Ok, it’s time to confess: I’m not really a whistle player. My heart lies with another, many-stringed, instrument. I did attend a novice whistle workshop last summer, though, and I played my whistle when I had to travel and couldn’t bring my primary instrument. I enjoy it when I pick it up; I just don’t get around to picking it up much.
I have made a New Year’s Resolution to play my whistle every day in January. (I figure I can re-up for February after I see how I do in January.) Eventually I’d like to play well enough that people won’t want to cover their ears when they see my whistle appear.
Hurdles for me to overcome in learning whistle:
Poor finger agility. My primary instrument (hammered dulcimer) doesn’t require fine finger control.
No experience with breath control. I’ve never played a wind instrument or been a singer.
Gotta make myself pick up the whistle and practice!
Points in my favor:
Obsessive/compulsive personality trait
100+ tunes (mostly Irish) residing in my head, as a result of 10 months of obsessive (see #1) dulcimer learning
A dog who doesn’t howl
So, do you think there’s hope that I can develop into a mediocre whistle player?
On 2003-01-02 18:23, E = Fb wrote:
You are a shoo-in. Do I guess correctly in saying you live in Alaska?)
Very good! Yes, I’m in Fairbanks, Alaska, enjoying the pinkish glow of sunset at 2:45 p.m. local time. It was 32 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, when I came in to work this morning. I LOVE living in Interior Alaska, but even I get the urge to hibernate in January.
Welcome Sarah! I’m another ‘many stringed instrument’ player. . .so is Byll, and I think cowtime. Practicing whistle is a LOT easier than HD! Tuning takes seconds, if you need to or bother to tune at all (try THAT with your dulcimer); the instrument fits in your handbag, in the visor of the car, and nearly any place else you care to put it. Multiple instruments don’t break the bank, so you can have one in every room and car, and a few to spare.
Have fun…don’t get frustrated often. . . visit C&F on occasion!
On 2003-01-02 18:23, E = Fb wrote:
You are a shoo-in. Do I guess correctly in saying you live in Alaska?)
Very good! Yes, I’m in Fairbanks, Alaska, enjoying the pinkish glow of sunset at 2:45 p.m. local time. It was 32 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, when I came in to work this morning. I LOVE living in Interior Alaska, but even I get the urge to hibernate in January. >
I fell in love with Fairbanks when we visited there a year ago August. It’s a neat city (I doubt I’d survive a winter there, though!).
You’ll pick up the whistle, never fear. The breath control thing is something that comes with practice, as is the dexterity. You’ve got the ear, and that’s the biggest hurdle over, I think.
It sounds like you may have an “ear,” which goes a long way toward musicality.
Like exercising, once you establish the habit of playing every day, it won’t be a chore. (That may take a week, maybe two.)
Don’t neglect scales and arpegios. You can do them while you’re trying to decide what else to play. In another thread about whistle teachers, there was a lengthy discussion about it, but for myself, I’m in favor of it. If you go for it, vary the length you hold the note and try to vary your volume from soft to louder to soft again before going to the next note–that’s to develop your breath control. (That’s not an original idea with me, a flute teacher advised that for me.)
Thanks for the welcome, and advice. I didn’t even realize you could get much in the way of dynamics (w.r.t. volume) on a whistle. I thought blowing harder just made it jump up an octave. Gotta work on that “control” thing, I guess!
I think of myself as an ongoing experiment to see how far one can get in music with zero talent and a lot of persistence. My ear isn’t as good as I’d like yet, but it’s definitely benefited from my obsessive dulcimer playing. I can take a tune I know and pick out the melody on the whistle, slowly, by trial and error. The process involves a lot of error, though – I hit a lot of wrong notes while searching for the right ones, especially when crossing between octaves. I’m better at picking melodies out by ear on the dulcimer, but even that still involves trial and error. So far, I guess my ear is better at recognizing “wrong” than at finding “right”.
As for stashing whistles in cars, though, I think my fellow Alaskans would advise against that in the winter. Remember, it’s 30 below zero out there!
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Whistling. My aunt is a HD player and is just learning whistle. Because of rheumatoid arthritis she has difficulty with her hands (one of the reasons she starting playing HD) and as such she knows she will never be a world-class whistler, but she can and does enjoy tootling around on it. And if she can do it with her hands, you will be able to as well!
On 2003-01-02 19:47, HDSarah wrote:
Thanks for the welcome, and advice. I didn’t even realize you could get much in the way of dynamics (w.r.t. volume) on a whistle. I thought blowing harder just made it jump up an octave. Gotta work on that “control” thing, I guess!
I think of myself as an ongoing experiment to see how far one can get in music with zero talent and a lot of persistence. > > My ear isn’t as good as I’d like yet, but it’s definitely benefited from my obsessive dulcimer playing. I can take a tune I know and pick out the melody on the whistle, slowly, by trial and error. The process involves a lot of error, though – I hit a lot of wrong notes while searching for the right ones, especially when crossing between octaves. I’m better at picking melodies out by ear on the dulcimer, but even that still involves trial and error. So far, I guess my ear is better at recognizing “wrong” than at finding “right”.
As for stashing whistles in cars, though, I think my fellow Alaskans would advise against that in the winter. Remember, it’s 30 below zero out there!
Sarah
Yeah…stashing a whistle in a car in those temperatures could get pretty painful…especially if it has a metal mouthpiece (I can see the headlines now: “Alaskan found in car with lips glued to pennywhistle…film at 11”).
