My last and only submission gave me the opportunity to receive several inputs that helped me better understand how to play the whistle. That topic generated an interesting discussion so I figured to leave it alone and start a new topic with my new and, eventually, future submissions to the community.

Here I present a few tunes recorded (with poor quality, sorry about that) in the last months that show more or less where I am right now.
They have been recorded with three different whistles, a Dixon Polymer High D, a Clarke Sweetone D and a self made aluminum E♭
whistle.

Danny Boy (Sweetone D)
Tim Finnegan's Wake (Self-made aluminum E♭)
Wallflowers (Self-made aluminum E♭)
Down by the Sally gardens (Self-made aluminum E♭)
Hey Diddle Dis (Dixon Polymer High D)

As always, every comment is much appreciated with no need to sugar coat words.

Ciao

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I'll be on the road for quite some time, maybe through the spring and summer, but I'll have a few whistles and a Low D with me.
See you on my return, hopefully closer to be a player.

My tune's thread, just in case.

its a pitty that you didnt take part and answere questions in the old thread anymore
i would have liked to know your opinion about it and how you did develop your playing of that song (and i guess i did ask for that there?!?)

_________________
Andreas Fischer the "German Whistler"
PLay Whistles since May 2012
* My Whistles and other Instruments
* My WeBlog
Recommendation:
* My (Your) Music Community
A monthly Learn and Compare Challenge and more!
Everybody is welcome and U 2

I know, the problem is that I still am very naive about what I do.
At first I had the "huffing and puffing" phase when I had to think really hard about tonguing if I wanted to, now I am in a sort of "I tongue all notes but try not to" kind of moment and I try that just by using cuts and hits (or taps or whatever we call them) to articulate notes but I still struggle.
I didn't have much to bring to the table back then and still now I wouldn't know what to add.

Besides, wanting to post new tunes I had to depart from that topic.

_________________
I'll be on the road for quite some time, maybe through the spring and summer, but I'll have a few whistles and a Low D with me.
See you on my return, hopefully closer to be a player.

My tune's thread, just in case.

well, i also was one with questions in that thread, but i know, that, for the ones giving answeres, its also nice to get feedback and or to see that the knowledge shared, the given advice, was apreciated and taken, ... dont you think?

as someone who did ask you dirtectly, after a while, how you did develop, think its a pitty that you didnt react anymore

maybe thats a reason why you, this time dont get feedback at all?
and isnt that a pitty?
i think you HAD to take part
i learned a lot by that thread but later i also did tounge everything and now many times am unsure what to do, BUT to share that experiances and communicate could have helped us both and others as well

anyway, i hope that you will get feedback for your new recordings (thread is on top now one more time , i cant do more,
i did listen to the recordings but cant say anything probably helpfull at this stage)

but i still would like to hear how you play that scarborough fair tune now
i did change the way i play it here is a thread with a new recording and am changing it again right now ... its still develloping

_________________
Andreas Fischer the "German Whistler"
PLay Whistles since May 2012
* My Whistles and other Instruments
* My WeBlog
Recommendation:
* My (Your) Music Community
A monthly Learn and Compare Challenge and more!
Everybody is welcome and U 2

Oh boy, at first I was replying in a rather ticklish way because I was wondering where all this animosity and resentfulness was coming from, but then I stopped and thought, why is Andreas so angry, did he mention I didn't reply to him?
So I took some time to re-read the whole topic looking for clues and there it was, at the end of one of your posts in reply to Peter, the little question for me.

Hell Andreas, sorry my friend, I totally missed it!
(Although I sort of already answered it in my second post in that discussion.)

As you might have noticed I am not a regular here. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to devote to this forum and actively participate to discussions and also, at times, I can't even make it to just keep up with the reading. Every time I have the chance to come here I mostly have to skim through the dozens of threads that have sprout since my last visit: something is bound to slip under my radar.

Of course being it my thread I should have been more careful but other than that little question, the discussion between you and Peter really didn't require me to intervene, especially since being a newbie I mostly have to listen rather than talk and you were already asking the questions so...

I'm sorry if you thought I was giving you the could shoulder, actually at the time of the discussion I wasn't even around, dealing with more poignant stuff, and I only read the rest of it when it was already cold, missing that bit I already talked about.

As for the popularity of this thread, I really don't think this is the reason why there have been no responses, since I seriously doubt that anyone besides you might have noticed my shortcoming in the other thread and took offense from it (by the way, should it happen again, PM me before thinking bad).
If the users on this forum don't feel like saying anything about my whistle playing right now, I'll just wait or, maybe, hope to be more interesting in the future.

No hurt feeling Andreas, I have been really oblivious about it (check the other thread now).

_________________
I'll be on the road for quite some time, maybe through the spring and summer, but I'll have a few whistles and a Low D with me.
See you on my return, hopefully closer to be a player.

