For those of you who actively play whistle for practice or to ‘compliment’ your piping, do you use ‘pipe fingering’ or whistle fingering when playing the latter? I’ve seen a few pipers playing whistle with the bottom hand down on high hand notes…
I use right hand below left, just as i do for pipes…but i never learned the whistle any other way…
Sometimes when switching back to the whistle after playing the pipes, I find that it takes a few measures to get my fingers opening up and not playing with pipe fingerings…must engage brain!
I’ve also found that a couple of months of playing the pipes has improved my whistle playing, both in speed and ability…not sure why.
-gary
Muscle memory. Or more technically, the neurons and neuralpathwaysget used to performing fine motors skills to perform a task ie: playing a holed wind instrument, and adapt accordingly to better process and perform the skill. I train for triathlons, so I would compare it to the art of mastering the technical freestyle stroke in the most efficient manner. half of my swim training is spent practicing the perfect stroke and not trying to swim hard and fast, that way when I do need to be fast the motions will be more effortless and fine-tuned.
Corin
I learned to play whistle with the lower E covered for stability. I later found that this helps on pipes when playing in the open style. It has the same stabilizing effect (obviously it depends on which notes you’re fingering at the time).
djm
I play whistle less and less as my piping gets better. And now the lack of a thumb hole for back D futzes me up a bit. I still have to get around to drilling a thumb hole just to see if it works. That, and just buckle down and play it more..
Corin wrote:
Muscle memory. Or more technically, the neurons and neuralpathwaysget used to performing fine motors skills to perform a task ie: playing a holed wind instrument, and adapt accordingly to better process and perform the skill.
If you really want to impress someone, the term for this pathway is a “sensory engram”. 
Rick
I have a very unique problem in that when I picked up the whistle long ago, I learned by ear and with no instruction. After years of playing, I reallized (can’t recall how) that I was playing the whistle lefty (right hand on top). I am not sure why this would have been considered lefty or that it was even significant. That was until I picked up the pipes about four to five years back. You can imagine the disappointment that I had and the decision that I needed to make when selecting my pipes. I am a right-handed person (though I can bat on the left side of the plate in baseball reasonably well), and preferred to purchase and learn the pipes right handed primarily due to my belief that there is a higher liklihood of attaining right-handed pipes over time. I have tried occaisionally to switch hands on the whistle but there is much sacrafice required which I do not want to make. So I play them lefty and pipes righty. Believe it or not, Tunes that I learn on either the pipes or the whistle are much easier still, to learn on the other, despite the different fingering. But I do not finger them in similar ways in any event. I take monthly lessons from Ivan Goff and he occaisionally has suggested putting down the whistle for a while to avoid confusion. But so far this hasn’t been much of an issue rather just a lost opportunity to perhaps advacne more quickly.
Neil
I also play with my ight on top of my left on whistle and am now contemplating pipes. Why is “left” handed pipes a problem?
Jenn
Jenn,
Its really not a problem in terms of playing, but there are far fewer lefty pipes out there (second hand), and not as many buyers either if you needed to sell them. That is the only issue. I actually would like to grow my collection over my lietime and therefore decided to go righty.
Neil