And, You Started to Play the Whistle because...

[IDAwHOa]

I have my roots in the recorder also, but as an adult.

I got some tickets to a Red Priest Concert and took my wife and son. It was very enjoyable. That group really was having fun with the music they were playing. Not the somber, dull type of chamber music I was actually expecting, but wanted to expose my son to (for his benefit, of course!) He actually enjoyed the music and the antics of the performers. Did you know that a harpsichord can actually be fun to listen too in the right hands? So can a recorder. We could not afford a harpsichord or a cello. I had tried violin (classic and fiddle style) and so we did some research on the recorder. Turns out you can get a fairly decent beginners instrument for a reasonable price, about the same as you would pay for a really nice whistle.

We tried soprano and alto. We did not like the quiet and all to sensitive nature of the beasts. We REALLY did not like the cost of the nicer entry level wooden instruments that we were told we needed to get over that.

Somewhere along the line we found this site and the generosity of several board members we were infected with WhOA. My first whistle was an Overton Low D that I picked up for less than $100. We have slowly (well ok, quickly) gravitated to the more expensive whistles (Bleazey, Copeland and Overton.) They just sound better to us.

The great thing about this story is that after more than 20 years of marraige, this is the first hobby that Renee and I are participaing in TOGETHER. It has strengthened our relationship.

[Quiet John]

NO Q.J. (or Ants) I'm not talking about the relatively cool hand bells that people play in choirs, these were more like Orff instruments, they could be played individually, but were struck with a mallet sort of like a xylophone. I remember the teacher asking which bell we thought would make the highest note, the bells were standing on end, so naturally I pointed to the tallest one and said "that one will play the highest" in a way I can still see a pervers truth to that answer , but imagine my surprise when the teacher disagreed with me!

Ah, my mistake. You're pardoned. What you describe sounds like another Musical Atrocity.

[Monster]

Yes Q.J., it was a form of toture, devised specifically for grade school children. I remember having several "run ins" with music teachers in grades 1-5. Grade K was cool, cause we primarily just sang and had fun, but grade 6 was cooler yet when we started in on real concert band instruments! Ahhh, the annoying sounds you can make on a trombone when your 11 years old!!

[BrassBlower]

Now, for the shortest answer so far:





(or, if a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, maybe the longest answer)

[Chuck_Clark]

Kinda complicated here. Started with trombone in school. then left music behind for years. got involved in reenactment, then helped put on a music and storytelling festival which led me in turn to mountain dulcimer.

Then I wanted to play pipes, but they were pretty expensive so I settled for a practice chanter - from which I could never get much more than a loud buzz. Tried recorder and hated the squirrelly fingering. Then i picked up a Generation pennywhistle and in noodling around found that its fingering was straighforward, not unlike a mountain dulcimer.

Don't recall how I found C&F.

[Walden]

I started because I wanted to.

Here it is ten years later and I haven't got anywhere. Maybe I should give these Clarkes away.

As for finding Chiff and Fipple, I visited the site quite a long while before I visited the Forums. My sister's back went out a few years back, and she was bed and wheelchair-bound for a few months, as Indian Health didn't have the money to pay for her MRI, and neither did we. Anyway, her birthday came, and I recalled she'd shown interest a few years earlier in playing whistle by tabs, so I decided to get her one... would give her something to do, till her back operation. That drew me back to the C&F site for a second time... looking at the pages that told about the different makes of whistle.

Some time later I first visited the Board, and posted.

[Monster]

Kinda complicated here. Started with trombone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

Then i picked up a Generation pennywhistle and in noodling around found that its fingering was straighforward, not unlike a mountain dulcimer.

Don't recall how I found C&F.

Are you talking about the cylindrical or conical bore dulcimer?

[blackhawk]

I heard Eoin Duignan play the low whistle in an Irish pub in Dingle in 1998. He made a kind of magic I didn't know existed until then. I was hooked but couldn't find a teacher til two years ago and then he recommended I start on tinwhistle because....well because it's a good place to start. I have no regrets about that, but now I spend most of my time on low whistles making a small kind of magic.

