Chiff and Fipple Forums

Tonguing depends on what kind of music you are playing. New England fife, lots of tonguing, traditional Irish, not so much. Having grown up with the NE fife music, I have spent years learning not to tongue when playing Irish music. You are right to listen a lot. Joanie Madden has some nice whistle C...

The book I loved when I first started playing whistle is The Fifer's Delight by Ralph Sweet, which is available from the Sweetheart Flute company website. Lots of Irish and Scots favorites, but lots of other great tunes, contradance, Canadian, New England. Highly recommended!

I showed a two piece whistle to a harp player once, bragging about how much easier it was to transport than the normal whistle, and she just looked at me in disgust...

I use a Kyser, which suits my purposes. Its primary use is to accompany singers, since their comfortable keys can often have more flats than I want to deal with. Never use it for accompanying tunes.

Air management issues? I find that they play easier and smoother through the two octaves for a beginner than many other whistles.

I have always preferred plain old wood fipple Clarkes, which have the added virtue of being rather soft in tone, and in tune with one another, which helps reduce the 'cringe factor' that inevitably results when multiple people play whistle together. If a brass tube whistle is purchased, make sure ev...

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought you were going to be making fun of old fat guys like me. Glad to see you are not. Carry on with your conversation!

Etiquette (did I spell that right?) and manners are full of rules that help us respect the customs, traditions and feelings of others, but they basically boil down to simply being polite. All suggested behavior at sessions is offered with similar intent, not to scare people, not to be grim, just to ...

Yeah, I figured the topic had been done quite a lot on chiffandfipple, but tried to search for past discussions, and ended up just frustrated at my poor skills at the search engine. As stated above, I had pledged to myself that I would become more methodical about my ornamentation, and then discover...

This is a response to Diane's/sbfluter's last post, that is now on the previous page of this discussion: I do NOT think that all the negativity on the internet is what people are 'really' thinking, that they are not free to verbalize in the real world. There is a nautical saying (which I will pretty...

The bad news is that I recently missed a house concert and session with Grey Larsen because I had to work late. The good news is that my wife came home with his massive “Irish Flute and Tin Whistle” book. But I ran into something unexpected. I was taught to cut the bottom notes with the bottom finge...

Original wooden fipple Clarke, without a doubt. There are sometimes flawed inexpensive whistles, but the majority are perfectly serviceable. Most of what makes a whistle good is the player, not the whistle. Too many people go chasing perfection by buying whistles, instead of practicing and playing w...

The first thing you want to strive for is not to make a tune your own. It is to make the tune fit the tradition. Once you become comfortable with the tradition, then you can make it your own. One of the things that will alienate a session is a newcomer who tries to imprint their own 'style' on the s...

Written notation only provides the bones of a tune. When someone with classical training puts their classical style on top of those bones, it sounds like classical music. When someone with Irish musical background puts their Irish style on top of those bones, it sounds Irish. The problem is not that...

Great idea!