I thought this was a little funny so thought I would share.
I was honoured to play my whistle at a funeral earlier this week for a 5 year old girl from our church who lost a long battle with cancer.
The actual playing went very well and I had lots of nice comments. One gentleman came up to me to let me know that he enjoyed the piece I played on my…uhhh…ummmmm…oh, I can’t remember what it’s called. “An irish whistle” replies I…no…oh, i just can’t remember…“A penny whistle?” says me. “No, I know, it’s a recorder!” Anyway, after following so many of the threads on recorder vs whistle, I almost jumped on the poor guy! Instead I just corrected him, and thanked him for his nice comments.
I’ve had my Gen High G called a piccolo before but this was a first!
To the uninitiated the difference between a whistle and a recorder is unapparent. Most non-musicians call them all flutes.
For certain there is less difference between a recorder and a whistle than there is between an electric bass guitar and a classical guitar. The Susato recorders and whistles especially are similar one to another.
A couple of weeks ago I was showing my grandmother a page of whistle music, and she said, “You mean for the recorder.”
The tinwhistle is more similar to the recorder than it is to the classical flageolette, which has 4 finger holes in front and 2 in back and a blow-tube and a sponge, and many people refer to whistles as flageolettes.
But the fingering system of the whistle produces a better tone more easily, and is like that of keyless flutes.
rossmpfc13 wrote:
Then why does Generation call them “Flagolets?”
-Ross
Exactly!
Actually it is based on the notion that they are a form of the English flageolette, which was patented in the 19th century, and had all 6 fingerholes on front.
Blackhawk, actually it was a song that my husband and a friend were singing and I did a whistle solo of the chorus at the end. It was a modification of a song by the group “Accapela” I think the title was “Abba Father” (but I could be wrong)
I don’t actually play any irish trad music (at least not much) but instead use the whistle in contemporary christian music.
So just about any song appropriate at a funeral can be done with a whistle.
