http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR5kCyjOat8
Cheeky robots.
Agh. The recorder thing. I’ve gotten that so many times.
“No, it’s not a recorder, it’s a whistle. It’s a LOW whistle.” (It really sucks when they call your low whistle a recorder.)
The ignoramus then usually asks: “Well, what’s the difference.”
“Well, smart guy,” I’ll quip, “It just sounds better.”
“So, it’s a better sounding recorder.”
“No. No. It has less holes, it plays differently, it sounds better.”
“So, it’s a better sounding, better playing, simpler recorder?”
Now, you may end the conversation one of three ways:
-
Profanity and/or a duel. (Flintlock pistols.)
-
You may concede: “Yeah. You’re right. Fine. The whistle is just a simpler, better sounding, better playing recorder.”
-
You may continue the argument: “No, they have completely different geneses. The whistle has much more ancient origins than the recorder. (Go do your research and quote some details if you want to sound really smart.) The recorder is just an ass offshoot of the whistle or the flageolet or something.” This might resolve the issue and convince the ignoramus that the two instruments are considerably different. Otherwise, it might make you look, in the eyes of the ignoramus, like someone who is terribly bent out of shape about the most inconsequential of matters.
There are people that I’ve known for years who have heard me play the thing over and again yet they still call it a flute or “recorder-type-thingy”. I won’t begrudge someone for calling it a recorder out of ignorance (and I’m happy to educate) but it’d be nice if the folks you know made the effort to remember the name of your passion (especially after being corrected many times).
I never begrudge someone for calling it a flute, I always let that pass, because it is a sort of flute really.
It is a flute, taxonomically speaking.
Right. It’s a fipple flute. There are at least two species of fipple flutes: whistles and recorders.
They cannot interbreed, fortunately.
You can produce a whistle recorder hybrid but like a mule it’s sterile.
It will not reproduce either whistle music or recorder music and sometimes you can’t get it work at all.
You guys.
Those are some good ones.
Sounds like experience - tried that once or twice, eh, Mack?
One day I’ll empty the drawers of tried things, rejects, and left overs directly into the circular file. Or my kids will have to. And yet I hold on to hope…
Just a short tale from this weekend,
We were exploring some disused 19th century copper and slate mines
in Cumbria.
I’d taken along one of my DIY whistles to play in some of the
larger caverns (great natural reverb 
).
Well I’d just finished playing ‘Amhran A Leabhair’ and ‘The Butterfly’
and were making our way through the next passage when we
met a couple coming the other way,
Oooo’ she said ‘a fellow Recorderist, that was lovely playing’,
‘Thank you’ I said ‘its was one of these’, proudly producing my white plastic
whistle from an inside pocket.
‘Oh’ she said ‘its a pipe’, and walked on.
I was speechless 
It may take me some years to recover from this 
Nick
But it is a pipe, no? As in:
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone
http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html
BTW, this is great advice to many whistle players. When they act insulted, just tell them that their playing inspires you to quote Keats.
So, those eleven pipers piping…were they whistlers, or bagpipers? (or smokers?)