Curso de Silbo

The words and phrases in this coursebook are intended to be recorded, and then those recordings turned into audio plus graphic visualization with translation on screen.

The examples of the spectrogram representations of the melodic contours of the whistled phrases that you see and simultaneously hear on the Curso de Silbo Gomero youtube channel uses "https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/explain/colors/colormaps.html" as modified by Daniel Smith de Paz (smithdepazd at gmail dot com) to suit this purpose. The viridis option seemed to give the most informative visual.

The examples on my youtube channel are only tests.

https://www.youtube.com/@CursoDeSilboGomero

But it's easy to see what the finished product would look like.

Recorded at:

Casa La Música

Calle La Playa 84B, 38870

Valle Gran Rey, La Gomera

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, España

+34 643 324 320

CasaLaMusica@icloud.com

www.CasaLaMusica.com

Frank Weiner: Sound Engineer

MUCH more information about El Silbo Gomero can be found on my site www.Silbo-Gomero.com

My first intention was to have two whistlers (female and male) whistle identical phrases back-to-back.

I timed it, and the recording in the studio would have worked out to about 18 hours (including breaks).

After the engineer told me that it was difficult enough to find ONE whistler much less two, I revised the budget and projected scheduling.

At half that time (9 hours) with only one whistler, the entire project could be easily done in three days at three hours a session, or in 5 sessions of two hours apiece.

Over time, he managed to get three Gomeran whistlers into the studio for "auditions".

I never caught the boy's name, but the first young lady, Marta, could have probably done the job, however, she went off-island to school, and when she came back she was no longer interested.

The second young woman, Idaira, did a good job, but there were issues with breathiness (Marta had some trouble with this as well).

I suggested to the engineer some ideas for microphone placement and/or filters to help eliminate those noises.

Shortly afterwards, he informed me that Idaira was no longer interested either, and further told me that he had exhausted his every resource, was at wit's end, and simply unable to help me anymore.

I am making this coursebook public on the off-chance that someone may want to continue my work on this subject.

Since the whistling language is largely used outdoors, the vocabulary and verb choices were limited to "exterior" verbs and nouns.

Linguistically speaking, it contains every grammatical structure and every permutation of every one in all persons (1st, 2nd & 3rd persons sing. & pl.), all of the most common verbs (in all conjugations), and all of the most common and relevant vocabulary.

As such, this coursebook would not only enable someone to attain a level of proficiency in the whistling language, it would also be entirely possible to reconstruct it, should it ever become extinct (as some have predicted).

Furthermore, it would represent an enormous body of empirical data that could be used to prove or disprove anyone's theories of how it actually works.

I have some areas of divergence with Trujillo's assertions concerning certain vowel issues. These are dealt with in the first few pages using a system of notation derived from that of Isidro Ortiz.

CURSO DE SILBO GOMERO

Jeff Brent: Grammar, Vocabulary, Design

Allan Dalcher: Conversations

Pilar Fernandez: Translator, Consultant

Daniel Smith de Paz: Spectrogram Graphics