How to Find Irish Whistle Tunes
		So you have a tin whistle.  You've learned the fingerings and can play notes in the higher and lower octaves.  You've learned a few basic tunes from a whistle tutorial or from a private instructor.  You've listened to lots of CDs of traditional Irish music, and you have a few favorite tunes that you are eager to play on your whistle.  Or perhaps you've sat through a few of your area's local sessions, have made notes of the tunes they have been playing, and you want to practice those tunes so you can participate at the next session. How you find a specific tune to play on your whistle? The answer to this question is very closely related to your preferred style of learning the whistle, (i.e. learning by listening vs. learning by reading sheet music).  In an ideal world, you would live a few blocks from an Irish pub whose premises is always graced with the presence of an expert whistler who knows every tune ever devised and who is always willing and able to patiently teach you the tunes that strike your fancy.  If you live in such a world, log off your computer now, grab your whistle and go learn some tunes the "right and proper" way.  Still here?  Me too.  So what do we do? One easy way to find tunes is to get one of the Tutorials that is out on the market.  These usually come with music for about 100 or so tunes, and usually also come with recordings of those tunes to help you out. Another good source of traditional Irish music is the Web.  A musical notation program called ABC is used extensively to notate, print and even play Irish tunes.  There are several sites on the web with databases containing literally thousands of Irish tunes that you can search and download for free. Click here to download traditional irish music, including an abc program and to find databases of thousands of Traditional Irish tunes in abc format available for free on the web. For purists, the only true way to get tunes is to attend sessions and to learn the tunes by ear.  While its probably not practical for most of us to rely on session attendance as our sole means of learning, I've learned a lot from sessions I've attended and from the experience of attending virtual sessions online.  So if you've been spending a lot of time home alone with your whistling and dont feel youre getting anywhere, check out your local Sessions, and even if you dont play, just sit in and absorb.  You may be surprised how it affects your playing.
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