Solitaire

[DrPhill]

A plea for help.....

Solitaire, (Neil Sedaka/Phil Cody)

I like this song a lot, but cant find the notes on the whistle. This is probably just my incompetence, and perhaps because I only have a recording with Karen Carpenter singing it (I get distracted listening to her voice).

Can anyone give me some clues? Even just the first note would be a great help, as I have gone down blind alleys before (eg trying Summertime starting on e, or The Immigrant starting on Cnat), and do not have the musical sense to find my way back out........

Thanks in advance for any help,

[david_h]

Does this count as "some clues" ? Not just the first note - but the first three !
http://www.freehandmusic.com/preview/53 ... SOLITA.png
Have fun transposing.
(Tip - searching Google images often throws up some dots, but in this case it is still in copyright)

[DrPhill]

Thanks David, the first three notes should be a good help..... and there are a few peeping out near the bottom too!

But the piece is in E, but now I am flummoxed by the notes going so low.... I need to move up at least five steps (not the same as five semitones, I know) to put the notes in familiar places on the ledger lines. But I have no clue as to how that changes the key signature. Sure I could try to move it up an octave, but I dont want it in E.

What does a competent musician do now? Just try all the possible start positions, or apply some theory to ease the search?

At this point I feel like an ignoramus.

[david_h]

Don't know what a competent musician would do. But, safe in the knowledge that one will jump in if what I would do is wrong, my logic would be that to finger in on a whistle you want a key signature of either D or G.
D is one note down from E so the tune would start on an F#
G is two notes up from E, so it would start on a B

You have an F# and B in each octave to try. Its a song so may not have a huge range and might fit on the whistle in more than one place. But its not a trad tune so their may be some accidentals lurking under the blanked out bit. If you are lucky it may not use all the notes in the scale so it might work in another key but I'll leave that for the experts.

[GordonH]

Here is a tip.

Find a midi file of the tune you are looking for and open it in a music notation program. If you don't have a suitable program then Midi Illustrator does a fairly good job and it can transpose the music and print it out for you.
You can also resequence the tunes, split piano parts into separate lines, remove lines from the playback, change speeds, change instruments etc. I make a lot of my backing tracks by resequencing existing midi files this way.

[DrPhill]

Thanks again David.

Clear logical and understandable; no wonder I didn't think of approaching it that way . Perhaps because I wasn't confident of deducing that the tune started on a G.

And actually, if I can remember that approach it may help in the future, too.

Im off to try tootlin'.

Crossing with GordonH: Thanks for the suggestion Gordon. I have not explored that toolset/technique yet. Something else for my to-do list.

[DrPhill]

I think I have mostly got this right. Does it contravene an intellectual property law if I post my inadequate ABC for people to correct? Would anybody be interested in correcting it for me?

Thanks in advance