My tune's thread, just in case.

dont worry, i am not angry at all
i am just courious on one site
and was wondering why you dont get feedback this time on the other site

all is well (see my private message)

_________________
Andreas Fischer the "German Whistler"
PLay Whistles since May 2012
* My Whistles and other Instruments
* My WeBlog
Recommendation:
* My (Your) Music Community
A monthly Learn and Compare Challenge and more!
Everybody is welcome and U 2

well done！！

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my mail： 23921660@qq.com】
i come from china，and i have a irsh-US name "fluke.Whelan"

Mor, your patience, practice and persistence is paying off as I can hear a notable improvement in comparison to your first recordings. Over the next months these tunes will get only get more ingrained. Keep up the good work

Thanks for your input John, I have been playing the whistle more and more and more since I started last summer and I feel like is going to take even more of my time in the future.

And now, like Andreas requested, a very quick and dirty try at Scarborough Fair:
Scarborough Fair (Feadóg single Nickel D)

_________________
I'll be on the road for quite some time, maybe through the spring and summer, but I'll have a few whistles and a Low D with me.
See you on my return, hopefully closer to be a player.

My tune's thread, just in case.

Hi everybody, here are a few more attempts at not tonguing at all that I recorded last week.

The first two are classics of beginners:
Egan's Polka (Sweetone D)
The Dawning OF The Day (Feadóg D)

I feel like they could be slightly better but it is tough to record a good one.

Next are my first two anthems (of a long series! ) and certainly not the only attempts at rendering them:
Flower Of Scotland (Dixon Polymer D)
Amhrán na bhFiann (Feadóg D)

I would especially like to hear from Scottish and Irish on these two.

Thanks in advance for listening.

Ciao

_________________
I'll be on the road for quite some time, maybe through the spring and summer, but I'll have a few whistles and a Low D with me.
See you on my return, hopefully closer to be a player.

My tune's thread, just in case.

I enjoyed listening to the tunes you are learning. I understand the need to practice more slurring so in that way you and I are at a similar learning stage. I can hear a good level of preciseness in the tunes with more tongued notes but like you when I slur more notes consecutively I seem to loose touch with the beat a lot easier. Realising this I wonder if the opening note of every bar in a piece could be tongued to help keep in touch with the tunes musical meter ?(though probably not as it defeats the purpose of slurring all notes) but don't think it's as easy as saying yes do that because a tongued note adds emphasis and I'm not sure that will work in the various tune types. Having said all that it could be a simple matter of more practice tonguing tunes

Well, I think you underlined an important facet of whistle playing for beginners.

Initially, I basically articulated notes with my diaphragm and back of the throat, almost incapable of tonguing.
Then, all of a sudden (well, almost), I started tonguing like it was the only natural way of playing and indeed have found more precision and ease of playing. By tonguing it is easier to avoid squeaks, easier to reach the higher octave, easier to play fast and, like you said, easier to stay with the beat although, sometimes, being in perfect synch with the beat makes playing somehow mechanical but, yeah, I know what you mean.

I read somewhere that especially the opening notes shouldn't be tongued but I might be wrong, maybe I just have mixed memories. Of course tonguing the first notes would make a lot of things easier especially when starting with the high notes (Egan's Polka comes to mind).
I have read a lot about tonguing and more precisely how often, hard or soft and where to tongue (you've most likely read the discussion started by Peter about this very issue) and feel still very confused about it.
I am a newbie in Irish Music even more so than I'm a newbie in whistle playing, therefor I'm not at all in touch with what is an appropriate amount of tonguing (both quantity-wise and softness-wise).
Naively I am bound to think (I would have wanted to reply to Peter's thread saying this but I felt like I had no business voicing myself in that discussion) that there certainly is a well balanced trade off between slurring and, to beginners, tonguing and will probably become clearer with experience, also, as you mentioned, some tunes/songs will most likely benefit from either one more than the other and/or just a softer or harder tonguing would suffice.

I think that for a beginner a good thing would be to practice songs/tunes both by tonguing them and slurring (with ornaments) and that with time and "mileage" and exposure to the general environment of tin whistle playing, everybody will find his/her place in the slurring/tonguing debate. Ultimately, it'll most likely be a matter of how one feels the music better.

I am now working more on slurring because I still have to force my mind into doing it and the faster the tune the harder not to fall back into tonguing, and also because, since I initially disregarded ornamentation in favor of just learning the tunes and music theory, I now will have to work on cuts, hits and rolls as well in order to articulate slurred tunes/songs.

Ciao

_________________
I'll be on the road for quite some time, maybe through the spring and summer, but I'll have a few whistles and a Low D with me.
See you on my return, hopefully closer to be a player.

My tune's thread, just in case.

I's good being able to chat and share information on our whistle trials and tribulations especially in these early days. Just tonight I had another read at what Bill Ochs was advising, he has an exercise drill that mixes tonguing and slurring in scale form, there is only one exercise that I can see and it's quite simple (5 bars thereabouts) I'm sure the idea could be expanded upon and applied to any of the tunes in our current repertoire just make note of exactly what notes will be T'd and S'd and keeping working at it. What's good for me is realising the importance of being able to turn tonguing and slurring on or off at will I can move forward now and apply this little nugget into my routine and keep working towards more control of the two techniques