HELP!!! Please send me all exercises in the scale of G for the tin whistle.

I can’t find two of three exercises in the scale of G that I know of. This is the one I already know:
G, A, B, C natural, D, E, F, G, F, E, D, C natural, B, A, G

First, Olivia, calm down - it’s going to be alright. Here are some exercises in the key of G:

http://www.nigelgatherer.com/whistle/tut_6/6-2.html

and then a wee tune:

The Rakes of Mallow http://www.nigelgatherer.com/whistle/tut_6/6-3.html

Patience and perseverence will stand you in good stead. Good luck!

Yes, do relax, it’s just music, it’s supposed to be fun. Enjoy your playing 🙂 What instrument do you play?

I play the tin whistle. And I have calmed my frustrated self ;) Thank you Nigel Gatherer for the links.

Yes do relax please. Playing the whistle isn’t a matter of life and death. It’s more serious than that 🙂
A friend of mine who has had difficulty mastering the whistle, reckons her whistle playing friends had to sell their souls to the devil in order to master the instrument.
It’s anybody’s guess as to what sacrifice a fiddle player might have to make.

Thankfully I’m not that desperate :D But I was bothered that I couldn’t figure out the excercise from an online tutorial. . .

The best exercises are the tunes themselves. If a particular phrase is giving you trouble, isolate it and practise it.

As for playing scales (such as the one you cite in your post), this is useful as a beginner, to familiarise yourself with where the notes are and to learn the breath control to get each note sounding clearly. But once you have this under your belt, I don’t think that practising scales regularly gives you any particular advantage - it just takes up time that could be better spent learning and playing tunes.

Thank you that helps, I was wondering if people who were better at their instruments did scale practices, and now I know 🙂 What is left for me is to practice my scales and get to that level.

I occasionally practise scales mainly g.
isolating difficult bits and practising seperately is good

Back in university when I was studying Baroque flute, which has a large number of strange counterintuitive fingerings, my teacher used a very simple exercise. He used it for any instrument (flute, recorder, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, etc) and for any key/scale. Whistle fingering by comparison is extremely easy, but I’ve used this exercise with beginners when you get around C natural and ‘going over the break’ which is where beginners usually have problems. I’ve also used this exercise with beginning uilleann students especially around Bottom D and C natural/middle D, the biggest problem areas. All it is, in G, is:

GAGA GAGA GABAG… (so dead easy here but wait)
ABAB ABAB ABCBA…. (C is natural) (a hair tricky to get clean)
BCBC BCBC BCdCB… (all C’s natural) (quite tricky to get spotlessly clean for a beginner)
CdCd CdCd CdedC…

and so forth.

This would be using
oxx ooo
or
oxx oox
for C natural, the most usual fingerings, though with some whistles
oxx xox
which is a hair flatter, is more in tune.

The other great drill are arpeggios which for G Major is
DGB dgb gdB G…

I would practice them all, both with C naturals and C sharps
DF#A df#a f#dA F#D…
EGB egb geB GE…
and so forth up the scale.

The highest note ordinarily seen in traditional Irish flute is c, so for example the arpeggio for A minor (using C naturals) and A Major (using C sharps) would be
EAC eac aeC AE…

C natural in the 2nd octave usually being oxo xxx.

Thanks for all that. I’ll soon be able to play my tunes better with all this scale work!

If you look at lesson 4 in Nigel Gatherer’s tutorial (linked above) he gives an excercise in D that I found really useful (and tricky) when transposed up to G like this:

| GBAc Bdce | dBcA BG A2 | GBAc Bdce | dBcA dB G2 ||
| gece dBGB | cAdB cA G2 ||

Look to the 50 tunes of what on this site is called the Dow List (if you click on my user name, you can find it embedded amongst some advice on accompanying Irish music). There are some nice G tunes on the list that you can work on. A tune I encountered about a year ago, Jimmy Ward’s Jig, is a nice G tune for a new whistler, and fits nicely into a single octave on the whistle.
Hang in there, and keep playing. In time, it all sorts itself out. And don’t be afraid to have fun along the way.
Enjoy!

Thanks! I will stick with it. Now that I’ve started I can’t go back as I am sure all musicians feel.