Good names for a solo whistle album?

Serious, profound, tongue-in-cheek, silly or downright rude - have at it!

(Also, while i’m thinking about it, any suggestions for tunes which would go well with The Sunny Hills of Beara?)

Sunny Hills of Beara…. Into another John Dwyer tune: The Fox in the Thatch. Played here by Nollaig and Arty… https://youtu.be/EM7y3Fh5QDQ

play video

No messing - gotta be played in key of F as written!

My two-pennorth for the album title:

“Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad”
-originally a poem by Robert Burns
-also the title of a ghost story by M R James

One option you have, among many: You could ask chatGPT for a list of ten possibilities, telling it about your persona, but you’d also have to describe in several lucid sentences the theme you want to conjure up. Also, if you describe to it your preferred audience and their values, what inspires them etc. , then that would improve the results too.

Since you’ve asked about “The Sunny Hills Of Beara”, that must be a tune you like. That’s as good a recording title as any, assuming it hasn’t been done before.
It would also matter what kind of music you’re putting on the recording. Can we assume it will be Irish ?

@Kenny - It will be 100% Irish. Just some nice steady-away playing or so i hope.

I don’t know if i want to sell it or anything - who wants to rush out and buy a solo whistle album? Well, apart from me! - this last 6 months, I’ve become aware of my musical mortality because i’ve got some kind of problem with my hands thats getting worse. Paradoxically i’m enjoying playing much more now i know it might not last forever. It strikes me to be grateful that i can play a bit now.

But i want to record some shtuff - mostly for me to look back on if i’m not playing in the future and i get nostalgic! The stuff i’ve been recording recently’s come out alright, surprisingly. Perhaps because i’m at peace with it.

@Atsunrise: I discovered chatgpt just recently, its changed my life! But it has a bit of a blind spot for Irish music. Although it does provide a very commendable list when you ask it who the best tin whistle players are…

Blow It All
You Know How to Whistle, Don’t You?
When the Whistle Blows
Blowing the Whistle
Hear That Lonesome Whistle
The Eagle’s Whistle

How to finger your whistle right!

Blow Out

The Whistleblower
Blowing up a Storm
Fipple Ripples
…and from Yorkshire:
Reet Sweet Tweet Feat

Given your motivation for the album, you could make reference to that.

A Whistler’s Farewell

“Whenever I feel afraid” or if that’s too subtle -
“ I whistle a happy tune”.

As for something to go after The Sunny Hills of Beara, it depends on your feel for the set, you might want to go in to any number in D major or A something, but if you want to stick to F/Dmin then try The Rolling Hills of Bellevue, an Oliver Schroer tune which for some unfathomable reason doesn’t yet appear in the database here; but that may be for copyright reasons, I suppose (although others of his are here).

Slow Blow

It’s a Real Blow

You Can Whistle!

1. ‘If you like Stridulant Shrieking, Raucous Squealing, Earsplitting Squawking, Shrill Squalling, Grating Wailing or Harsh Caterwauling This Is The Album For You.’
2. ‘Wow! That’s What I Call Cacophony Vol XXXVIII’

“Two thumbs and willing to whistle”

You grinning maniacally on the cover with two thumbs up (whistle in each hand) pointing at yourself.

Can’t wait!

Way back at the start of the nineties, I was working in a prestigious national collecting agency in Canberra. It should have been a dream job, but the recently formed organisation was wracked with interpersonal rivalries, power struggles, dodgy agendas, etc. I regularly found myself in a quandary, not knowing how best to proceed with the work that clearly needed doing without the support of those who wielded the power. Even the word quandary was bothering me, and it particularly annoyed me that it didn’t seem to have clues as to how to escape its grasp. I probably invented the verb form, to Quander. And then the adjective, Quandering. Even that gave some relief. So then I wrote a tune, possibly my first, to give further expression to my situation. I called it The Quandering Whistler. It was a deliberately happy tune, seeking to make light of the seemingly intractable position. No point in adding depression to helplessness. It wasn’t long after that that I decided to toss in the very well-paying job and take my chances in the financially improbable worlds of community broadcasting and flute making. And then go cold turkey into flutemaking. Still here!

Imagine my surprise when some years later, my tune turned up in an on-line publication: https://www.bushtraditions.org/music/cont_trad/abcweb/htm/Quandering_Whistler_The_42.htm
I have no idea where they got it from!

So, my reason for telling you the above is perhaps you could conjure up a word or expression that describes the feelings that are driving you, and use that in your title. Doesn’t even have to be a real word!

This evokes to me the great album “Idir dhá Chomhairle” by
Áine Uí Cheallaigh with Dónal Lunny. A fitting variation to that title might be:

“A bheith i sáin, idir dhá fheadóig stáin … “

Is that the Dónal Lunny that stands at the back of things?

Cannae be. He’s in front of 6 musicians here :
https://youtu.be/mvBFLeughic

play video

Thanks for the story about your tune, Terry.

https://bushtraditions.wiki/tunes/index.php/Quandering_Whistler_(The)

Oops! My link does not seem to work in the thread. It should show lots of information including notes below the abcs and an mp3 recording. It works for me on Mozilla & Chrome. Don’t know why it’s empty on here.
Cheers!
edit: I see it now. The closing parenthesis isn’t highlighted in the url. How do I fix that?

Right now i’m liking ‘The Spirit Level’ as an album title (after the Heaney collection) And also because when i was looking at whisky stills some of the pipes coming out of them look like a whistle with holes.

“Shaking the Barley”

Don’t know what’s going on there, AB. They seem to have more than one site and the WIKI site seems unreliable. These links work for me:

https://www.bushtraditions.org/music/cont_trad/abcweb/htm/Quandering_Whistler_The_42.htm

https://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=bushtraditions.wiki/tunes/index.php/Quandering_Whistler_(The).no-ext/0001

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dVjFN6VjT6UJ:bushtraditions.wiki/tunes/index.php/Quandering_Whistler_(The)&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-d

The site is working now. It does get overloaded eventually & give a 509 error. However, if you can catch it when it’s working there is a lot of stuff. It’s just not currently set up to deliver everything when the visits increase. Go easy & don’t expect it to function like thesession (it is more sporadic).

Ag casadh foinn