I’ve just been learning ‘Old Man Dillon’ and ‘Lark on the Strand’
from Sean Potts’ album ‘Number 6’.
‘Transcribe’ is a wonderful thing 
Now, he plays a few tracks on the album on a ‘C’ whistle
including the above which is accompanied by guitar.
So the question is, why would he choose ‘C’?
All other things being equal…
Many musicians have pointed out that every musical key conjures up specific feelings. American popular song writer Bob Dylan claimed the key of C major to “be the key of strength, but also the key of regret.” "French composers such as Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Rameau generally thought of C major as a key for happy music, but Hector Berlioz in 1856 described it as “serious but deaf and dull.” Ralph Vaughan Williams was impressed by Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 in C major and remarked that only Sibelius could make the key sound fresh. However, C major was a key of great importance in Sibelius’s previous symphonies.[3] Claude Debussy, noted for composing music that avoided a particular key center, once said, “I do not believe in the supremacy of the C major scale.”
In a lot of genres the key is set by the instrument the tune was composed for. If a tune happens to fit the fiddle best in D minor, then you’d better have a C whistle handy if you want to play along with a fiddler, because that’s the only key they’ll do it in. (“Julia Delaney” comes to mind).
Some baroque instruments - especially flutes and recorders, maybe woodwinds in general, I’m not familiar with other families - produce a different sound depending on the key they are played in because of the use of cross fingerings. I’ve always wondered whether this is the origin of the characterisation of tonalities Phill refers to. Otherwise it never made that much sense to me, not having absolute pitch myself.
On the other hand, why play something in one key rather than another? To introduce variety in a set, because you like the sound of a particular whistle or register, because you can avoid a particularly shrill high note or unassertive low note, because your accompanist finds it more convenient… many reasons.
Non-whistlers like to wind whistlers up by putting together sets of tunes that force the whistler to swap whistles - the oftener the better. In the Scottish tradition you usually have 4, sometimes 8 tunes to one dance, and box players like to show off with a key change at every new tune. This usually lets you in for at least two whistle swaps a set.
My (Scottish fiddler) wife has just come up with ‘Farewell to the Creeks’ in A followed by ‘Cock of the North’ in F (for the Britannia Two-Step). It sounds fine, and sure, it’s only one whistleswap, but going from reading in A on an E whistle to reading F on an F whistle…
Reason for choosing a particular key? To stave off Alzheimers in aging husbands by keeping their brain cells hyperactive.
So the question is, why would he choose ‘C’?
The counter question could be ‘Why wouldn’t he?’. Variety, liking the sound of a tune on a particular whistle, liking a particular whistle, reasons galore.
My thoughts as well.. It’s not like D and related D whistle/flute/pipes keys are carved in stone for ITM
I don’t know if this is still true, but I remember hearing that Bill Ochs required all of his beginning whistle students to use a C whistle because it’s easier on the ears, especially when you’ve got a class full of them.
My first whistle was a C, a Generation that I bought in 1976; it’s still my favorite whistle and the only one I play at home for my own enjoyment.
I tend to spontaneously grab a C or Bb whistle at home too when i just feel like playing a tune, come to think of it i believe it is indeed because of the D and above can be rather shrill in my living room.
I hear what you are all saying about the association of keys with the emotional vibes of the music.
For example - some russian composers made great use of the Eb minor key for symphonic pieces; equally, we see the same key being used in Japanese ethnic music, and chinese music - leading some musicologists to suggest that Eb minor is associated with ‘orientalness’.
I tend to think that it is the repertoire, which defines our impressions of the key.
Personally, I prefer the keyless tune scale, but that requires a chromatic flute, and not a diatonic flute. Henryk Gorecki’s music, is keyless, and impossible to play on a diatonic instrument. Some refer to it as atonal for that reason, but it’s not so much ‘atonal’, as it is, ‘liberated’ from the tradition of writing music in fixed keys.
The Key of D, C, G, F are my most popular flutes/recorders/whistles. I have one low Eb minor key which I love, but the air volume required to shift it is exhausting.
But none of that is relevant. The reason to get a specific key flute is … to have another flute.
Whoooaaaadd!
Hello. This is my first post on CF so forgive me if I muck things up. There is a mystery to music that I try very hard not to unravel and that is the effect of keys on the emotions. I just enjoy them. On a 5 string banjo tuned gCgcd it makes a happy sound. But raise the C to a D as in gDgcd it becomes G modal and the instrument becomes a totally new instrument and the music becomes haunting. Put a capo on a diatonic dulcimer and as you move it up the fingerboard the changing modes evoke different emotions from the otherwise same fingering…Bob.
and I think this was the reason for the post in the first place,
just trying to get some idea as to why.
