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
