I’m a bit disillusioned with the whistles I have.
I am reminded of a childhood story book (beautifully illustrated with B&W photos), where a young boy frustrated with his violin puts it in the garbage. An old man walks by, picks it up and begins playing beautiful music. Boy wants violin back.
PS: Anyone know the name of this book?
I know there are free training videos on youtube, but I’d add that I really have learned much from Blayne Chastaine’s training video series (www.blaynechastain --then click on the iTeach button). It does cost a small subscription fee, but it’s, imho, the next best thing to a live teacher–he plays a tune with ornaments, then simple, then goes through it phrase by phrase without ornaments (by the way, I know “ornaments” might not be the best word for such articulations) then again with the articulations/ornaments. He repeats the phrases so you can play along, adds a new tune every week, alternating between whistle and flute. I have no personal commercial interest in this, but am just an enthusiastic student (took a couple of real live lessons in London last year, and hope to do so again this summer). I think it works very well for a beginner/intermediate player, at least. Of course, ultimately no teacher can teach if you don’t practice, practice, practice, like others said above–I think I’ll stop and play my whistle for a bit (slaving away at the office, but the place is empty).
Best,
JD
I am reminded of a childhood story book (beautifully illustrated with B&W photos), where a young boy frustrated with his violin puts it in the garbage. An old man walks by, picks it up and begins playing beautiful music. Boy wants violin back.
Point taken but I agree with RDC about not having to fight with your instrument. And I really want to believe that one day I’ll make my whistle sound something like the soloist does in the video linked to from my first post, or like Pat Tierney does. If I can’t hold on to that belief I’ll probably give up.
The good news is I’ve tweaked my Generation whistle last night and am very pleased with the result. Now when it doesn’t sound good I’m pretty sure that it’s my fault so even that bad feedback is positive.
I’ve signed up to http://www.blaynechastain.com/
You guys, Ryan Dunns and web sites like this one make you realise how fantastic the Internet is.
When I was I think 14 I bought a Generation in “C”. It came with a leaflet with a few tunes on it and I learned how to play those just tonguing the notes. Then I hit a brick wall I couldn’t find a way to get access to tunes I wanted to learn to play so I put the whistle down. I still have it but a pup at some time in my life got hold of it and bit the end of the tube. Fortunately it was the bottom end and the mouth piece is still OK. I’ve ordered a new “C” so that I can try my old mouth piece on a new tube.
The Internet is what makes learning this instrument so accessible. I also now realise that there are many books and CDs available that I was just unaware of. I’ve ordered The Complete Tin Whistle Tutor by L. E. McCullough that someone recommended on this forum.
Now I just need to continue to share the obsession that you all have and practice, practice, practice. I’m going to keep back buying a top notch whistle as a reward to myself when I stick at it.
Many thanks
HS
Nah.
‘The future is uncertain. Eat desert first.’
The simple principle by which I live.
If one has the money. a new good whistle is a good
way to keep at practicing.
Old ‘Serpent in the Garden’ Jimmy
No commercial interest here either, but I’m another very satisfied customer. I believe there’s a sample lesson or two you can access if you sign up with your email address. I did this and had such fun with it that I signed up immediately. The way he teaches a tune phrase by phrase has really helped me wean myself off of learning tunes from sheet music.
I’ll be a voice of dissent on the Burke – when the stars align, and my breath control can hold the edge, I get the most gorgeous ringing silvery chiffy-edgey sound from my Freeman Blackbird or Cillian Ó Briain Improved Feadog. It’s the sound I fell in love with listening to my trad Irish whistle recordings. I can sometimes get it on some other whistles – my Parks Everywhistle, with the tone ring turned just so, was the whistle that taught me the trick, but that one takes a bit more wind than I usually have to spare.
Yet try as I might, I just can’t get my Burke to ring out that way. It almost feels like it’s designed to prevent precisely that sound – which is, I will admit, is breath-wise adjacent to a very raspy/shrill screeching chiff-gone-bad sound. But my target sound is silvery instead, and takes surprisingly little breath for such a ringing tone.
Does anyone else know what I’m talking about here? Can you get your Burke to do it? How?
And back in the seventies Mary Bergin was wringing sounds of jewel-like purity out of an unmodified generation, if you listen to Feadóga Stáin. I greatly doubt there was much if any audio post-production, so sometimes it really is the player.
