Keys for playing in Church

[Mikethebook]

Those of you playing in church worship teams, I've been asked to join ours and am both excited and, as a relative beginner, daunted by it. I have a fixed and very limited budget for whistles, fast running out. Low and high Ds are the obvious first choices but what intermediate key(s) after that, given I don't want to have to learn a bunch of new fingerings so I need to be able to transpose choruses and hymns into D fingerings.

[hoopy mike]

Hi

This question has been asked before here. It rather depends on what sort of music your church is using and how flexible the other musicians in the band are.

I've played / led music at events where we've managed to play everything in D and G, partly to fit in with the whistle, but also to give a good flow between songs. Conversely, playing in a different church, I now have whistles in just about every key, including C#.

Starting out, I would say maybe just play along with whistle-friendly songs in D and G and gently point out that it's easier to put a capo on a guitar than to stretch a whistle. If it goes well, perhaps a decent whistle in C would be a good investment and it won't hurt to buy Generation whistles in Eb and Bb. Remember that the cost of a relatively full set of decent whistles can cost less than a beginner's guitar / sax / keyboard.

Happy to discuss further off-line if that'd be useful...

[Feadoggie]

Sounds like an exciting endeavor.

I am going to agree with Hoopy Mike and support what he has said already. It will vary from church to church based on what music is played and who is organizing it and the flexibility ( or lack of flexibility) of the rest of the worship team.

A lot of the contemporary praise music will be played in guitar friendly keys. So D and G will be common, as will C, A and E. In other cases the keys will be geared towards the comfortable range of the vocalists and any key can show up (they know what a capo is). Some churches work off of Internet tabs or mimic the keys on CDs and music videos and for whatever reason they only play the songs in the key they learn the parts in - no transposing allowed. Sometimes you get lucky. I play with a group from one congregations where absolutely everything played is in the key of G. They have their reasons but it just goes to show you that these things are not always predictable. If the church likes to work from a hymnal you might run into Eb and Bb more often. ANother thing that you will encounter in contemporary Christian music are a lot of key modulations where a song starts out in lets say the key of A and after two or three verses the key rises up to Bb - Robin Mark's Days of Elijah as an example. That'll have you reaching for another whistle and another whistle. And so it goes.

So, as Hoopy Mike suggested, start by playing in the keys that you already have whistles to cover. Talk to whoever is organizing the music for the church. They will be able to be more help than we can be. They should be able to help you set some priorities.

And another suggestion I might offer would be to start learning to make simple PVC whistles yourself. You could work off of Guido Gonzato's plans and techniques initially. Part of what got me into whistle making was to provide whistles to youngsters and not-so-youngsters playing in churches where they could not buy whistles. Developing that skill has the advantage for yourself of making it possible to make whistles in keys you do not have for very little money. And it has an additional attraction that if other people in the church (or outside of the church) are inspired by the sound of your whistle playing you can support their interest by gifting a whistle or two. It's whistle evangelism of a sort.

Relax and enjoy the experience.

Feadoggie

[pancelticpiper]

I do a lot of Church playing, but with traditional choirs singing along with organ, singing the hymns in traditional hymnals.

The hymns which occur in traditional hymnals (Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc etc) will be in a wide range of keys, usually between three sharps and four flats.

I just looked through two hymnals now and most of the hymns were in two sharps to three flats, that is, D, G, C, F, Bb, and Eb.

This means that most of the hymns could be played if you had whistles in D, C, and Bb.

Remember that each whistle can play using the "six finger note" as the tonic, and also using the "three finger note" as the tonic which takes away a sharp or adds a flat, so a D whistle also gives G, a C whistle also gives F, and a Bb whistle also gives Eb.

A few hymns were in three sharps and four, and even five, flats. That's why you might need whistles in A, E, and Eb.

Now, as people have pointed out above, your Church music situation might be very different from that traditional choir/organ/hymnal thing, and you might have a guitar-based thing. But! Guitarists have capos! And I've found that they might sing a hymn in any key whatever, a wider range of keys than is found in hymnals, including six or seven flats or sharps. And they might sing a given hymn in C one Sunday and in C# the next Sunday and in B the Sunday after that. It's why I have whistles in every key. (My roll of whistles is MY capo.)