You can’t get much variance, dynamics-wise, with a whistle. Some whistles will allow you to “grow” a note a bit before they jump, but you can’t make major dynamic changes.
I think most of us hit more than a few clinkers when learning a new tune by ear…they reduce, somewhat, with time, as your fingers and ears get in sync, but they still happen.
One of the neat things about the whistle is it’s such a simple little instrument, but it has a seemingly endless array of nuances. I think you’ll find yourself addicted in very short order (if you aren’t already!).
Oh Boy Sarah have you come to the right place. There is no finer group of human beings in the world then the ones who are about to help you get as addictied to these stupid, simple,complex,frustrating,magicaly wounderful little hunks of tin and plastic.
Anything you ever wanted to know about them can be found right here. Check out the search function and you will see what I mean.
I spent 4 hours this mourning just learning about recording myself on the confusser.
Im new here my self but already I feel very comfy and warm in this place. Dont worry too much about all of the many propper ways to play these little devils. Just make music. Heck last night I got so frustrated with a song I have been working on that I just started screaming through my whistle. I mean I was blowing that thing so hard my dog ran for cover under the bed. And right there in my rage I found the blues inside my little D. Gutter blues. Jeez I wounder if anybody makes an Em whistle. Anyway, you will have fun I guarunty. Welcome to ya and watch out for WhOA!!!
Welcome, Sarah of the Many-Stringed Instrument. My band uses twin four-octave hammer dulcimers. Our first CD was entitled, ‘228’, and refers to the number of strings the band has to tune every time we rehearse and play in public…
You have come to a good place. The knowledge I have gained here is invaluable - as are the friendships.
Welcome Sarah, I’m another of C&F’s many-stringed instrument players. The dulcimer is what brought me to the wonderful world of whistles and the affliction of WhOA!
C&F is a great place to spend your time. Keep a whistle by the computer too! I don’t carry one in my car either but it’s because I don’t want to be wearing it in my nose at stop signs!
Welcome Sarah.
Remember practice, practice, practice,
Because practice makes perfict.
But at the end of the day its playing to gladen your heart, thats important not how well others think you play.
For me, the hardest part is learning the tunes. I’ve got no problem with breath control, having sung for years, and playing the clarinet in high school, and fingering is generally a doddle after playing guitar and mandolin (at least the fingers always go down in the same place) but it takes me ages to get a tune right in my head. Once it’s there, though, I only need to play the first 3 or 4 notes and the rest of the tune just follows.
So having a store of great tunes already at your fingertips is going to be a HUGE help.
Hi Sarah and welcome. Theres’ a lot of dulcimer players here, although some of us prefer the mountain dulcimer.
I honestly can’t understand your claim of poor finger agility when you play the hammered dulcimer, though. My efforts at the latter instrument are limited to even slower tunes than I play on whistle.
It’s great to find some other hammered dulcimer players here! Whistle does seem to be a great complement (i.e., opposite) to HD: small, light, cheap, and no strings to tune. Wow, Byll, tuning TWO 4-0ctave dulcimers – that’s a lot. (By the way, how do you count your strings? I tell people I have 124 strings to tune, because I count both sides of the treble bridge separately since I have to check/tweak the tuning on both sides. I actually “only” have 92 tuning pins. And the number of individual pieces of wire is even less, because some of my courses use a continuous string that goes around a hitch pin and then back across the dulcimer, acting as two strings. So just trying to count the strings is confusing!)
Since the mountain dulcimer has also been mentioned, I can’t resist telling my favorite dulcimer joke. (Credit goes to my son, who made this up.)
A mountain dulcimer walks into a bar and says “Bartender, give me ten beers.” The bartender says “Whoa, buddy, why are you drinking so much?” and the mountain dulcimer replies “I want to be a hammered dulcimer.”
Yes. Welcome to the Wild Wierd Wacky Wonderful World of Whistle.
If you follow everyone else’s advice you will end up obsessed with whistles, obsessed with practicing and perfection, or obsessed with this chat site. It won’t take you where you want to go.
Playing whistle is 50% fingering, 50% breathing, and 100% listening.
As to fingering, don’t try to be the Dublin pub session queen at the beginning. Pick one or two tunes that you know from the HD and learn to play them without a lot of ornamentation and mishegas. (A tune may be easy on HD but not so easy on whistle, so be nice to yourself and pick one that’s easy.) When you’re bored with one, play the other.
Don’t grip your whistle, and don’t squeeze it. Your hands will hurt. The less you lift your fingers from the whistle, the easier it will be to get them back on the holes. Keep your lips loose, too. Let the fipple do the work.
The first thing you will find out is that, unlike the dulcimer, YOU HAVE TO BREATHE. To breathe you will have to stop playing the tune and pick it up a note or two or three later. Try to find places where your breathing doesn’t kill the tune’s momentum. This will keep you busy for a while. A tape recorder may come in handy here.
The big secret is: what makes a tune work on dulcimer won’t work on whistle. When you’ve got all that, come back to C&F and we’ll show you how ornaments help the tune along and personalize your playing.
By the way, the best thing I ever did for my music in general and whistle playing in particular was voice lessons. It was a group class called (something like) “Singing for people who have been asked not to”. $40. Changed my life. {Thank you Annabel Gratz at The Gypsy Wagon, Cambridge.}
Sarah, the ‘counting strings’ connundrum is the reason HD people talk about ‘courses’ I think. When I explain my instrument I say that there are 27 courses on my 13/14 dulcimer, yielding forty notes on a total of 54 strings, and let the mathematicians in the crowd scratch their heads.
