A while ago I discovered I can easily perform a glissando on my Alto recorder and I thought I’d see how far I could go on the tin whistle. Now I know from experience that it is harder to slide on a small instrument but my fingers began sliding when half holing T1 to produce a Cnat. And then I extended it to T3. Kept at it and eventually I went from T1 to B3 in one stepless slide. (On keyboards I would call this portamento )
I have to say this Feadóg is fantastic!
In a matter of weeks I’ve gone from learning a few songs to playing the second octave, adding vibrato and half holing. And now portamenti, which I wouldnt have imagined doable on such a high instrument!
Traditionally on the pipes you can bend up to several notes. The most distinctive to piping, probably, are bending up to the crossfingered C natural, F#, and to a partially-open F natural. But you can bend up to E, G, A, B, and even Back D.
It’s fairly common to bend downward from E in the 2nd octave to Back D.
Paddy Keenan did a downward bend from B to A (as I recall) on one Bothy Band track, The Blackbird.
All of this works on whistle too, except for the Back D stuff.
In the tradition you wouldn’t bend up (or down) more than one hole.
Rhapsody in Blue anyone? 
I’ve tried this myself in the past. I must admit, I pretty soon got bored with it because, as pancelticpiper says, there’s not much call for it in trad.
By the way, picking up another point in your OP, you’ve mentioned playing Cnat a couple of times around here lately. You know that half-holing isn’t the only way, right? You can use a number of different “cross-fingerings” to produce Cnat, the most common of which (especially in the first octave) would be OXX OOO. You’ll find that you have to just marginally adjust your breath pressure to get it tolerably in tune, but it’s a useful thing to be able to do.
On the whistle and pipes I, and many others, do a combination of crossfingering and partially opening the hole to bend upwards for the note C natural.
So it’s not an either-or thing.
It’s a tricky thing that beginning pipers go through, learning how to do that distinctive bluesy piping C natural, because it involve precise timing of a number of fingers and the thumb (because there’s usually a thumb gracenote on that C). If your timing is a splitsecond off you get a screaming High D instead of the low-octave C. (This can be heard on at least one Planxty album.)
Ah OK. So, for some pipers, they’d do both; some whistlers (most, I would have thought) use either/or depending on circumstance; or, presumably, those who can do the combination thing could also use one or other of the other two methods at will and depending on context. Is that about it, Richard?
On pipes or whistle, the same.
You’re always crossfingering the C natural, but you can either attack the note straight or bend up, depending on whether it’s a quick unaccented passing note, or a prominent dwelled-on note. Either way you’re using the crossfinging. (In other words you wouldn’t finger C# and try to keep it down with the bend.)
Here’s a good video, the tune Pipe On The Hob having C naturals all over. You can see Patrick’s upper-hand index finger bending off the chanter, the fingers doing the C natural fingering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5PukOANT00
Here’s me playing whistle, the same finger action, the same fingering, for C natural. (As a bonus there’s a half-holed F natural bending downward to E.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJm6BQ-Qxcg
Of course I’m a piper. I played pipes first, then picked up whistle. So myself and any piper would naturally do the same thing on whistle. I can’t speak to people who don’t play pipes.
For sure people who come to the whistle from the Boehm flute, people to who come to the whistle from Recorder, bring their accustomed technique with them. The difference is that uilleann pipes are a traditional Irish instrument.
Yes I discovered that a few days ago, but I also discovered the half holing technique, which I am also practicing on recorder. I’m fairly new to whistle but I’ve been playing recorder on and off since last September. Its good to practice tricky techniques, and I dont believe one should only play one specific type of music on a certain instrument. But I will perservere and eventually get onto trills cuts and crans.
Now, only one of those three is traditional whistle technique, as usually heard in the old days.
Pipers have always done crans and trills, the trills usually being of the pralltriller variety rather than full-length trills. By far the most common trilling finger on the pipes is the lower-hand index finger, used to trill both F# and E, most often in the 2nd octave. But you’ll hear the note A trilled too. But rarely other notes.
Traditional old-school whistle and flute technique is built around cuts and pats, and the rolls (short and long) created from cuts and pats. That’s all, it’s not rocket science. And they’re not ornaments per se, but finger articulation, to separate notes (instead of tonguing, though you can tongue cuts too, for emphasis).
Here’s a little demo of cuts, pats, and rolls. You don’t need any more technique than this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfu_fDUyNHs
and that stuff put together in a tune
Thanks for those links, I’ll have to watch them later.
The famous whoop!