I know a woman who plays Boehm flute in her church praise group. No grabbing another whistle! She has to be able to play in whatever key on the same instrument. Well, one Sunday a different guy was leading the group, and a song which they had rehearsed in C, well, right as they started to play he slapped on a capo and played it in C sharp! The group has good musicians and the keyboard guy didn't miss a lick but she on the flute found playing in all those sharps something of a struggle.

All I would have had to do was put down my C whistle and pick up my C# whistle.

[hoopy mike]

I know a woman who plays Boehm flute in her church praise group. No grabbing another whistle! She has to be able to play in whatever key on the same instrument. Well, one Sunday a different guy was leading the group, and a song which they had rehearsed in C, well, right as they started to play he slapped on a capo and played it in C sharp! The group has good musicians and the keyboard guy didn't miss a lick but she on the flute found playing in all those sharps something of a struggle.

All I would have had to do was put down my C whistle and pick up my C# whistle.

Or throw a whistle of your choice at the guitarist.

I used to play along with an elderly pianist who would play the intro to a hymn, everyone would stand up, take a breath, and then she'd stop and announce "I don't like this tune!" and would rummage through the book to find a tune she liked.

[Mikethebook]

In my church, we have keyboards (though they may be a thing of the past soon), guitar, bass and drums but I think the key is chosen more for the singers and congregation and though they might bend to adjust for my needs i don't think it is something I can always count on.

Remember that each whistle can play using the "six finger note" as the tonic, and also using the "three finger note" as the tonic which takes away a sharp or adds a flat, so a D whistle also gives G, a C whistle also gives F, and a Bb whistle also gives Eb.

A few hymns were in three sharps and four, and even five, flats. That's why you might need whistles in A, E, and Eb.

You're losing me a bit there but I think I understand what you're saying. But given I will be playing from music, even if its transposed for my own needs, I don't think I could play a whistle reading the music for fingerings different from the D fingerings I'm used to. Or is that not necessary? hoopy mike has given me a lot of help but I'm still struggling to understand the usage of a lot of different keys of whistle.

[pancelticpiper]

What it is, is using the C# fingering
ooo ooo (that is, everything open)
on a whistle gives the Major scale that's the same as the whistle's name:
D Major scale on a D whistle

xxx xxx
xxx xxo
xxx xoo
xxx ooo
xxo ooo
xoo ooo
ooo ooo
oxx xxx

but using the C natural fingering oxx ooo (or oxx oox, or oxx xox)

gives a G Major scale on the same D whistle

xxx ooo
xxo ooo
xoo ooo
oxx ooo
oxx xxx
xxx xxo
xxx xoo
xxx ooo

It's why people say you can use the "six finger note" (D) or the "three finger note" (G) as the tonic on a whistle.

Here are some whistle sizes, and the two Major keys you can get from each:

whistle name six finger note key/three finger note key
D/G
C/F
G/C
F/Bb
Bb/Eb
A/D
E/A
B/E
Eb/Ab
Ab/Db
Gb/Cb
Db/Gb

Now, trad players are going to call a Db whistle a C# whistle and a Gb whistle an F# whistle (the notes are the same) but in normal/classical music they'll use the key signatures of Db and Gb.

[Mikethebook]

Okay pancelticpiper, between you and hoopy mike I'm getting there, I think. First please just confirm that you're not learning any new fingerings for these different keys; all you need are the D fingerings.

Okay, let me take an example to see if I'm right. The church will be playing a tune in C on Sunday, so I transpose that into D for myself and play that with a C whistle, or with a G whistle (and a Cnat if I want to play lower down). Is that right?

The other possibility is that a tune will be in D but doesn't use the bottom half of the lower octave and goes too high in the second. hoopy mike suggests a low A would be good, so do I transpose the music into A and play as if I were playing in D? Correct me if I've got that wrong please? Maybe you have a "formula" like the other for playing in the same key but with a lower whistle better capable of playing the higher notes.

