Andrew Wigglesworth
Just a few links. Me at other places on the web. Greenman Rising - I play with this band. Melodeons. Melodeon.net - melodeon discussion forum. Whistles. Chiff and fipple - tin whistle discussion forum. The big whistle - A shop with lots of whistles. Generation whistles - Made by a small company in Oswestry, Shropshire, known around the world and iconic in folk and traditional music. Great…
Jigs, single jigs, slides, slip-jigs etc. Alexandrine March Aid-memoire: #+html: I picked up “Marche Alexandrine” from an Old Hat Band recording many years ago. It is from Quebec. I was only able to find it online recently. It’s also not in any of my music books. http://www.webfeet.org/eceilidh/bands/old-hat-dance-band.html http://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Marche_Alexandrine…
Casadh an tSúgáin A classic Irish sean nos (old style) song, which translates as “The Twisting of the Hay Rope.” The song is about a young man who comes to a cottage, courting. The mother gets rid of him by getting him to help with the making of a hay rope. When the length of the rope means he’s outside the door, she slams the door shut, leaving him outside. The song is from the…
Reels, polkas, rants, Scotch measures etc. Not including hornpipes and schottishes. 3 Kerry polkas / Black Horse Polkas Three polkas that I learned early on whilst learning to play the melodeon. They were popular in Coventry sessions at that time and were often known as “The Black Horse Polkas” after a session in the Black Horse pub. One year in the late nineties I was at the Whitby…
Alexander’s Hornpipe Also known as Prunoble’s Hornpipes. Boys of school hill An obvious variant of “Boys of Blue Hill”, which itself has a rather mysterious history, possible North American origins and many different names. https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Boys_of_Bluehill_(The) Basically if you play Boys of Blue Hill as a dotted hornpipe and kind of “swing”…
Water can condense inside the windway in the head of a tin whistle and start to block the correct flow of air. Why does condensation happen? If enough heat is robbed from the incoming air stream from your lungs, then this will cause water droplets to start to form in the whistle windway. This could be because you are playing somewhere cold, and it can depend upon the design and materials of the…
Well, I’ve started (and then stopped) to put short videos on Tiktok. I’ve had to use my old phone so far, but at least it’s a simple process. However, I’m looking at other cameras so that I can make the sound and video a bit better. Why do this? Partly it’s a self-serving thing, a showcase for getting some more bookings, especially for dances. It’s also, of…
A song
NB: not all of these tunes are strictly waltzes. Elizabeth Claire Kinnersley house Lovely Nancy Margaret’s Waltz Margaret’s Waltz was written by Pat Shuldham-Shaw (1917-77, from Stratford-upon-Avon and widely known as Pat Shaw), the great enthusiast for English Country Dance, and highly influential composer of new tunes and dances in that style. He wrote Margaret’s Waltz to…
Centenary march, The Dr Fauster’s Tumblers Eynesham march Grand Turks March, The Jimmy Garson’s march La Morisque Marching through Georgia From the famous song. But, as a dance tune, is this a march or an American style square dance tune? Either I think, but I actually play is as a square dance type tune. Moncks march Rogues march A marxch in 2/4 Sir Sydney Smith’s march
Shreds and patches Written by John Kirkpatrick, a tune in 3/2, a triple hornpipe. The key to the cellar. An English triple hornpipe. The tune that was also used for the song “Cam ye o’er by France.”
TLDR: Buy a Generation D whistle. Stop worrying and start to learn to play it. Buy a Generation C and B flat whistle for even more fun. Now you can play and have formed an opinion. A tin whistle is a simple instrument, they can be made pretty cheaply and work well. Which brand should I buy? This is where the daftness comes out on web forums etc. Anonymous posters will declare this or that…
The tin whistle is a simple instrument and you’d think that how to place it in the mouth and blow it would be simple and obvious. That’s until I read some rather strange advice from anonymous people on the web. Bad and strange advice seems par for the course for the web, but I’ve seen this given on a tin whistle web forum (not Chiff and Fipple I hasten to add!) where beginners…
In my view, videos made of people playing whistles are basically worthless for judging the qualities of a tin whistle. What do they signify? They are more an indication of the microphone being used, the acoustics of the place where the recording was made, the skill of the player and the loudness and treatment of the recording. Not treating the recording (eg. compression, equalisation) is a…
People often assume that I chose to play the melodeon because there is something specifically special about the instrument that attracted me. That is, something about its sound or aesthetics. The answer is, no. I started playing the melodeon through a set of chance happenings. I decided to join a morris side (a Border Morris team that was just starting up), and that included some melodeon players.…
I play dance music that has developed over the last 400 hundred years or so in England. It is closely related to the traditional dance music in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Sometimes indistinguishable, sometimes in the more “English” versions of this shared tradition. The core of the music I play is “Country Dance” music; a dance music that has it’s origins somewhere…
This can be a touchy subject, and I certainly do not intend to offend anyone. In the ceilidhs and band events I play for we offer a professional service with expensive musical instruments and equipment. To be able to play events we have had many years of experience in performing and many thousands of hours of practice. In my view, booking an experienced dance musician is akin to engaging a plumber…
English social dance has something of a nomenclature problem, which comes from its long history and modern misconceptions or assumptions when using historical terms. Country dance The longest lived term is Country Dance. It is the term used in the earliest dance manuals or descriptions (16th/17th century), in the diaries of contemporaries like Pepys who described Country Dance at the royal court.…
See also my comments on “Bad Generation whistles?." It’s simply to help counteract some of the more hysterical comments you get about Generation whistles and demonstrate their worth as instruments and give anyone starting on the tin whistle confidence in buying a cheap whistle such as Generation. So, to showcase the Generation whistle here are some videos. I am, of course, not saying…
The story seems to have several variants: Beginner or inexperienced player writes on a discussion board that they didn’t want to buy a Generation because of the dangers of flaws, or had read about bad quality control of Generation whistles so they didn’t buy one. Beginner or inexperienced player buys a Generation whistle and cannot immediately play all the notes correctly, cannot…