To the best of my memory, I was nine when Santa Claus got the three boys a Clarke's tin whistle each for Christmas. He did not supply classes to go with the whistles, so we were left to our own devices to master the instrument.
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Clarke's original tin whistle
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There was a little instruction leaflet with the whistle, showing you how to position your fingers to get the various notes. The scale illustrated was the diatonic scale (Doh, Ray, Me, Fah, Soh, La, Tee, Doh) in the key of C. It also mentioned that you could get sharps and flats by half-covering some holes.
The sheet music of some simple tunes were provided. I remember that one of them was "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."
I was somewhat familiar with sheet music, because I was in the church choir. Generally speaking, I could follow notes up and down, but knew the size of the jump only by having previously learned the tune from the choir-master. Faced with a fresh sheet, I was not able to read the tune.
With the Clarke's instruction leaflet, I could, with time and effort, figure out how to decipher the notes; and could gradually work out how the tune sounded.
I could not play by ear; i.e., listen to a tune and then play it on the whistle. This was partly due to the fact that I could not guess the key from the oral presentation. (The clue to guessing the key is to listen to the tune, and then hum the first note that comes into your head. This will generally turn out to be the tonic note of the tune just heard, i.e. the Doh, and the key in which the tune is written. If not, hum a second intuitive note: that should be it now).
It was easier for me to blow random notes on the whistle and make up my own tunes. If I rehearsed such a tune several times, I could remember it for the future. However, if I just blew it once or twice, I found it was forgotten next day. So, I began to take a note of my little tunes. I recorded them, in a jotter, in tonic sol-fa, like the following:
This was a sufficient reminder for me, but not an adequate record to pass the tune on to others. I bought a little music copy book, but it posed insoluble problems. I would have to figure out the time signature (how many beats in a bar) and decide actual time value of each note. For example, my above note suggests a longer value for the first, third, fourth and sixth note in the first line (and, though not indicated, follow suit on the other lines). But is this one-and-a-half or two, or three, beats, or just one beat with an emphasis? Then I would have to decide where the bars go. There was also a problem of choosing the right key, for I would not know whether I had written it too high or too low. (Initially, I would write it in the key of C, since that was the key of the Clarke's whistle, but, later on, I would try it in D or G, which are the keys appropriate to the D whistle, which is the whistle most often used in folk sessions in Ireland).
On a number of occasions throughout my life, I renewed the task, but never got very far. It never mattered, because it was never anything of consequence.
Then, in 2019, I bought a software package, with the intention of putting my Joyce airs (tunes I had composed to some of James Joyce's poems) down on paper (and disk) at last.
This has a number of benefits, not the least of which is that I instantly know, as soon as I key in a few notes, whether I have got it right. (Sibelius lets you hear the notes you have just written. When I put a tune on paper, out of my ignorance, I did not know whether, when someone played it from my sheet music, it would actually sound right).
My Sibelius software, when I choose to enter a NEW tune, allows me to choose whether to write the tune in Treble or Bass Clef, allows me to choose the Time Signature and the Key.
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| Sibelius software: setting Key and Time Signature |
Then, to add a note, using the mouse, I could drag the appropriate symbol from the KeyPad:
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| Inserting notes |
There are other ways of inserting notes: playing on a musical keyboard or using hot keys. For a beginner, dragging with the Mouse was easily mastered.
Soon I had all the notes of the tune entered, could add an automatic simple guitar accompaniment, type in the name of the tune, and Bob's Your Uncle, I had a printable version.
I might not be sure at this point what would be the name of the tune or whether it would be fast or slow, noisy or quiet, how many repeats, what instruments to use, would there be a few introductory bars and how it would end.
For the purposes of demonstration, I now give the tune a temporary name and quickly cobbled words. Behold:
I can play the tune, in Sibelius, decide the tempo, add instruments, evaluate and change until I am happy with the result. The name of the tune now changes to Peace On Earth and I convert it into an Audio File for playing on PC or Disk. Voilá:
Still no words, but does it need any?
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