Chiff and Fipple Forums

For the past few years I've been organizing the US Ocarina Festival. We hold it in October in a suburb in North Dallas. The first year we hosted a small gathering of enthusiasts and held our concert in the foyer of an Asian Grocery Store (don't judge, it was awesome!). Since then it has grown each y...

I occasionally host music meetups at my house and at Bob Woodruff south in Plano when the weather is nice. It's not so much a session as an open jam. My primary instrument is the ocarina, but I also play various whistles and flutes. We have a pretty small core group, but have a lot of fun and try to...

Hello! I'm happy to announce my ocarina method book. It's written for 12 hole ocarinas, but if you have a 10 or 11 hole you can still get a lot out of most of the lessons. I've also included a pendant fingering chart in the back with a few scales I like to use to improvise. Right now you can pre-ord...

A friend of mine and I just posted a duet video with him playing the Bodran and me playing tin whistle and ocarina. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YanPOMZ22B0 I've never performed on the tin whistle before and my first performance is on Thursday! I'm pretty excited. We're just doing a short 20 minut...

Reading the response made me feel a lot better. I really appreciate the update

Hi Cris! Sorry to hear about the theft of your Burke. I have one whistle with a thumb hole: a Shearwater. I think it's not essential, but the bottom line is this: Anything at all that you can do without a thumb hole you can do with one, but there are some things you can do with a thumb hole that yo...

Thanks to everyone for all the helpful replies! I decided to go with the thumbhole. I'm not planning to sell it, and while I don't want to tape over the thumb hole, it's nice to know that I can if I need to at first. I'm really looking forward to not having to use the 0XX 000 fingering for C (it slo...

I was recently given a Michael Burke soprano D tin whistle. I instantly fell in love with it and actually took it with me everywhere. Because of that love, when my car was broken into this past friday - it was stolen :(. Soooo now I'm going to buy one for my very own, and I'm wondering if I should g...

I recently took up the tin whistle. I normally play the ocarina but I keep catching myself reaching for the tin
whistle more and more often.

Here's my first tin whistle video ever :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY8BkNk78W4