Learn Irish Tin Whistle with Whistleberry Tunes
Adventures on Irish Tin Whistle for Children and Their Adults!
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Fun and engaging Irish traditional music lessons: researched & developed especially for children.
What you Will Learn:
- begin by learning whistle basics such as (i) how to hold the whistle, (ii) the importance of warming up, and (iii) scales of D major and G major (i.e., the building blocks of all the tunes you will learn)
- progressively develop your aural learning skills
- develop technical musical abilities
- learn lots of old traditional tunes such as Dawning of the Day, Song of the Chanter, and Maggie in the Woods
- learn some new tunes composed especially for this course such as Tradoodle Do! and Faolán's frolics
- discover ways that you can decorate the tune with a range of ornaments such as cuts, taps, and bounces
- Children aged 7+ and their adults
- Families who want to learn music together at home
- Groups of children learning music in a school or community setting
- Anyone, including adults, who want to learn basic skills and Irish tunes on the tin-whistle
Welcome to Whistleberry Forest, a musical land of curiosity, creativity, and wonder!
Whistleberry Tunes has been designed by Dr. Thomas Johnston, an Irish traditional musician, educator, and researcher, with over 18 years experience teaching the tin whistle in Ireland and internationally.
Whistleberry Tunes draws on Thomas' experience as a traditional musician, but also as an educator and a researcher in the areas of Irish traditional music, music education, and theatre for young audiences. In designing Whistleberry Tunes, Thomas set out to create a series of music lessons that would be fun, meaningful, and engaging for children (and their adults) at home and at school.
The course is suitable for beginner whistle players of all ages, but in particular, it is geared towards children aged between 7 and 77.
How you will learn in Whistleberry Tunes is very similar to how you would learn in a traditional teaching and learning context.
Your Instructor
Musician, educator, researcher, Thomas Johnston's work lies in those spaces between Irish traditional music, performing arts for children and young audiences, community music, and music education practice and policy. He is Artistic Director of Ceol Connected, a company dedicated to promoting high quality and meaningful experiences of the traditional arts amongst children. He is also a lecturer in Irish traditional music, ethnomusicology, and world popular music at Dublin City University. In 2016, Thomas was a recipient of the Arts Council Ireland's Next Generation Bursary Award.
As Artistic Director of Ceol Connected, Thomas recently produced Tradoodle Festival, Ireland's first traditional arts festival exclusively for young audiences. Ceol connected has also created and toured several traditional music and theatrical productions for young audiences including: The Quiet Tree, The Far Field, The Wonderful Tune, Return of Spring, and A Winter Wish.