medit8b1 wrote:Baah! Ignore those people with their little tooters
, If you want to play a low whistle, then play a low whistle! Welcome to the dark side! Or should I say low side? As I state on my website, a low whistle is not a high whistle, and is not played the same. The fingering is different (pipersgrip) and the air/breath support required is different. Even if you spend a year playing high whistles, you will still have to "learn" to play a low whistle. If anything, I think it would be easier to learn low whistle first, than go to high whistles, they would seem easy in retrospect! (for more of my arguments on this subject, go to
http://pipersgrip.50webs.com/F.A.Q..html)
A good, pure sounding low whistle for not much money is the Dixon abs low D. They also have a slightly smaller finger stretch and smaller holes compared to other low D's.
Ha.
3. Should I learn the "High" whistle before I learn the Low whistle?
It is a common misconception, in my not so humble opinion, that one should learn how to play the "high" whistle before learning how to play the low whistle. While it can certainly be argued that learning to play the high whistle may be a somewhat easier task, being able to play one does not necessarily give you a leg up on learning how to play the Low whistle. High whistles are generally played using the pads of the fingertips, where low whistles are generally played using the pipers grip (see Technique section). Having instilled into ones muscle memory how to play using the fingertips, one would then have to "re-train" their fingers, compared to a complete beginner who would just learn the pipers grip from the start. Further more, not all fingering on a Low whistle is exactly the same as a High whistle, and the air requirements and breath control required to play each instrument is very different as well. This is not to say that a High whistler cannot or should not learn the Low whistle, simply that no one should feel obligated to learn the high whistle in order to learn the Low. This can most aptly be demonstrated by the fact that most professsional Low whistle players tend to be pipers first, not high whistle players.
But most importantly, if you, like myself, are drawn to the Low whistle for it's intrinsic attributes, and maybe feel that High whistles are, well, too high (dare I say shrieky?), then why waste your time learning an instrument that you're not really interested in playing and just go straight for the good stuff!
LOL. The pipers grip and breath support and the occasional quirky cross fingerings are the least of it. Those are easily learned, in a week or a month. What learning the whistle actually means is precision, rhythm, phrasing, ornamentation, variation. That's the work that needs to be done and it is easier to do on the high whistle.
That said, if you only want to play low whistle, and particularly if you are going to play Sally Gardens and My Heart Will Go On, you're right: don't bother with the high whistle.