The subtleties of breath control are truly remarkable. The received wisdom is that the tin whistle is one of the easiest instruments to learn. I wonder if that should be easiest to learn how to tongue out Mary Had a Little Lamb but far from easiest to learn how to get the best from it.
Mary Bergin’s breath control is a perfect marriage with unmodified Generation whistles. I wonder if she has tried others and has been disappointed that even she can’t make the sound that her ears and brain are expecting.
I guess that the easy thing to do is to blame the whistle when in reality it is capable of making the noise you want and eventually you will find a way of getting it to produce it. The whistle doesn’t change you do. Having said that it is clear that some whistles suit some people and not others. When I’m playing a slow air I want to sound like that soloist playing the Burke rather than Sir JG on the Abell. Ask me in a couple of years how I got on.
Cheers
HS
PS Can playing one of these things become additive in the true chemical effect on the brain meaning of the word addictive?
D Gens used to be much more consistently good. I had some in the early 80s that were super.
Occasionally these surface.
And even now, when Gen quality control seems to have slipped vastly, some D Gens are good.
I’ve spent lots of money trying to find one; finally Jerry F saved me.
I would expect that Mary B was playing an older Gen or a good new one if her
whistle wasn’t tweaked. That doesn’t mean that the one you buy in a store
is going to be playable, unfortunately. There are other inexpensive whistles that are much
more consistently good. If your Gen squawks you are hardly alone in thinking
it’s the whistle. Folly to try to improve till you can play it. Same goes for any
whistle a newbie can’t play–even if it’s a good whistle. Get something
you can play.
I’ve played through batches of 20 or so Generations and found them to be very consistent, with no real noticeable difference in sound or playability. This whole notion of “Generations have poor quality control” is not accurate in my opinion. One of my go-to D whistles is a Generation that I picked after playing through a batch of approx. 20 whistles and finding basically no difference between almost all but a couple, and even there, the differences were so minor that a beginner wouldn’t be able to tell. I picked the one I bought more or less at random, although it might be a tiny bit sweeter sounding than the rest. Maybe.
Generations are definitely my recommended whistle when buying a batch for a school or workshop or class or whatever, as you are pretty much guaranteed to have them all be good whistles.
The early ninties gens had brutal quality control, IMO. Three out of ten would be awful, six playable in varying degrees, and one would be good. The numbers would dwindle if the shop wasn’t good at stopping people from cherrypicking the playable examples. Any stale stock was likely to be ugly.
I doubt Mary’s favorite D whistle was randomly selected, but it was a generation. At the time, (1979) there were Clarkes, and Dave Shaw had begun making his conical-bore whistles in C and D (dunno about when his other keys became available. He was making rolled-tin whistles in D before Clarke) but I don’t believe there was any good alternative to the gen for tubular (I’d write ‘tubiform’, but I’m not sure we can stand a repeat of the recent hilarity) whistles.
Possibly the 90s were not good to Generations, but for whatever reason, 10 years on they have very decent quality control. I still prefer my good Feadog, but out of three of those that I own, one isn’t that great… but I haven’t had the opportunity to play through a bunch of Feadogs like I did with Generations, so I can’t comment on the quality reliably at all. Something I think holds true for many of the people who repeat the “poor quality control” comments about Generations.
Just to bring this thread back to Burkes, I think that video is fairly representative of the sound of Burkes. It is not a sound I particularly care for when listening to Irish Traditional Music, and more importantly it is not at all a sound I like to hear when I’m playing it (ie from my own whistle). Really though, the biggest problem I have with recent Burkes (anything less than 10 years old I guess) is that they feel stuffy and do not have the level of flexibility that I love in Feadogs and Generations. But that also makes them good for a beginner, because they’ll pretty much take whatever you throw at them and sound the same way. FWIW I think Syn whistles are a pretty similar, but much cheaper, Burke alternative.
Controversial. Here are two posts from Doc Jones (my experience is like his and I’ve played lots of D Gens,
looking for a good one. I have more success with lower keyed Gens. I own now five or six Gens.)
‘I have plenty of cheap whistles and dearly love the “cheap whistle” traditional sound. The bad Generations I’ve had have just been garbage. The one good Generation I have is a true delight.’
https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/anyone-playing-a-bb/18223/30
Bottom post on page.
