At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whistle?

The Ultimate On-Line Whistle Community. If you find one more ultimater, let us know.
Dan A.
Posts: 453
Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:19 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I can only hope that my proficiency with the whistle is steadily improving. A few of my whistles get a workout on an almost daily basis. And I'm almost certainly afflicted with WhOAD.
Location: Detroit Metro

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by Dan A. »

s1m0n wrote:Except we don't really say "shan't" much. It's more a word we read.
Americans are unlikely to use "shan't" at all. We tend to prefer "shouldn't." I don't know why...maybe we find that "shouldn't" is a little more open-ended?
User avatar
ytliek
Posts: 2739
Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2012 3:51 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 10
Location: Seashore

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by ytliek »

Here I grew up with spelling chantey in relation to sailors working. Two types sung while working, raising the anchor winch / capstan, also for raising the sail halyard.
https://www.mysticseaport.org/explore/d ... hanteymen/

Shanty is also a term used but refers to living spaces.
User avatar
s1m0n
Posts: 10069
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 12:17 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 10
Location: The Inside Passage

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by s1m0n »

benhall.1 wrote:Well, there isn't really a "t" sound as such in the French word "chant".
Now I'm curious. How does it sound in french, to you?

~~

Ah. Perhaps we should be distinguishing between "chant" (song) and "chante" (sing). You're right, the verb form has a more prominent "t" sound.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis
User avatar
s1m0n
Posts: 10069
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 12:17 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 10
Location: The Inside Passage

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by s1m0n »

Dan A. wrote:
s1m0n wrote:Except we don't really say "shan't" much. It's more a word we read.
Americans are unlikely to use "shan't" at all. We tend to prefer "shouldn't." I don't know why...maybe we find that "shouldn't" is a little more open-ended?
I think that "won't" is closer than "shouldn't".
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis
Dan A.
Posts: 453
Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:19 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I can only hope that my proficiency with the whistle is steadily improving. A few of my whistles get a workout on an almost daily basis. And I'm almost certainly afflicted with WhOAD.
Location: Detroit Metro

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by Dan A. »

s1m0n wrote:I think that "won't" is closer than "shouldn't".
You are correct. Americans will use "won't" as an absolute, and otherwise use "shouldn't." I typically only heard the word "shall" during my military service.
User avatar
Peter Duggan
Posts: 3223
Joined: Tue Aug 30, 2011 5:39 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I'm not registering, I'm trying to edit my profile! The field “Tell us something.” is too short, a minimum of 100 characters is required.
Location: Kinlochleven
Contact:

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by Peter Duggan »

benhall.1 wrote:How about the "t" sound? And the "n" sound?
And the 'a' sound!
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

Master of nine?
User avatar
benhall.1
Moderator
Posts: 14797
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2009 5:21 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I'm a fiddler and, latterly, a fluter. I love the flute. I wish I'd always played it. I love the whistle as well. I'm blessed in having really lovely instruments for all of my musical interests.
Location: Unimportant island off the great mainland of Europe

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by benhall.1 »

Peter Duggan wrote:
benhall.1 wrote:How about the "t" sound? And the "n" sound?
And the 'a' sound!
Yeah, I thought s1m0n was attempting to cover that one. I must admit, I haven't heard any speaker of English replicate that French "a" sound in an English word. Don't think I have, anyway ...
User avatar
Peter Duggan
Posts: 3223
Joined: Tue Aug 30, 2011 5:39 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I'm not registering, I'm trying to edit my profile! The field “Tell us something.” is too short, a minimum of 100 characters is required.
Location: Kinlochleven
Contact:

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by Peter Duggan »

Ah, missed that...
s1m0n wrote:We don't have the vowel that brits put into "shan't".
What, no 'ah' sound?
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

Master of nine?
User avatar
s1m0n
Posts: 10069
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 12:17 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 10
Location: The Inside Passage

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by s1m0n »

Peter Duggan wrote:Ah, missed that...
s1m0n wrote:We don't have the vowel that brits put into "shan't".
What, no 'ah' sound?
It's the first thing that Americans try to imitate - and get wrong - when they try to affect an english accent.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis
User avatar
s1m0n
Posts: 10069
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 12:17 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 10
Location: The Inside Passage

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by s1m0n »

benhall.1 wrote: I must admit, I haven't heard any speaker of English replicate that French "a" sound in an English word. Don't think I have, anyway ...
I think Richard's point is that while Americans have neither the French nor the British A sounds, they use the same substitute for both, which means that shan't and chante are similar to American tongues.

~~

Incidentally, this is not true of me. Being 1/2 Quebecois, I daresay that my "chante" sounds very little like Richard's, and quite unlike my "shan't". Which I don't say, much, and never unselfconsciously.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis
User avatar
AngelicBeaver
Posts: 373
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2012 8:29 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I've been playing whistles since 2010. I love how varied whistles are in their design, construction, tone, and handling. Though I've largely settled on what I enjoy playing, I'm still a sucker for an interesting new design.
Location: San Antonio, Texas

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by AngelicBeaver »

I visited Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia with my family back in 2002 or so (summer after my 11th grade year). I was interested in the fifes they were playing in the recreations, and not knowing exactly what they were, ended up with a Walton's D whistle and a book purchased from a gift shop. I played around with it a bit in the car during the trip, but it didn't stick with me after that.

