An Ghaoth Aneas - The South Wind (Tune #1)

This is a very old tune. It's hard to put a date on a folk tune. Most of the time, they evplve over a number of years and through the memories of dozens or hundreds or thousands of performers. And each of those performers may make tiny little changes each time they play the tune, so one tune can diverge into countless variants. Occasionally a folk tune can be traced to a single author, but I wasn't able to find anything definitive in this case. It probably goes back to the late 1700's, but it could be much older.

You can find an entry for An Ghaoth Aneas on the Session website here: http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/601.

I recorded this last Fall on my Dixon high D.

An Ghaoth Aneas

Local Musician Releases New Celtic Album

Here's an article from The Portland Press Herald about Matt Shipman's new album "Solitary Wander".

I bought a copy and gave it a listen. He's an amazing guitarist, and while his style isn't strictly what some people would call Celtic, I like the "If it Sounds Celtic, It Is Celtic" perspective. It's also pretty obvious he's a Chieftains fan, which I respect.

In the article, he says that there is "a great Irish music scene here in Portland and in Maine," which I was glad to hear. I haven't found this scene myself, but then I don't get out much.

So check out his album. Also, check out his website: http://shippymusic.com/.

Making Noise: Matt Shipman embraces the diversity of Celtic music | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram

Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation

This has nothing whatsoever to do with whistles. It's just awesome.

And it answers the question "How would Batman land on Mars?"

Sadly lacking in whistly-ness

For a blog about whistle-playing, this has had shockingly little whistle playing. That will hopefully change soon - a project that's been taking up a bunch of my time is pretty much done, and in January, my job's going to be taking up less of my time. Much less of my time. None of my time, in fact. Unless I find another job.

I'll also post the link to the Tony and the Tin Whistle podcast, as soon as I put together an episode I'm proud of. That should be pretty soon.

Already Started - but a Slight Change of Plans...

The plan was that I would work on playing all 110 tunes in a book of Irish Whistle Tunes, and if I succeeded in learning all of them (and recording them once to my satisfaction) I would consider myself worthy of a Burke Brass Session High D whistle. 

Here's the thing: I checked Ebay a couple of months ago, and there was a beautiful Burke up for auction - exactly what I wanted! And cheap, too! So I bid all I could on it, and won. So now I have a Burke, and I don't have a mission.

But, still, am I worthy of the Burke? Soon I'll be posting recordings of myself playing the Burke, and let the world have its say.

Almost Ready to Get Going!

Huzzah! I think I've figured out the technical stuff for this blog! I need to do some testing of things, make sure I can record MP3s, make sure I can link to the website where I'll be storing them, and then we're off!

One thing I want to point out: One of my goals is to become a better whistler. So you can figure I'm starting from a point where I'm not a very good whistler. My hope is that the later recordings will be significantly better than the earlier recordings.

So don't judge the early recordings too harshly, is what I'm saying.

-Tony