How fast did you learn the whistle?

Whistle
1

Specifically, if you NEVER played another wind instrument, how long did it take you to be able to play the whistle without squaking & squealing? I’m not talking about mastering music or anything else, not even making it sound GOOD, but just to make the whistle make the right notes.

I ask because my mother has been playing for a few months and she said she JUST got it to sound OK and not squeak. I played recorder for a couple of months before the whistle, so I could play fine immediately–but even the recorder only took a few days for me!

She insists that the reason I picked up on these instruments quickly was because I am talented and a “natural” but I think she’s just having a harder than normal time. Please, help settle a family dispute!

I also don’t know what kind of whistle she has so maybe she got some terrible Gen or something…

2

It took me about 4 days to get the note to come out steadily. Breath control was a HUGE part of it. You have to learn to breath correctly, and it’s harder than it sounds.

Also, having the right books/tutorials helped a lot. TEN times more than online tutorials. There’s something about an actual book that lets me absorb more than reading a webpage.

Also, since you don’t know what kind of whistle it is, are you sure it’s even a whistle?

3

Kar,

I picked up my first whistle two months ago with NO prior experience with such instruments. It took me about three days to be able to produce an acceptable note, a couple more to be able to play notes in sequence and about a week to be able to play a (very) simple tune.

Mind you, my first whistle was a Low G, which is supposedly harder than starting out with a soprano. Since then I got a Dixon Sop.D and indeed find it a whole lot easier.

Finally, although I can play a few things, I am FAR from being proficient and still lack quitea bit of technique, but I am already having fun, which is what counts, right?

4

I don’t know exactly how long it took me to make it not squak or squeak; probably a week or two, but the reason I probably didn’t pick it up faster is because I live in an apartment complex and I was always a bit scared about using the second octave or sustain any note for a long period of time. So I tried to avoid it as much as possible. Since no one complained, I play at full force now until someone comes a knockin’ one day.

5

Know what you mean… I have to deal with a dubious wife and a sarcastic 14-yr old son. That’ll leave scars on your playing pride!!!

6

At least you can shut the door on the 14yo son…I suffer from Beehive Syndrome.

Whenever I pick up a whistle up to four under fourteens descend on my space, pick up any whistle they can lay their hands on and in any Key :astonished: and join in to the best (or worst) of their abilities, often a different tune altogether (sometimes recognisable). I can only liken the cacophany to a Beehive.

I bought my six yo son his own SweetOne as, having looked throught the pics in the Low Whistle book, he has realised that Real Men Play Whistles (even if his Dad doesn’t!!). :slight_smile:

Trisha

7

I started off with a LBW and the instruction sheet that came with the whistle. It was fun, I already knew a bit on reading music and I knew which holes corralated to which notes . . . but man, did I sound awful! I was trying to play in our finished (meaning carpeted) garage one night and my mom heard me and broke out laughing. I didn’t know how to seperate two notes of the same pitch, so I’d puff in little bursts. It’s so funny to think back five or so years, I’m grinning as I type!
I made progress with Bill Oches book and tape, but even then it was a while before it started to sound nice. I bought a Clark Sweettone and sat down with the material every night. At first, playing simple things was easy, but when I got to songs that were in 6/8 time, for example, it would stump me for weeks.
I never played an instument as a child(apart from fooling around on keyboard) so I didn’t have a reference point to start from. And no one in my family is musical, exect for my mother, who had a good singing voice in high school.

8

I’m in the same boat, Kar. … or am I in the same kar, Boat. :laughing: :laughing:

Seriously, though, I seemed to be able to pick it up pretty quick, but I’ve always been able to do that with music. I can hear a song once or twice and sing it through by memory pretty easily. My wife hates that. So I get the “natural” bit as well.

All that to say, I don’t know you, but would be inclined to side with your mother on this one. … you’re a natural. HOWEVER, you could remind her that you had to get those genes from someone, and therefore, she should just practice a wee bit harder, 'cause she’s probably a natural of sorts as well. …

All the best,

Little John

9

I hear that! When my wife left, she said that she would miss me, but she wouldn’t miss the whistles… :laughing:

Of course, she just IM’d me a little while ago and asked me to send her one… :laughing:

I had never touched a whistle before January of this year. Withing a few days I had worked up Hector the Hero (after playing it along with Mick Woodruff and Gary Humphrey’s awesome recording of it a few hundred times…) to the point that it didn’t sound terrible.

