Paul H. Umfleet
Christmas Sounds for Whistle


Christmas Whistle Book

After doing 3 collections of Irish tunes for whistle I thought I would take a break and do a Christmas collection.

I call this Christmas Sounds because a some of the tunes are not exactly Christmas songs (like the three tunes from The Nutcracker). Those are, however, very much “sounds” from my Christmas.

I wrote all the accompaniments for these tunes and created the recordings on the computer. I then recorded my whistle playing along with those accompaniments.

I had lots of fun with these arrangements and a few may seem a little unusual to you. Many of these tunes are very short so I made them a little more interesting with key changes and even a few time signature and tempo changes.

Since these tunes are being played on Irish Whistle I started the set with the traditional Irish tune A Merry Christmas. Later on a couple of other tunes (Seven Joys of Mary / Sussex Carol) seemed to fit very well with the Irish Jig sound so I present them that way.

Irish whistle style uses very little tonguing. It imitates the bag pipes. I depart a good deal from that style on this set. In fact on Jingle Bells I realized I would need to double tongue. Well, what tune comes to mind when a old trumpet player thinks of double tonguing? Yup, I worked it in there.

That strange idea for We Three Kings came into my head ages ago so I had to get it out of there!

I was ending with We Wish You A Merry Christmas and even after a key change needed more time. I got to thinking back to my music theory classes when we had to do inventions and variations a la Bach! After writing the second variation I realized I had not left places to breath. I tried to remedy that by having the tune keep getting faster and faster. I’m not sure that made things any easier.

I hope you enjoy these and I apologize if I messed up one of your favorite Christmas Carols!


List of Tunes

1. A Merry Christmas ----mp3 file
2. Infant Holy, Infant Lowly ----mp3 file
3. Angels We Have Heard On High ----mp3 file
4. Good King Wenceslas ----mp3 file
5. O Tannenbaum ----mp3 file
6. Arab Dance ----mp3 file
7. Joy To The World ----mp3 file
8. Away In A Manger ----mp3 file----sample pdf
9. O Come, all Ye Faithful ----mp3 file
10. Deck The Halls ----mp3 file
11. First Noel ----mp3 file
12. Nutcracker ----mp3 file
13. Silent Night ----mp3 file
14. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear ----mp3 file----sample pdf
15. Go Tell it on the Mountain ----mp3 file
16. Jolly Old Saint Nicholas / Up On The Housetop ----mp3 file
17. Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine ----mp3 file
18. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen ----mp3 file
19. Seven Joys of Mary / Sussex Carol ----mp3 file
20. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing ----mp3 file
21. We Three Kings ----mp3 file
22. Jingle Bells ----mp3 file
23. O Holy Night ----mp3 file
24. We Wish You A Merry Christmas ----mp3 file


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