What do you think?
Rate this book
How to Whistle Like a Pro
Discusses breath control, pitch, tone, and musicianship, and includes recordings by professional whistlers.
- GenresMusic
64 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 1989
2 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 29, 2013
This was mostly a waste of time. Harp spends the first large chunk of the book teaching basic music theory. He uses long sequences of "do re mi" instead of using a musical staff. He concludes at the end with a note about the ratios found by Pythagoras for the musical scale matching the scale of the distance between planets in the solar system and the whole thing being mystifyingly beautiful.
A lot of the book felt like advertisements for other books or recordings. This information would have been better placed in an appendix (if it were written a few years later it would have belonged on a web site). The section devoted to listing professional whistlers was, however, still somewhat helpful because I found a professional whistler that lives nearby. One of the listings claimed that you could make your plants absorb nutrients up to 700 times as fast by whistling while feeding them. Seriously...
The book contains sections for non-whistlers to learn how to whistle, and more advanced sections for more advanced whistlers. Basically all of the good advice comes from Jason Serinus, who contributed a lot of material (and should have been first author). Serinus advocates meditation and breathing exercises, pointing to another book that he wrote. The book also includes the story of how Serinus became the whistling voice of Woodstock in a Charlie Brown special, which was interesting but too long to belong in a book on "how to whistle like a pro."
Harp added a lot of notes about things he was just starting to learn, saying "I'll figure it out and then write about it in the next edition!" If the book is called "how to whistle like a pro", then why are you writing it before you've figured out how to whistle like a pro? It was very aggravating. There is no second edition.
The book comes with sound sheets, which are thin square plastic records slipped into a pocket in the back cover. Harp says in the book that the publisher convinced him to use those instead of cassette tapes to cut down publishing costs, and recommended that the reader record them onto cassettes as soon as they bought the book. This was a Bad Idea. I got the book from a library and tried to play the sound sheets, which were of course scratched to death. No library was going to buy a book and copy records onto cassette tape for the patrons. I'd be surprised if there were any working copies left. It's a shame because it seemed like it would be a nice material.
A lot of the book felt like advertisements for other books or recordings. This information would have been better placed in an appendix (if it were written a few years later it would have belonged on a web site). The section devoted to listing professional whistlers was, however, still somewhat helpful because I found a professional whistler that lives nearby. One of the listings claimed that you could make your plants absorb nutrients up to 700 times as fast by whistling while feeding them. Seriously...
The book contains sections for non-whistlers to learn how to whistle, and more advanced sections for more advanced whistlers. Basically all of the good advice comes from Jason Serinus, who contributed a lot of material (and should have been first author). Serinus advocates meditation and breathing exercises, pointing to another book that he wrote. The book also includes the story of how Serinus became the whistling voice of Woodstock in a Charlie Brown special, which was interesting but too long to belong in a book on "how to whistle like a pro."
Harp added a lot of notes about things he was just starting to learn, saying "I'll figure it out and then write about it in the next edition!" If the book is called "how to whistle like a pro", then why are you writing it before you've figured out how to whistle like a pro? It was very aggravating. There is no second edition.
The book comes with sound sheets, which are thin square plastic records slipped into a pocket in the back cover. Harp says in the book that the publisher convinced him to use those instead of cassette tapes to cut down publishing costs, and recommended that the reader record them onto cassettes as soon as they bought the book. This was a Bad Idea. I got the book from a library and tried to play the sound sheets, which were of course scratched to death. No library was going to buy a book and copy records onto cassette tape for the patrons. I'd be surprised if there were any working copies left. It's a shame because it seemed like it would be a nice material.
Displaying 1 of 1 review