About once a month C&F gets a posting from a new whistle player that says something like “I’ve been playing the whistle for six months and I can’t play anywhere near session speed. What am I doing wrong?”
The truth is, you’re not doing anything wrong.
Unless you’re particularly gifted, have hours of free time every day to practice, or are already expert on another instrument, it takes several years to play at session speed. You’ll probably never be able to play as fast and as well as a professional whistle player, and there’s a good chance that you’ll never master ornamentation at session speeds (although you might think you have).
Sorry to be the one to break the news to you.
One reason is that Irish traditional music at session speeds is just very challenging. Listen carefully to different sorts of music, and you’ll find that very few genres play at the pace of a fast reel. So the bar is set very high. I find that most beginners in despair over how slow they are would have no trouble playing along to folk music, for example.
Another reason is that a lot of sessions are dominated by really good musicians who spend a lot of time on their music. Many’s the session around the US that really gets rolling around 10 PM on a weeknight – and if you’re a person who holds down a real job, has a family and comes to the music as a hobby, you have to wonder who these people are who can stay out till 2 in the morning playing music. When you get to know them, you’ll discover that for one reason or another they don’t have a day job or kids or other commitments. Their music is their highest priority. Kudos to them, but don’t feel bad if you can’t measure up to that standard. If you’re lucky, you can find an intermediate session in your area more welcoming to people like yourself. (If not, maybe you should start one!)
No doubt this posting will generate responses from people who never picked up an instrument before and mastered the whistle in six weeks while holding down two jobs and volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Congratulations to them! But I’ve run beginner and intermediate sessions for many years and played in twenty different sessions around the country, and I’m confident when I say that the average person should expect to take several years to master the whistle to session speeds. (In truth, half the people or more who take up an instrument drop out within six months, so really the “average” people who take a few years are already in the top half of the class.)
On the other hand, there is some good news.
First, the whistle is the perfect instrument for someone who plays music as a hobby. It’s cheap, you can carry it anywhere, and it can be a beautiful solo instrument. Regardless of how fast you can play, making music is its own reward.
Second, you will get faster. There’s plenty of good advice on C&F about how to work on your speed, but if all you do is play the whistle as much as you can, you will improve. It might take a few years, but one day you’ll find that instead of sweating and concentrating your way through a tune, your mind is wandering and you’re watching the TV in the bar and listening to the rest of the players. All you really need is the commitment to stick with it.
– Scott
practice, 
