Trouble Deciding Which Instrument to Pick Up

[Kypfer]

probably not the best whistle but I only have a surface knowledge of itm

... please don't limit yourself by associating the whistle solely with "itm" ... to quote Robin Williamson : "in the hands of an experienced player, it can make the finest music", and there's a wealth of "non-itm" music available that plays perfectly well on a whistle

[maki]

Yep, you can play blues, jazz, folk, Scottish, Christmas, or a number of other types of music on the tin whislte. This board has many such topic threads.
Don't limit yourself to Irish if thats not your thing.
Congratulations on your choice of first whistle, its a classic.

[tcpercussion]

Haha yes I guess what I should have said is that do to my lack of experience with whistles I don't know how much I like it compared to what else is out there because I didn't have the oppertunity to play anything else, but I have fun playing this classic so that's all that counts!

[maki]

Not tryin' to muddy the waters too much but there are some affordable and fun
flutes and piccolos out there;
http://tippleflutes.com/
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=89656&p=1084590&hil ... o#p1084590

Woodwinds RULE, even when made of PVC.

[tcpercussion]

Hey always happy to know what's all out there. It's also cool seeing what different instrument makers are doing.

For the various transverse flutes, how similar/different are the Embouchures? Like if you can produce a solid tone on a western concert flute does that make it pretty easy to get notes on the irish flute or vice versa?

[kokopelli]

I think you'll find that with a little bit of time, and perhaps a tweak or two on the head, your new whistle will quickly grow on you. It can play wonderfully as a solo instrument but also does well in a group for almost any style of music you can imagine. It has a good range depending on your skill, which will improve with time, and can be made somewhat tuneable so you don't class with other instruments. I would suggest that you don't go too fast in acquiring different instruments. By no means do you need to try to master an instrument before getting another, but if you only have one to focus on it's much easier to dedicate time to it until you can play it somewhat well. Then you can get something new and still play and enjoy the old instrument while you work up to being good on the new one. Just my two cents.

Oh yeah, and A generation D was my first whistle. I played it for years before my abusive ways of carrying it around with me everywhere eventually broke the head. Looking back now it isn't my favorite, but it was a fine whistle to learn the basics on. And if I had found a resource like this and sought out advice like how to tweak it I might have liked it even more.

[tcpercussion]

I've been putting some work in on the whistle and I'm really enjoying it so far. The top notes in the higher octave are really nice and I find them easiest to play and shift between. Lesson 2 (and I'd be curious to know how much of it is my technique and how much the whistle plays into it) you really have to keep air to a minimum for the lowest three notes (d e f#) to avoid a busy air sound and it feels like you have to increase your power a disproportionate amount to get the top 3 notes in the low octave to not be really flat. Finally, I find that the high d is the most tempermental when it comes to overblowing. Once I get up there the sound is nice and pure but I find that octave jump the hardest.

I think I'd like to pick up up a couple different brands of whistles (especially susato which I like the sound of) to see how they respond--I think it could teach me a lot about my technique. Eventually I'd like to work up to getting one of the concert or exotic scaled whistles from Erik the Flutemaker. Found that website on here and I really like how flute-like even his fipple flutes sound. How are those instruments generally regarded? I really like the wood sound.

[ubizmo]

Nice ocarina page Jack!
Quite extensive.
Any opinion on the Mountain Ocarina? I didn't see anything at your site.
Thanks!

I play Mountain Ocarinas almost exclusively, when not playing whistle, so obviously I like them. They currently have a G and a C model. Of the two, the G performs better. The G will work well for Scottish pipe music, as Jack Campin pointed out.

MOs have a strong voice, which I happen to like, but some others don't. They were designed to carry well in an ensemble or session, and they do. I played "Jimmy O' the Bu's" the other night on it, and it sounded wonderful. The MO sound is a bit more complex--some might say "reedy"--than other, more rounded, ocarinas. The inline form is more ergonomic, in my opinion, but there are those who prefer the transverse form of the "sweet potato" ocarina.

For most ITM, the range of the MO, or any single chamber ocarina, is inadequate, unless you resort to a lot of creative octave folding. A double has enough range for most ITM, but the chamber-switching, which also involves switching the right hand between different sets of tone holes, doesn't make for fluid ITM play. There are some who do a decent job of it, but I think nobody would say that these doubles and triples are strong in this genre. There's no double chamber MO yet, but there is one in the planning stage that will not require moving the right hand to different tone holes.