We get so used to playing on D whistles and flutes because
we play tunes with others in keys of D and G.
Reasons can be simple, reasons can be complicated, I’m just curious.
Because it fits my particular lock.
Every key, when compared to itself will sound the same. C major will not be any less or more happy than C# major. the intervals are all the same. A major 3rd from B to G will sound like a doorbell, just like one from D to Bb will.
like the others pointed out, folk instruments (ones that often do not play chromatic, like whistles) are suited for some keys more than others.
many musicians, especially from a folk background, associate certain keys with certain emotions. if you only ever played a D whistle, you’d start to think of G as happy, E as sad, etc.
and to agree with another poster, I’ll close with this quote about science, just change it to “music” in your head 
“Science isn’t about ‘why’, it’s about ‘why not’!”
-Cave Johnson
On a lot of instruments, keys do NOT all sound the same, and that’s why they got the emotional associations.
One to three sharps gives you a lot of open strings on the violin, particularly for notes closely related to the tonal centres most used when playing in G, D or A. And the same notes sound without crossfingering on a 1-key flute or simple oboe. So if you play in D you get a bright sound out of a typical 18th century band. Play in E flat and both strings and woodwinds have a more muffled sound for tonic, dominant and subdominant. On the other hand the brass and the B flat clarinets can really wail. So the whole balance of sound changes. Listen to Mozart’s scoring in The Magic Flute for some typical examples.
I’ve deliberately used this. A lot of Carolan’s tunes sound far too bright and assertive when played as usual in G on a D whistle or C descant recorder. It’s better if the notes most central to the key have a more muted sound, so you don’t get cadences terminating with an assertive bang. So I use something like a D voiceflute or A sopralto, playing the tune with the crossfingerings you’d use when playing in a flat key on a C recorder. The result is a gentler and more vocal tone that cuts out the over-dramatization.
But that is only germane to the instrument, not the key. If you could get violin strings of a gauge that would allow you to tune a half step flat and have the normal tension on the strings as you with a standard set, I doubt you’d hear any of the “emotion” that’s been mentioned hear.
I can certainly buy the theory that folks with perfect pitch may hear something the rest of us do not, but I’ve also heard it said that those with that gift hear individual notes and associate them with colors. It doesn’t seem a far stretch to believe that’s where this notion of keys having emotions comes from. On the other hand, if I write a dirge in the key of C, I don’t care what you think C sounds like, a dirge is going to sound sad.
Key does not mean absolute pitch.
The effect I was talking about is created by the design of ALL the instruments from the period when key associations were commonly made. There was no standard pitch across Europe and nobody ever thought there was. The key of E flat would still produce a sombre, ritualistic effect no matter what you measured it at in Hz - E flat was the note you got with the bottom key on the flute or a half-step up on the D string.
You’ve lost me here, Jack. It sounds like you’re saying that back in the period to which you’re referring, there were no standardized notes but if you called something Eb you got a “sombre, ritualistic effect.” I’m guessing there’s something you’ve left out or I’m misunderstanding your point.
He’s saying that pitch standards varied widely from place to place up to the early 19th century, with A sounding at pitches from around 390 to 490 (around 2 whole tones, I believe). But whatever the pitch in Hz of a given note, it would have a characteristic sound in relation to the other notes played on a given instrument because of the way it was produced. This is what I was suggesting in my previous post.
On the baroque flute, cross-fingered notes had a weaker sound than normally fingered ones, which gave the various keys an sort of tone colour, which in turn could be interpreted as a mood. I don’t know how far this applies to other instruments. Remember that “affect” is a central concept in the music of that time, which was highly emotional and demonstrative (quite contrary to the popular and by now quite outdated notion of baroque music as mathematical and unemotional).
But this variation in tone colour was eliminated when the baroque instruments were “perfected” in the 19th century, and won’t be heard when you play a tune on a C whistle instead of a D whistle using the same fingerings - that simply transposes it. Although changing whistles can have a strong effect, of course. On the other hand, playing a tune in D on a C whistle will obviously make it sound quite different from playing it in D on a D whistle.
So - breakfast time.
Are you saying that the emotional colour of the key is not actually a consequence of the key, but of the technology rendering that key?
Ah, heavy question. Let me rephrase. If we say Eb is a sombre key, does that mean on all instruments it is sombre, or only on the instruments of one historical period?
I had puzzled over this, as I thought that ET would remove any differences in the ratios between the notes of the scales, which would give all scales the same emotional colour. As a consequence the notion of a particular emotion associated with a particular key would be a historical accident that no longer applies.
Or am I barking up the wrong kettle of fish?