My whistles came!

Whistle
1

My first ones. I ordered them from House of Musical Traditions last Monday, the invoice says they were shipped last Tuesday. I’ve played the recorder before, and yes, the breath control practice with the recorder definitely carries over to the tin whistle. The fingering is different, of course. The sound is more, how shall I put it, chiffier? And the penny whistles are much easier to skirl at the higher register than the recorder is (and definitely easier to play without squeaking).

I got three whistles – a Clarke Sweetone, a Walton Mellow D, and a Walton Little Black Whistle. Physically, these things are smaller than a recorder, with the Clarke being the tiniest. Each has its own character.

The Clarke Sweetone is just a sweet whistle. It’s really easy to choose which register you want to be in. If you want to stay in the low register, it’s easy to stay there. If you want to go up to the high register, blow harder and do whatever it is you do inside your mouth to get there, and it’s similarly easy to skirl away up there. (I dunno what’s happening up there, I just kept practicing until it worked). It has a pleasingly “chiffy” sound.

The Walton Mellow D is similarly easy to work with, though a little harder to keep in the low register on the lowest D. As you’d expect from its name, it has a quite mellow tone, a bit bland compared to the Clarke. I think of it as a Clarke on weed :slight_smile:.

The Walton’s Little Black Whistle isn’t so little (it’s about the same size as the Mellow D, but with a smaller fipple or mouthpiece and slightly smaller in diameter tube). This one is a pain. It doesn’t want to stay in the low register. It’s great for skirling around in the high register though. I’ve put it aside for now though and am using the Clarke for learning, the Sweetone definitely is a sweet little whistle, easy to handle yet with character, unlike my recorder (which is so bland that if it were ice cream, it would be vanilla).

My instructional books came in from Amazon yesterday, so now I’m all set! Not that I’m waiting to read the books, I’m having fun skirling away right now. Given that the average price of these little instruments was $7, this is the most musical fun for the buck that I can think of, except maybe a harmonica (but most cheap harmonicas are pretty irritating because virtually all of them have at least one reed that’s out-of-tune and irritates the trained ear, while all of these penny whistles are at least in tune with themselves).

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I’ve recently bought a whistle. I picked up one of those cheap sub-$10 ones they have by the cash register at the music shop. It is DEFINITELY easier to play than the recorder! Why did I drive myself to such despair for so long playing instruments that aren’t easy or fun and don’t even sound half as nice as this little whistle?

Why did you order so many whistles?

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Well, they average $7 apiece, so it was a case of “why not?” And as you can see, they each have their own different character, so it’s not as if I bought three of the same instrument. They each have their own sound and character. Indeed, I’m probably going to buy a couple of other whistles shortly from Whistle and Drum.

Besides, this lets me have a whistle in the car, at work, in every room of the apartment, … :smiley: It’s sort of like a musician I know who has a guitar in every room of his house. Whenever he gets the urge to play something, he’s never more than a few feet from his axe.

4

Welcome to whistling! But … skirl skirl skirl? Sounds more like a bagpipe chanter than a whistle. Never heard that GHB term applied to whistle before.

That’s fine. But if the LBW is the one giving you trouble, then I’d suggest that’s exactly the one you should practice on! It’s an easy playing whistle, and if you can’t keep it in the lower register, that means you’re blowing way too hard. And most whistles are more similar to the LBW than to the Sweetone. So if you can get the LBW under control, then you’ll be happier in the long run. Also try the putty tweak described elsewhere on C&F.

Good luck and have fun!

5

I have about 15 whistles currently and the Sweetone and the Clarke Original are the ones I like practicing on because they are rather quiet. The only downside is that they require more air than the Feadog which was my first whistle. I have the Walton’s LBW as well which I am not too fond of because it is so light, nearly half the weight as the other whistles that I have. I love the feel of the Clarke original because you don’t have to insert the mouthpiece into the mouth, it simply rests on your bottom lip but, wow, it requires alot of breath and I can hear it at the same volume as the low pleasant tone.

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I’m not sure what to call it, when you’re flipping notes with your finger Irish-style rather than tonguing them. It sounds mighty much like what a bagpiper does. The word “skirl” was used to describe it to me by a professional musician who, amongst other things, plays Irish/Gaelic music. His specialty is the Irish harp but he also does play the tinwhistle professionally as well as the Irish bagpipes, he’s rather multi-talented. (No, you won’t know his name, he is a professional sessions player rather than a “star”, he’s the guy you hear actually playing behind the “star” to make the “star” sound better and is so good at it that he has to turn business away).

Oh, and my general policy when learning a new instrument is to use one that’s easy to deal with, and then move to harder ones. It’s better to learn on a simple easy-to-play acoustic guitar than an arch-top guitar, for example. Once you get the easy ones down, I’ve found it’s a lot easier to move on to the harder examples than to start with the harder ones to begin with…

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wellcome!!

R_ _ _ _ _ _R oHHH!! no!!, you do not say that word by these sides is people with hatred to this rare thing that xDxD :smiling_imp: :smiling_imp: :smiling_imp: :tomato: :tomato:


TIN WHISTLE RULES!! :smiley:

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I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Are you talking about that funny-shaped piece of plastic that sounds like, well, a funny-shaped piece of plastic? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Welcome to the wonderful world of whistling. :party:

They certainly are easier to play than a recorder (something I’ve started working on recently). Recorders can be pretty darn cool though, just ask Carlos

10

I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Are you talking about that funny-shaped piece of plastic that sounds like, well, a funny-shaped piece of plastic?

xDxDxD jajajajaa you are all the right!!









…by a free world of mmmmmm… emmmm… that thing xDxD…. :party:

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They certainly are easier to play than a recorder (something I’ve started working on recently). Recorders can be pretty darn cool though, just ask Carlos

mmm if you are right, Carlos has betrayed to us, jaja not only I joke, Carlos is one of the best flute players of the world, nevertheless never I am pleased Andor, immediately feels like the sound difference. :slight_smile:

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Can anyone explain what the issue is with ridicule of recorders? I don’t understand. They aren’t all made of plastic, either (and aren’t some whistles made of plastic anyway too?)

I used to play recorder in church in a quartet. I played the tenor. Sure we were pretty terrible, and it wasn’t Irish music, but we enjoyed the rehearsals.

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I think it’s because the plastic ones are generally atrocities with bad tone, iffy tuning, and difficult voicing. A fine hand-turned wooden one of course is a classical Baroque woodwind, but due to the expense and level of care that a hand-built wooden whistle requires, most of us have never been exposed to the real deal.

That said, I play my (plastic) recorder just fine. I have one of the better plastic recorders (a good Japanese model, I forget which one), it doesn’t have the tuning problems of the $1.95 cheapies handed out to 4th graders. I just don’t like the sound of the thing, it sounds… plastic.

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Followup on Little Black Whistle – I gave it another chance. After the practice on the other whistles I had no problem getting any note I desired out of it. But it doesn’t sound good. It really is too wheezy (is that the word?). It has been relegated to the bathroom for use while, err, doing my business. Listening to the sound, I think if I gave it good post-processing (a tiny bit of reverb to add depth, a teensy bit of compression to flatten the chiff, a big dollop of the “warmth” filter to simulate a classic large-diaphragm dynamic microphone) it’d record great. But as an unmodified whistle for unamplified use… not so great.