Whistler Ty O’Tooth
On Wednesday, the 15th, Ty lost his third tooth. Kyle pulled it out of his mouth, actually. It was wiggling and wobbling, and it apparently was bothering both Ty and Kyle. So Kyle pulled it out.
We couldn’t get the Tooth Fairy to come by that night because she didn’t have enough notice. She doesn’t bring cash to the Sleppy children. She brings toys, so she needs at least a few hours’ notice. On Thursday night, she traded Ty’s tooth for an Irish “D” tin whistle. It came in a package with an instruction book that contains musical notation and tablature to play popular melodies.
Ty started playing it immediately. I frustrated him when I offered to teach him. He followed the instruction book well enough to learn to play all of the tunes.
On Wednesday, a week after Ty lost his tooth, I started practicing my violin. I asked Ty if he wanted to play with me. We played Mozart’s “Ah, vous dirai-je Maman” several times for practice. The next day, we practiced some more of the same, but I played some harmony on the violin. We also played “Au Claire de la Lune” and a German folk song, both from the instruction book. And today, Friday… well, we haven’t played yet, but I hope that we can get some practicing done this weekend.
Playing together is helping him with his breathing into the whistle. When he first started learning it, he’d breathe hard to make the sounds, but the whistle plays a higher octave if it’s played that way. It took him a couple of days to get the breathing steady where he wasn’t playing higher octaves. Also, he’s not separating his tones as he was at the beginning. Most tones in the music are quarter notes, and it doesn’t sound too badly if he separates them. He still has to be reminded to hold the half notes, but once he gets warmed up, the longer notes sound pretty good.
Ty sometimes sits around the house and makes up tunes for himself. He doesn’t write them down or bother to remember them.