[ChrisLaughlin]

For me it was a toss-up between whistle and guitar. I figured chicks really dig guys who play whistle and flute, so my choice was easy.
Chris

[anniemcu]

Having been listening to the Chieftains, The Boys of the Loch, and the like back in the mid to late 70's, I spent the then 'much more than a penny', $3.98 or so for my first penny whistle and proceeded to learn a few tunes. I loved the sound, the ease of playing (fingered like the flute I had played in school) and had plenty of opportunity at that time to play.

Unfortunately, I've never been much for actually paracticing, so those few tunes are *still* most of my repetoire, LOL, though I've finally figured that out, and am adding new ones regularly.

[BrassBlower]

For me it was a toss-up between whistle and guitar. I figured chicks really dig guys who play whistle and flute, so my choice was easy.
Chris

I play both whistle and guitar. I started out playing guitar, then I met "the Ladies"!

[brianormond]

-After hearing a stirring medley about 1978 on a David Bromberg
album with a medley featuring a well-played high whistle on the finale.
-Its still the best lively piece I've heard, but not for the fainthearted.

[fancypiper]

About 24 years now. I liked the GHB, happened to hear some SSP and Northumbrian pipes and someone said get started on a whistle before getting bagpipes.

Then I got some Chieftains and Planxty albums and heard the uilleann pipes.

If you think WhOA disorder is bad, try UpOA disorder.

You better give that whistle to someone before you happen to find a pipemaker

[amar]

1991 was the first year I went to Scotland, and the first folk-cd I then bought was "the compact collection" by the corries.
<img src = "http://www.tartanthistle.com/cdcorriescollectionT.jpg">
still, a very enjoyable album, if you like that sort of music. It was my first encounter to folk music. Some years later i bought myself a genD and tried to play along to some bagpipe music I liked, of course it didn't work and I thought it had only to do with my inadequacy....
After a few more years (that is about 3 years ago) I found out about various keys and stuff, I bought myself the whole generation range and found out using a Bb worked well to Mike Katz's (Battelfield Band) bagpipes...
Well...the rest is, as they say, history...

[brianholton]

In the summer of 1973 (I think), the Chieftains came to Scotland for the first time. We'd heard the odd track on the radio (John Peel played them from time to time), but when they played the Edinburgh Festival so few people came that the hall was almost empty. We had bought the cheapest student tickets, but were ushered onto the front stalls.

Now, you must understand that at that time in much of Scotland, pipers didn't speak to accordion players, fiddlers mostly didn't speak to folk revivalists who played guitars and mandolins and other such new-fanged imports. So apart from the club-footed fiddle and accordion bands (deeply uncool), you either heard Highland pipes and drums playing together, or solo fiddle and piano, or - very rarely, and only if you knew where to look - older tradition bearers breaking all the rules of polite performance. The Incredible String Band was a notable exception.

So hearing an ensemble like the Chieftains was an absolute revelation. I was in tears of joy most of the time.

I'd been a r*c*r*e* player, into renaissance and baroque music, but increasingly starting to explore my own Scottish tradition, and learning bluegrass guitar too.

Well, I went right out and bought a brass Gen in d', and in a year or so had close to a full set. Somewhere around '74 I bought an Overton A (which I still have). And I've been playing ever since.

In the late '80s I got hold of a Shaw low D, which I never really took to: I got cramp in my hands holding it for any length of time. Arond the same time I bought an Overton G, but never managed to stop it clogging.

About 4 years ago I discovered C&F, which has unclogged my Overtons, and launched me on big-time WhoA. Thank you Dale.

For many years I would be the only whistle player in the session - there were good players around Scotland, but not where I was living. So I lsitened to RTE (the Irish Radio Station), which influenced my style a little.Mostly, though, I play Scottish style, much influenced by highland pipe ornaments, and also by Northumbrian piping - lots of tonguing and a fair bit of staccato, and even flutter tonguing occasionally (where an Irish piper would do a cran, for instance, or a Highland piper do a pinky birl.)

So that's my story.

all the best

brian