Plenty of people on both sides of the pond tearing away at Tam Lin and Masons Apron at speeds they can’t handle. And plenty of audiences clapping and fake Irish dancing to it as well.
Of course I agree with all the comments about the flow being the thing, and the fact that you should be able to jump octaves cleanly without tonguing. But one point about tonguing is that it is an aid to phrasing. I look at it rather as I would look at changes in bow direction when playing the fiddle - naturally, I suppose, since I had a pretty mature fiddle style before I ever paid serious attention to the whistle.
Fiddle players’ bowing styles evolve to make the music swing. Passages like the ones being discussed here (rocking figures in Gravel Walk and Drowsy Maggie) require careful attention to where you change bows. Typical “cross-bowing” patterns are not what you might expect, with slurs across the beats.
When I began playing whistle I unconsciously transferred phrasing habits from fiddle to whistle via tonguing, but it was later on that I realized that some of these tonguing patterns are in fact used by a number of top whistle players.
A good example would be the slur-tongue-tongue pattern to deal with repeated notes in jigs (what Mary Bergin calls ha-ta-tas) that is gone into in some detail in the Brother Steve site.
And another example would be dealing with the rocking figures by dividing the notes into pairs or threes with the articulation on the off-beat.
For instance in Drowsy Maggie (left parenthesis indicates tonguing) (E2 B) (E d) (EB) (E | ~E2 B) (E AFDA)
Judging by the reaction this idea got in the ancient discussion I linked to above, many people find it difficult to get their head around this idea. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work though - although it is just one approach among many that you can use on the whistle.
Tounging adds good definition when played well. Though some of what Highwood says makes sense I disagree regarding tounging and think that with quotes like " The tongue does not play a part in this, and so is not needed - except in the case of whistles which do not want to make certain leaps, in this case sometimes stopping the air flow (say by tonguing) can help." he totally contradicts him/herself.
he is a him if it makes any difference.
And I think that I was not understood if you think I contradict myself.
It was brought up that tonguing might help “hit all the notes”, ’ all’ being in particular large downward leaps. My main point was that these leaps should be possible without the tongue, not that one shouldn’t tongue, but that the use of the tongue should be dictated by phrasing/sound concerns and NOT because it is the only way you can get from a to G
I have no desire to further rehash what I have written - I’ll just add that there are ‘technical concerns’ and ‘the music’, ideally the players technique or instrument doesn’t limit musicality, if you want to slur a bunch of large consecutive leaps or tongue specific notes to bring out a musical line it should be possible.
magickdancer,
panceltpiper describes (correctly) ‘breath pushes’ as a form of breath control used by traditional flute players. The term I am used to is ‘pulsing’ which uses the glottis to restrict, not stop as in a full glottal stop, the flow of air. Essentially the same thing really, just described differently.
Drowsy Maggie/Gravel Walk can be played very easily in a legato style while incorporating little pulses of air which accentuate the rhythm and flow.
I have just sat and tried playing Drowsy Maggie using a straight flowing legato style. There is no shape/bounce/lift to the tune when playing this way, and I find it very difficult to stop myself from using little pulses or pushes to give the tune it’s lilt.
Try whistling the tune legato (using your mouth, not a whistle), feel what your mouth is doing to articulate the notes in the tune (it’s not a ‘song’ by the way).
If you are whistling by making an ‘O’ shape with your mouth rather than whistling through your teeth the way some folk do, then you will find that you are using little contractions at the back of your throat to restrict the airflow. I do the same thing when playing my flute or whistle, the only difference is that I don’t physically ‘whistle’ as such, but I do use the same glottal control as I would do if I was (mouth) whistling the tune.
Walking around whistling tunes that I am trying to learn is the way I map out the tune in my head, I then transfer that to the instrument, knowing that I already have the ‘bare bones’ of the tune and the way I am going to accentuate it using my breath.
Hope this helps you see that there is a big difference between glottal control and glottal stops. Hopefully it will help you attack the tune with a bit more certainty as to what you need to do to get the rhythm, flow and control you are after.
The speed will come with practice, enjoy. 
Highwood - “My main point was that these leaps should be possible without the tongue, not that one shouldn’t tongue, but that the use of the tongue should be dictated by phrasing/sound concerns and NOT because it is the only way you can get from a to G”
Couldn’t agree more…
I just tried that, and found out that I’m not contracting the back of my throat at all; in fact the moment I started whistling the back of my throat opened up. This is, by the way, standard pedagogy in orchestral wind instruments and vocals, the goal being to have as unrestricted wind passage as possible, for a bigger tone.