Fast forward to late 2010. I was 25, and found my Walton's whistle on my garage floor, probably fallen out of a box. I recalled having the book that came with it somewhere inside the house, so I decided to try to learn. I worked through the beginning exercises in the book (Beside the Sally Gardens, Oh Danny Boy, The Foggy Dew, Spancil Hill), but never really became a fluent music reader, although I'm a singer, so I had a passing familiarity with musical notation, although it took whistles before I actually understood what keys were, since the human voice is a fully chromatic instrument.

In late 2011, or early 2012, I bought my first low whistle, which was a green PVC whistle with black plastic head made by Nick Metcalf for $75. I was good enough by that time that my wife actually asked me to play while she was in labor with our first child, who was born in March of 2012. I played a lot of slow stuff, like hymns that I knew.

I gave up on finding one perfect whistle years ago, and now I just enjoy the variety that is available, and snag deals when I can on special whistles, although a recent job loss has put a halt to non-essential purchases. I've started and stopped many times. I've gone for months without playing, but I always seem to come back to it in a way that has never happened with the many other instruments I've played, partly because whistles are so darn portable. I've recently picked them up again, and I'm determined to become session proficient. I think a lot of the basics are there, but I'm bad at stopping when I mess up, I'm not good with spontaneous variation, and I've been a solo player for so long that I don't have the speed or ability to power straight through tune sets like I might have if I'd been regularly attending a session. I don't even have a lot of the basic tunes memorized, so I'm also working to build my mental trad library.

My goal is to one day be so skilled and confident in my playing that I would feel comfortable playing out on the street with a hat that people put money into, or playing live at a wedding or other event. I've always dreamed of being able to amaze people in my hometown of San Antonio on St. Patrick's Day. Maybe next year...
Nathaniel James Dowell
User avatar
benhall.1
Moderator
Posts: 14797
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2009 5:21 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I'm a fiddler and, latterly, a fluter. I love the flute. I wish I'd always played it. I love the whistle as well. I'm blessed in having really lovely instruments for all of my musical interests.
Location: Unimportant island off the great mainland of Europe

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by benhall.1 »

s1m0n wrote:I daresay that my "chante" sounds very little like Richard's, and quite unlike my "shan't".
The French words "chant" and "chante" mean different things and are pronounced quite differently, and Richard was talking about the former.
User avatar
s1m0n
Posts: 10069
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 12:17 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 10
Location: The Inside Passage

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by s1m0n »

benhall.1 wrote:
s1m0n wrote:I daresay that my "chante" sounds very little like Richard's, and quite unlike my "shan't".
The French words "chant" and "chante" mean different things and are pronounced quite differently, and Richard was talking about the former.
Richard's not talking about a word at all, he's talking about a sound. He named a word and described how it sounds, in his view. That is not how the word he wrote sounds to most, but there does happen to be a closely related word that with the addition of a single letter does sound very much as he described, and is, in his accent, a homophone of the word "shan't", as he says.

Think of Occam's razor for a moment. His comment makes perfect sense with my spelling. It's nonsense - as you pointed out - with his. Either he and I are crazy, or Richard made a typo. Or more likely, is a little vague on how the french conjugate the 1st & 3rd person singular forms of the verb 'chanter'. He knows it to hear it but not to spell it, and he's talking about sound, anyway. Which explanation is the more economical? That he's talking about "chant" and getting everything about it but the spelling wrong, or that he's talking about the sound of the word "chante", & describing it accurately, but got the spelling wrong by a single letter?
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis
User avatar
pancelticpiper
Posts: 5298
Joined: Mon Jul 10, 2006 7:25 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: Playing Scottish and Irish music in California for 45 years.
These days many discussions are migrating to Facebook but I prefer the online chat forum format.
Location: WV to the OC

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by pancelticpiper »

My main thing was that chant/chantey/shantey/chanter/cantor etc are all related words which have happened to come into English from various sources at various times and as one would expect the initial sound differs.

And yes there are no real equivalents between most vowel sounds between American English, RP, Scots, Australian English, Gaelic, French, or any other dialects or languages. I don't pronounce "top" "phone" "water" and "down" they way people from Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh do.
Richard Cook
c1980 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle
busterbill
Posts: 731
Joined: Sat Mar 15, 2003 8:06 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8

Re: At what age did you start playing/ learning the tin whis

Post by busterbill »

Back to original biographical question. I started piano when I was in second grade, but my teacher couldn't figure out what to do with me since I learned by ear instead of reading what was in front of me. So my sister continued with piano for 10 years. A year later I got my first tin whistle at a 4th of July picnic and played it all day. It ended up abandoned in a drawer and lost forever somehow. In the 4th grade I started flute lessons and my teacher put up with my parroting instead of sight reading (which is easier for a teacher to deal with since a flute is only playing one note at a time). By high school my band director asked if I would consider switching from last chair flute to first and only chair bass clarinet. I loved that thing, but couldn't afford to buy one when school was over. In my twenties I played the flute, guitar and 5 string banjo and struggled to learn the fiddle and mandolin, mostly alone at home. In my late thirties I picked up the whistle again, this time with a good teacher, Shannon Heaton, who informed me, much to my joy, that my inability to sight read would in no way hamper me in Irish Traditional Music. Yeah! I found a niche and a community of other players. 35 years later I play the traditional simple system wooden flute and whistle in public sessions and have messed around with tenor banjo, fiddle and concertina at home. --- I'm giving the long story to encourage others that it is a long and winding road. And for me, at least, 10 really gifted teachers have attempted to teach me to sight read and failed, but my brain is wired for music and I am happiest when I am playing it.
Post Reply