joined here recently as a newbie whistler - I have a couple of questions about low whistle fingering that I can’t quite get my head round. If anyone could help me along that would be most appreciated.
I’m starting out with The Low Whistle book by Steafan Hannigan that was recommended to me by some of the good folks at the Celtic Guitar Talk site, and I’m still at the stage where my grip isn’t quite right. My top hand seems fine, nice and relaxed and fairly clean tone, but my bottom hand is struggling, particularly the ring finger. I have fairly large hands so I don’t think its a question of being too small, but the recommended fingering position in the Low Whistle Book always seems to result in my ring finger positioned over the bottom hole so that the joint of the second knuckle is directly over the hole. I have quite skinny fingers so this is causing ‘dead-cat-itis’ much to my wife’s amusement. I find that if I slide my bottom hand back off the whistle a bit to play the bottom note with the pad of my ring finger, things get better but then the index finger suffers a bit from the same problem and my pinky can’t give any support. Maybe I need to get fatter fingers…
What sort of fingering positions to some of you folks use? I’m interested in the parts of the fingers that are in contact with the holes on the bottom hand mainly, and how that relates to the pinky rest position advocated in the book.
Just to ensure that I have get it right: The “pipers grip” is the grip where you play with your finger joints, say the common way to play low whistles?
I initially thought low d was out of the question as I have small hands and thin fingers, I now play a Cillian O’briain low D which has a fair stretch from E to bottom D, 47mm/ 4.7 cm center to center, I too used the low D whistle book for correct finger positioning and although very goods as a starting point, all hands are different and not everyone has the same length fingers, use pipers grip i.e the pads of the fingers but instead of using the books exact positioning diagram just modify what works best for you, for example with my hands there is no way I will ever beable to use my pinkie to stabilise the bottom of the whistle, but this is not a problem, with small hands and skinny fingers I just work a bit harder at
getting a comfortable grip light but with enough pressure to seal the holes.
pick it up every day even only for 10 minutes and it will soon come. i’m not a great player by any standard but thats more down to me trying to hard to read music and not using my ears to learn the tune.
I checked out Phil Hardy’s tutorial and that was very useful. The book did not make it clear to me that the main aim is to play with the pads of the fingers and once I sussed that out it became a bit easier. Only a few dying cats around now…
I watched the video linked above and noticed that the guy uses the pad of the third finger on each hand. I use the joints of all my fingers. Should I try to re-train myself or stick with what works?
I started out using pipers grip exactly as described in the book, thinking that if I wanted to learn Low D properly I had to get this right, but instead I spent weeks getting frustrated trying to copy what the book said, then I started to relax more found a good position for playing and my fingers found were they naturally and comfortably played best, for example if you watch the very talented Tony Hinnigan play on the kerry whistle site or at Tonys site you will see that when he plays Low D he use his pinkie to cover the ( G ) and his other pinkie to cover low ( D ) and in my oppinion he plays low and high whistle to die for, he has found what works best for him although when you watch him play it looks strange because the first two fingers are at a strange angle, I tried to play this way and it don’t work for me, so the moral of the story is find your comfort point that gives a good seal and work on that, don’t worry which particular pad is over the hole as long as its confortable and it seals, and makes sure its not causing you to physically stop playing to get a certain note.
I took a basic pipers grip on a Phil Hardy Low D whistle and practice fingering for about 2 months before I recognized real progress to the point that I felt one with the whistle. I didnt bother with matching my fingers with the pix or videos, rather what felt comfortable.
Fingering practice consisted of playing ITM, TONS of scales, Twinkle, Twinkle little Star, Cat Stevens and Beatle tunes, and trying to play along with Mary Bergin.
Best practice sessions was while I was watching something mindless on TV (like football) picking up and dropping the whistle as the mood struck.