a PDF that includes the screens that are shared during the workshop will be emailed to participants along with their Zoom invitation ahead or each session.

Sincerely,
David