…
‘I have had about six Generation whistles of which exactly one was playable. It’s a Hi-F. The Bb I bought was a total disaster. I do hear good things about them but can’t corroborate personally. Either the company has some serious quality-control issues or I have seriously bad luck.’
Same link, same thread, ten down from top.
I think Jerry F is the answer.
Well, I think Doc Jones is also in the business of selling high-end instruments. He also says quite regularly that he’s not much beyond an intermediate level player.
I agree with what Bloomfield says on that link, by the way.
I have three Bb Gens. They are identical (well, were… one had a head crack after an attempt to force it onto a different tube of my own construction) and are all wonderful whistles. The same times I played batches of Ds I also played batches of Eb, C, and Bb (and a few Fs, although I can’t play those for too long because they’re just so high pitched). Same comments apply to all the keys.
This poor quality control is not something I have ever observed.
I don’t think it’s controversial at all. I think it’s an oft-repeated, but poorly backed up claim. You get a garbage Gen, send it my way and I’ll be happy to revise my opinion.
The ad hominem against Doc is unwarranted. He’s an honest guy and good whistler. I’ve been playing
whistle for many years and seriously for ten years. That intermediate level whistlers (I guess that’s
where I am) often find Gen Ds ‘garbage’ or ‘unplayable’ counts for something, surely. Both Doc and I testify
that we like the cheap whistle sound and are having considerably less problem with
other cheap whistles. I’ve played Gen whistles since the 70s, when they were delightful.
The only thing that’s changed is that I’ve gotten a good deal better while they
seem to have gotten a good deal worse.
Obviously we are playing different batches of Gen whistles, you and I. No wish to discount your
experience. Counting ours too, there’s a problem.
Eventually, we all need to buy into the fact that it’s all subjective and variable.
You’ll see really good, accomplished players using all manner of whistles, and many shift readily between Sindts, Burkes, Feadogs and Generations at will. They all have different sounds, feel and play differently, and achieve different ends.
As someone whose opinion I value pointed out this week, whistles are cheap. Compared to what other musicians spend on their instruments, “It’s basically just beer money”. Trying, buying or settling on any one needn’t brand a player as being “in that camp”.
For myself, I enjoyed learning on my easy-playing Burke, and generally favor my slightly more finnicky, but more traditional-sounding O’Brien Rover now. And I’ll always love the cheap ones too.
I say sell your TV and buy 'em all.
Eventually, we all need to buy into the fact that it’s all subjective and variable.
You’ll see really good, accomplished players using all manner of whistles, and many shift readily between Sindts, Burkes, Feadogs and Generations at will. They all have different sounds, feel and play differently, and achieve different ends.
Couldn’t agree more. I think it’s a BIG mistake calling any of the above whistles ‘beginner’ whistles. That’s absolute nonsense. Choose one, stick with it, and learn to play it well. An accomplished player can make any of them sound good. Mary Bergin has a tremendous sound on the Gens, and Joannie Madden has a tremendous sound on Burkes and O’Riordans that she plays. They’re all good 
I have a Generation D and I would classify it in the “junk” or “unplayable” category, especially when I compare it to my Susato D. The Suzie has twice the volume, much better response and stability, and far superior intonation. I bought the Gen. about 30 years ago, played it (or tried to play it) for about a week, then put it away and never played whistle again until about six months ago when I discovered Susatos. I have a stable of eight Suzies now and I’m on these things night and day. I have become obsessed with penny whistle.
Send it to Nico and have him put a clip
up. I want to know how it sounds when
a Gen-xpert plays it. I always meant to
do that with Peter Laban back in the day.
Yes, I know that Generations can sound very fine. I have recordings of some of the top players using Generations and they sound great. Maybe the one I got is a lemon. But whistle makers shouldn’t sell lemons.
What I’m saying is that some people
claim they can play quite well on a
generation that others find unplayable.
I’d like to witness that…
To wit:
I don’t think it’s controversial at all. I think it’s an oft-repeated, but poorly backed up claim. You get a garbage Gen, send it my way and I’ll be happy to revise my opinion.
I say if you aren’t going to use that
lemon, send it to Nico and we can
all see if what he says is true about
the lemons.