10

I’ve been playing recorder (though not too seriously) on and off for the last 35 years, so I was able to get decent sounding notes (and tongue reasonably well) from the start.

But it took me a bit to straighten out the fingering - a whistle fingers almost, but not quite, like a recorder in the first octave (though as a bonus whistle doesn’t require the odd fingerings the upper second octave needs in recorder). Took me a few days before I wasn’t trying to finger F# as XXX 0X0 rather than XXX X00 when my concentration slipped.

But the real difference, for me, was moving away from sheet music - I’ve memorized a few recorder tunes, but most tunes I played from paper, not the heart.

Though I practice every day, I’m not pushing myself too hard - at this point, I try to learn one or two new tunes a week (while practicing all the old ones enough to retain them) - mostly from the Bill Ochs tutor, though I’ve also mined the Walton’s Irish Music series and A_Dossan_of_Heather.

With that schedule - I started at the end of last November, and had 5 or 6 tunes I could play half-way acceptably by the end of December, the most challenging being “The Boys of Bluehill”. Now, I’ve rather lost count - 30+ tunes I can play reasonably well from memory, though some are fairly simple (“Red River Valley”, “Yankee Doodle” and the like). Most recently learned are “Napoleon’s Grand March” from the Bill Ochs book and “The Shae o’ Rye” from A_Dossan_of_Heather

But I’ve got a long ways to go before I stop improving - my timing needs a lot of work, I need to improve my breathing technique, I need to start working much more seriously on ornamentation . . .

11

[quote=“Kar”]
She insists that the reason I picked up on these instruments quickly was because I am talented and a “natural” but I think she’s just having a harder than normal time. Please, help settle a family dispute!
quote]

Your mother is right. :slight_smile:

Paulsdad

12

Good question, Kar - reading the answers here has been very interesting, since I’m on Day 3 of whistle playing. Previous wind instrument experience was 3 months of flute lessons 15 years ago. So far I can play tunes that don’t require any high notes! And I’m loving it!

Can also totally relate to the people who have troubles playing at home - I’m in a rented bedroom, and so have to go out in the park to practice. It’s all very windy/spacious/fresh-air romantic except I can’t listen to music out there (no tape Walkman) and paper music is kinda tricky to hold down with my elbows while I play it.

13

Kar, I’m just wondering what kind of whistle your mother has. Some are more temperamental than others, and some are just godawful (I have a couple of those). Maybe you should indulge in a little bit of WhOA and get her another whistle to try, or let her try yours for a while.

Robin

14

Your mother is right.
Mothers are always right

15

This sounds like me! I walked 1/2 mile to the lake at lunch yesterday at work just to practice the scales and I still kept looking over my shoulder. I try to sneak in a few moments before bedtime upstairs while the rest of the family is downstairs watching television but I’m very reluctant to try for notes in the 2nd octave else they’ll notice or the dogs will bark I’ve been “at it” for 3 days too.

Mike

[[/list]

16

Oooh, such fun replies! First, I’m pretty sure my mom has an actual whistle because she got started when she saw mine a few months ago. She lives out of town and when I finally visited her, I’d been playing whistles for months but she’d never heard me! Well, she loved the instrument so I guess she got one for herself, but who knows what type. I’m visiting again this weekend so I get to find out what she got herself into.

She actually is a musician, been playing guitar for the last, oh, 35 years or so, and my grandad was a GREAT blues guitar player, so perhaps musical talent does run in the family. I always assumed it didn’t because I was terrible when I tried the guitar (and bass, drums, piano, bowed psaltery, mini accordian etc), but when I found the whistle, well, it seemed EASY. Last time I saw my Mom, she played her guitar and me the whistle for some spontanous amazingly-good sounding duets. I was totally blown away by it, and after that was the first time I thought, “Hmm, maybe I really can say I am a musician.”

