Dan at Necessary Roughness asked the following question “I don’t know anything about your whistle, but one # in the key of G makes for slightly more readability than two-sharp D 🙂 Not that big a difference though.” To my Post on about transposing “A Mighty Fortress” But since I can not do table formatting in comments I will post the answer here so that I can use table tags in the answer. So here goes my answer.
Dan on the Tin Whistle, I just look at the key signature just to see how to play the C, to give idea how it works the finger is as follows.
| HOLE | A | B | C | C# | D | E | F# | G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | X | X | O | O | X | X | X | X |
| 2 | X | O | X | O | X | X | X | X |
| 3 | O | O | X | O | X | X | X | X |
| 4 | O | O | O | O | X | X | X | O |
| 5 | O | O | O | O | X | X | O | O |
| 6 | O | O | O | O | X | O | O | O |
So for me the key of D and G are just as easy as each other. and for transposing the song would look at this.
| Key | DO | RA | ME | FA | SO | LA | TE | DO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D | D | E | F# | G | A | B | C# | D |
| G | G | A | B | C | D | E | F# | G |
| C | C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C |
So as you can see going from the key of C to D is just upping the notes by only about one in most cases and in 2 cases only 1 1/2 step. For the key of G it would be 5 notes in 7 cases and in one case 5 1/2 steps. So for me I felt that it was just easier to go up to the key of D was best for me.
Mike, thanks! Learning about wind instruments is quite nifty.
Your Welcome. I will tell you one instrument I would love to learn. That is the Piano, I tried 3 times when I was younger, but I failed to learn it. I just had trouble when I had to start to play 2 or more notes. I guess I just have to work with only one note at a time.