Hello all. As the (for the moment) newest member of the Board, please allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Mark Fisher and I live near Cumberland in Western Maryland. I’ve been playing around with whistles for about two years now, ever since I stepped on my wife’s Clarke ‘D’ at a Scottish Highland games (thereby inheriting it after replacing it). Hence the username (although it is highly debatable which is more bent, the whistle or the whistler).
The whistle still plays pretty well, but it caused an instant case of WhOA. With no budget to support such an addiction, I proceeded to make a copper ‘C’ and after seeing Riverdance for the millioneth time (but the first after becoming afflicted) I made a low ‘D’ out of steel tubing (EMT - conduit). Both are fixed tuned (thank goodness for electronic tuners) and the steel one comes in handy as a jack handle and billy club. (Note: my family bought me a plastic Dixon low ‘D’ last year in self defense.)
I’ve taught myself a number of the simpler and slower Irish standards (Fields of Athenrye, Sally Fields, Carrickfergus…) but can’t get the hang of the faster jigs and reels. I bought L. E. McCullough’s “121 Irish Session Tunes” book with discs a little while back, but even the slow playing he provides is way too fast for me (so far, but I practice).
I’ve been getting C&F for a year or more and figured it was time to delve into the Board. I played both a rosewood and a blackwood soprano ‘D’ this summer and have stimulated my illness, so I thought I’d check in here before spending big bucks.
Your username reminds me of the day my first expensive whistle (a Copeland high D) arrived. Just as I was reading the part in the little blurb that comes with it about not dropping the instrument, it slipped out of the bag onto the hardwood kitchen floor. It seemed none the worse for it, and at my next lesson my teacher just laughed and said, “Oh those things get tossed around pubs–and dropped–all the time!”
In case you’re not familiar with it, the search function up the right hand corner will take you many miraculous places in the past, where tortured decisions on which instruments to buy are lovingly archived.
Hi Mark! Welcome to the board. I guess I’m pretty lucky that I don’t have that sort of equipment in the house, or the skill to use it, or I’d have a mountain of pieces and parts and half-working whistles.
I may be missing something, but it sounds like you don’t have a working High D whistle (unless you still play the bent Clarke). If you’re trying to play along with CDs on your homemade low D, you’re going to have trouble keeping up, because it’s that much harder on a low whistle to begin with.
I would suggest you invest a few dollars in a cheap Soprano D before splashing out big bucks; get a Feadog, Walton, Generation, Acorn, or Dixon, something like that.
I’m not familiar with McCulloughs, but does he put breath marks in? I ask because Clarke’s (and low whistles) generally take more breath than cylindrical high Ds, and you may be fighting the need to breathe, thus interrupting the rhythm. Breathing in the right places is vital, gives the piece the right feel, and stops you turning blue.
Check out the following site for some good advice on playing Irish jigs & reels, breathing, ornamentation etc. Brother Steve is a regular on this board, but rarely blows his own trumpet (too busy whistling I guess).