All my pulses are coming up from the bottom, from the diaphragm.
In short I don’t do this glottal thing. On the flute it’s all diaphragm, on the whistle diaphragm and tongue.
This link shows the standard approach to flute, playing of other wind instruments, and singing in the “legit” music world
panceltpiper wrote;
‘I just tried that, and found out that I’m not contracting the back of my throat at all; in fact the moment I started whistling the back of my throat opened up.’
You obviously whistle a lot differently to me then panceltpiper.
I wish I could upload a video of me whistling (I don’t have the means to do that at the minute) to show what I do. There is only a subtle contraction of my glottis, surely you must have felt a tiny bit of movement, you can’t be telling me that you used just the diaphragm? How did you separate each note?
(I’m not trying to pick you to pieces here panceltpiper, I am just really curious as to how you whistle. )
panceltpiper; ’This is, by the way, standard pedagogy in orchestral wind instruments and vocals, the goal being to have as unrestricted wind passage as possible, for a bigger tone.’
How does having an unrestricted wind passage translates to a bigger tone on flute? Care to elaborate how this could be? I can understand how it would work for vocals but can’t see how it would work for flute.
panceltpiper; ‘All my pulses are coming up from the bottom, from the diaphragm. In short I don’t do this glottal thing. On the flute it’s all diaphragm, on the whistle diaphragm and tongue.’
I know that the diaphragm is used to pull air into the lungs, but doesn’t it then relaxes when we exhale? Our stomach muscles and chest muscles are what cause the air to expel, not the diaphragm pushing out the air.
I realise now that folk probably whistle in lots of different fashions, Doh!! 
Mr. Gumby,
I clearly remember you having posted me regarding this matter. I also remember you stating that you would be notifying the Moderator. I had no real concerns regarding confusion with prior posts made by yourself being attributed to those made by me, and I still do not.
I very well may have chosen another username if I had been alerted that “Cayden” had previously been used. All water under the bridge now Lad.
There have really been no troubles experienced on my end of things resulting from your prior username, and I trust your experience has been much the same?
Cheers Mate,
Cayden
I am all confused (maybe the once in a decade warm weather and a Willie week afternoon of playing pipes and whislte contributing there).
is pretty much in line with my:
I notified both Cayden and the Mods but nobody seemed worried much about it at all.
I very well may have chosen another username if I had been alerted that “Cayden” had previously been used. All water under the bridge now Lad.
Nobody used the ‘Cayden’ name before, the database, wrongly, assigned yours to my old posts.
There have really been no troubles experienced on my end of things resulting from your prior username, and I trust your experience has been much the same?
Confusion aside, I am not too worried. In this case though, the thread linked made more sense with the misnaming of posts explained.
Yes you’re right. As Nancy Toff says in The Flute Book
There is probably not a flute student alive who has not been instructed to “breathe with your diaphragm”, good advice, but you should know what it does and does not mean. When teachers speak of your diaphragm they are generally referring to the abdominal muscles. The diaphragm cannot push air out of the lungs. Nor can it “support the air column”- that being the job of the abdominal wall and rib cage (intercostal) muscles.
About the open throat thing, vocalists and flutists are of the opinion (difficult to prove scientifically) that an expanded air column gives a bigger tone: rib cage, throat, and oral cavity.
Try to keep your rib cage expanded while simultaneously allowing the abdominal wall to contract… only when the air in the abdominal cavity is totally expended should you contract the rib cage muscles. Think of the chest as a reserve tank, to be used only for emergencies. Do not tighten the throat, even if you’re running low on air and feel that throat pressure will expel the last remaining vestiges of air. Actually, constricting the throat muscles will do the opposite, restricting the airstream rather than propelling it out.
Tone quality is affected by the position of the tongue within the mouth, the relative inflation of the cheeks, and other variations of the size of the oral cavity.
Holding the tongue mid-mouth blocks air flow; lowering it to the base of the mouth allows freer intraoral air vibration. Similarly, a slight inflation of the cheeks has been shown to enhance tonal resonance.
These things aren’t one author’s crackpot theories, but are widely held “truths” in flute tone production. What’s interesting is that I never was conscious of any of this stuff when I was learning flute back in the 70s, as I was entirely self-taught, but I do it anyway.