I actually still squak when I’m playing anything about a second-octave G, but that’s just because I don’t much like the higher notes, so I avoid playing them. (And yes, it’s partially because that’s when roommates complain). Also, I don’t play much Irish trad, but mostly folk & medieval & some classical tunes, so most of it stays in the first-octave or the low second.

The fact that I seem to be able to easily play the whistle but was terrible at other insturments makes me wonder if there’s instruments that are specially suited to a person. Is it just a matter of finding what suits you? In other words, do I play the whistle because I like the whistle OR because the whistle likes me? I also sing, and I’ve always wanted to play an instrument that I could sing with, so I avoided winds. Even now, I almost wish I played other things (thinking of trying strings again with a dulcimer, maybe) but I just gravitate back to the whistle. Something to ponder…

BTW, I do Middle Eastern dance, and CAN play the zills (finger cymbals) without too much trouble, but they hardly seem like instruments…OK, I’ve rambled long enough!

17

It took me 10 years, off and on. I had studied clarinet for 8 years, starting when I was nine. I was inspired by a Tommy Makem/Liam Clancy concert to order a pennywhistle, Mel Bay instruction book, & tape from the Signals catalog. I was very frustrated by the tone quality and by my inability to play more than one octave. After a few weeks, I gave it up and went back to clarinet & piano. A few years later, I took it to a folk festival, in the hope I could find someone who could teach me something. I went to a whistle workshop, and the advice I got was, “Buy a better quality whistle.” The teacher recommended an Oak or a Generation. I did, and I heard the improvement right away. Even so, I still got frustrated, and put it away again. A few years later, I picked it up again after attending an Irish music festival. This time, I had a book of pennywhistle tunes that included many that only required one octave. (The MelBay book had a number of jigs with octave jumps.) I stayed with it this time, because I could actually play something I enjoyed. After a few weeks, I could play upper octave notes ok if I went up to them gradually and had good breath support. It took me over a year to learn to jump to them quickly and to be able to play them without playing loud.

18

First whistle I ever owned was a copper water tubing one I made, and I was able to figure out “how” to play it in a few minutes as far as blowing harder got me the 2nd octave, etc… then I just kind of made up some slow aire stuff, and after a few hours I was doing ok with it. I didn’t find anything to copy or learn from for several weeks, so I couldn’t really play anything but stuff I just made up on the fly. :laughing:

I think the first tune I ever played that had any sort of a beat to it was Off to California… and it took me at least a week to be able to play it decent.

I learned all of my “ornamentation” by experementation, and only in the last year maybe, found all the cool sites and info on exactly HOW correct ornamentation is done, and am re-learning it all, so I’ll get there eventually! :smiley:

I think it just depends on the persons natural abilities, and it has a lot to do with the persons frustration level… as in if they are easily frustrated or embarassed, it’s easy to make anything more difficult than it really is! :slight_smile: I think anyone that is interested in the whistle, and can relax and practice a bit, should be able to pick it up in a reasonable amount of time. All of the people who have come to me for lessons who have never touched an instrument in their life picked up the whistle in around 3 - 4 lessons! Of course it was simple stuff, but just to be able to play the whistle with simple slow tunes or a scale without squeaks won’t take too much longer if one can relax and just pay attention to what their fingers and breathing are doing.

Take care,
John

19

The slower you go, the faster you’ll get. I played flute for about three years before I first ran into a tinwhistle, and one of the first and best lessons I learned in college flute classes was to play “long tones.” That is, play one note until it’s clean, until you can vary the volume, and until you can control your breath. Play low notes, and work your way up. If you’re squeaking and chirping, don’t worry. Just slow down. It only takes a few weeks.

Same thing when you’re learning tunes. Very slow at first. Slower than you know you can play. Just get it right, and then slowly bring it up to speed.

Before you know it you’ll be handing out sage advice like this.

Oh, and by the way, I’ve been playing for many years – off and on for a couple of decades, in fact – and some days I still squeak and honk like a set of bad brakes. Nothing, after all, is perfect.[/b]

20

It seemed to come very naturally to me…at least as I remember (it was…er…a few years ago). I got my first whistle, took it home, and picked out two of my favorite camp fire songs (“The White Road” and “Gypsy Weather,” if you’re curious) right off. I was so proud…I remember running upstairs to find my mother and play them for her!

Redwolf