I’ve a question I’ve been dying to ask, but haven’t been on this board in so long, I forgot my username… The whistle player in Flook does long rolls in such a way that he achieves a staccato sound, that gives me the impression he is tongueing his rolls. Can anyone explain how he does this? I don’t hear it in all the tunes, only some.
Yes, he (Brian Finnegan) does this by tonguing his rolls. Sometimes. Voilà. 
Do you have a specific example in mind from one of the recordings?
The tune that drives me crazy is from the set, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” the second one in the set. “The Girls In Boisdale.” I listen to it over and over, and am flabbergasted. The man hardly ever stops to breathe—plus his rolls just come out like a jack hammer. I despair. Will never be able to attain to that myself…
Ah, well … In that tune Brian plays almost no rolls at all. What you hear are tongued triplets. See this thread for a recent discussion:
https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/phantom-ornamentation/67191/1
The few times he plays actual rolls - e.g. at 3:38.5 (flipped roll) or 3:46 (short roll) - he plays them normally, without tonguing.
Thanks MTGuru, very interesting!! Could you please tell me where the vids of Brian are found? I haven’t been around for awhile, so I’m almost like a newbie, but not really.
No special source that I know of. You can find quite a few on YouTube, and a few on kerrywhistles.com.
Brian Finnegan is probably my favourate whistler, he has a near absolute command of the instrument and a style of modern ornimentation (not just the rolls) which i would dearly love to be able to immitate.
i believe he writes a few tunes aswell, i got ‘Three little steps’ of one of his you-tube videos, its a flook tune, sort of a jig / slip jig.