Can anyone (and I’m sure there will be someone) give me any pointers on learning to play whistle?
Hi,
Those ones should be of good help.
http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/brosteve/
http://www.whistleworkshop.co.uk/ornament.htm
http://www.tradlessons.com/
Pascal.
Listen to a lot of music. Go to sessions if you can, get some good CD’s, or even check out YouTube for music. If you can find a teacher (even if for only a few lessons), do it. I played for a long time and I sounded bad and never improved until I realized it was because I didn’t really know how the music was supposed to sound.
Other than that, practice a lot, don’t give up (you probably sound better than you think) and have fun.
Oh yeah, WELCOME!!
Thank you both so much for your guidance, I am looking forward to the frustration of learning to play.
Also, would anyone know of any good cd’s I might listen to, I am trying to find a Lick The Tins CD.
I’d recomend listening to a range of CD’s as different players have different styles.
Wow, I haven’t heard Lick the Tins in about 20 years!! I totally forgot about them. That brings back some memories 
. Anyway, I really like Lúnasa and Danú.
You can listen The Chieftains, Lúnasa, Mary Bergin, Joannie Madden…
Also good to listen to is the Bothy Band, and Planxty holds a special place in my heart. THey have a lot of ballads and such, not all just instrumental, but they really are nice to listen to, though i do blame them a bit for my current longing for a set of uilleann pipes.
You might want to check out Ryan Duns, too. Great player and excellent teacher.
keep a whistle in your car, purse, backpack or some other place that will make the whistle handy. you will soon be happy that there is a traffic jam during rush hour.
Kegger, I don’t think my PM’s are going through. Canada is no problem.
I am also just beginning to learn how to play.
I’ve been browsing other whistle websites as well.
Many thanks Hunter for sharing Ryan’s YouTube channel. He has a bunch of nice lessons that I can learn from.
What a terrific resource this site and others are.
Yes. Best, Cyril.
The best advice I can give is to just play. If you’ve never played anything before, don’t expect much at first. Have fun, but don’t worry about what you sound like.
Play whatever you can, even if it’s children’s songs. If you just keep playing, one day you’ll discover that you’ve gone a long way . . . and that you’re playing actual music.
I think a lot of people quit unnecessarily soon, just because they have unreasonable expectations. Make a pact with yourself to not quit until 3 full years have passed, and stick to it.
Read Brother Steve’s insights. He does a good job of talking about the journey as well as the details of playing.
I’ll second that. Out of the Wind and into the Sun (Bothies); The Well Below the Valley (Planxty); and After the Break (Planxty) are indispensible as far as I’m concerned.
If you can read music, http://www.thesession.org/ is a great source for tunes in what’s called ABC format, and http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html is where you can turn that into manuscript. Although a lot of whistlers will quite rightly tell you that written-down notes is no way to learn Irish music, if you have both the score AND a good performance of any given tune, you’re onto a winner.
Good luck. 