I presume from what you're saying you tend to avoid the equivalent of playing in C on a D whistle by half-holing to get the Fnat, and confine yourself to the G?

Thanks to both of you.

[hoopy mike]

Okay, let me take an example to see if I'm right. The church will be playing a tune in C on Sunday, so I transpose that into D for myself and play that with a C whistle,...Is that right?

yup

The other possibility is that a tune will be in D but doesn't use the bottom half of the lower octave and goes too high in the second. hoopy mike suggests a low A would be good, so do I transpose the music into A and play as if I were playing in D?

If the tune is in D, but you want to use an A whistle, then transpose the tune into G and play with D fingerings on an A whistle.

[Mikethebook]

Well I'm half way there. But you've lost me at the second hurdle. Why do I transpose into G and then play with an A whistle?

Okay, let me take an example to see if I'm right. The church will be playing a tune in C on Sunday, so I transpose that into D for myself and play that with a C whistle, or with a G whistle (and a Cnat if I want to play lower down). Is that right?

Was I right on the second part of that?

[dolphinjon]

I have yet to play whistles with the praise bands at church, but I play violin or viola every few weeks with them. We have an awesome worship leader and a flexible choir director, so sometimes I'm able to appeal to them for key changes. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of our singers love the key of B. Not sure why, but it pops up far more than I think it should. And a lot of more traditional music than I'd like is given to me in Db (I usually can win them over to D).

One thing that helps is that we subscribe to CCLI SongSelect Premium, although Melody is pretty good too. You can find details here http://www.ccli.com/WhatWeOffer/SongSelect.aspx. The bonus is that we rarely, if ever, have to buy praise and worship music (or hymns if what we want isn't in the hymnal), and CCLI will transpose it to any key with just the click of a button. That makes it very easy to go to a different key because no one has to transpose the music by hand, we just click a button and hit print. And as everyone else has said, a guitarist can always throw a capo on.

[Mikethebook]

Thanks for that. Our church subscribes to CCLI already and it is a great resource, as you say, allowing you to transpose songs at the touch of a button. I couldn't manage without it.

[mutepointe]

I hope that you find being a musician in your church is a wonderful experience for everyone, especially you. When someone joins our folk group, we always stress up front that the music is about worshipping and NOT performing. A few people didn't get that and they moved on.

I've played in Catholic folk groups since I was a teenager and folk music was new. In our hymnal, F seems to be a popular key.

I play the guitar mostly now but also get to play the whistle, flute, and ocarina occasionally and rarely a harmonica. I keep praying for a cellist. The last time that prayer was answered, it was with an electric bass player.

The one thing that no one mentioned that I've run across with most everyone is that no one knows how or why to transpose. Even the people who had been formally trained on their one instrument didn't quite know what to do about transposing. Back in the old days, when I had to transpose music by hand, I was very inspired to get everyone to be able to play the same sheet music with minimal modifications. (If the singers needed the guitar player to capo III, a minor inconvenience, then the electronic keyboard player needed to know what to do, and the clarinet player was going to have to know the starting note.) No one quite knew what they were doing (other than saving me the bother of handwriting music for them).

The adult choir at our church wouldn't transpose a half-step because 1/2 the people would immediately have palpatations and the other 1/2 would be sure that this would take the song out of their SATB range. They would however be willing to play/sing the exact same song if all the sheet music was professional printed in the new key. There are even some people with good ears who can tell when a song is transposed and just don't like the change.

If you're going to talk transposing, may I suggest a private conversation with the music director so as not to incite panic.

[hoopy mike]

Well I'm half way there. But you've lost me at the second hurdle. Why do I transpose into G and then play with an A whistle?

My best attempt at a simple answer is, "Because it works". My second best attempt at a simple answer is: "Because you want the "G" note on the A whistle to be a D."

[hoopy mike]

Okay, let me take an example to see if I'm right. The church will be playing a tune in C on Sunday, so I transpose that into D for myself and play that with a C whistle, or with a G whistle (and a Cnat if I want to play lower down). Is that right?

More or less. To play with your G whistle, I think you need to transpose the tune into G.