L.E. McCullough, 121 Favorite Irish Session Tunes.
L.E. McCullough's tin whistle tutorial comes very highly recommended by the Chiffboard. L.E. McCullough is a highly accomplished and well-regarded whistler, and his sited can be viewed at www.feadiniste.tripod.com L.E. McCullough really outdid himself with this tutorial. As best I can tell (being still a newbie) the 121 tunes are as advertised (popular common session tunes) -- something not necessarily to be taken for granted with every compilation. In fact, I was spurred to purchase this book/CDs when, after having received a playfully taunting post on the Chiffboard to just buy "121 F.I.S.T." already (we were talking about the tune "Off to California", and I had posted a request for a copy of the tune in abc format), two days later, at a local slow session, everyong starts playing "Off to California" --- reading from 121 F.I.S.T.!. While there is no one single bible of session tunes, 121 F.I.S.T. is probably one of the more universally used and recognized. Oh, and the CD's are excellent: each tune is played twice--once slowly without much ornamentation, then once with full ornamentation, phrasing, etc. The tempo of both is slow and manageable, making it easy to play along with the CD (though the second versions tend to be faster). I must say this is one advantage over Cotter's CD offering...all of her tunes are played only once, at full speed with full ornamentation, which is fine for listening to learn the sound of the tune but tougher to play along when learning the tune.
On the down side, some have taken issue with the chords used to accompany the tunes, as well as the particular "settings" used by McCullough in the tunes as a whole. I'm not sure how valid these criticisms are, quite frankly, but my take on the matter is simple: this tutorial will help a beginner get to the stage of whistling compentency where he/she can then modify and customize the tunes to suit their personal taste or the local predilections of their particular session. So its all good.
