I have a low D whistle and absolutely love it and I really want to do more than just mess around with the instrument. What is the best way to learn to play this in an excellent manner? Can anyone recommend a really good beginner tutorial (maybe with a CD or DVD that goes with it so I can hear the techniques I’m to be learning)? Any other suggestions? Thanks.
I don’t know where a low whistle tutorial is but there are some low D tunes here http://www.tinwhistler.com/index.aspx 
that you can see the dots, and listen to MIDI, mp3, and a few are played on a low D whistle. Click on the tunes then click on the tunes type. then click on Airs & Ballades. Not all of them have low D recordings you will have to look around to find then. A few are Brown Collen, The Water is Wide.
If you hurry and go there soon maybe you will miss the flames of those that say you should learn polkas on a soprano whistle first, and do it by ear. 
There is a low whistle tutorial, listed here on thewhistleshop.com:
http://www.thewhistleshop.com/catalog/tutorials/tutorialsets/low/low.html
It comes with a CD, and has standard notation for the tunes in it. I have a copy-got it for Christmas one year, but never used it! Maybe I should?! Seems a good thing to have-interesting little details in it relating to the history, makers and performers too, besides techniques and tunes. Only low whistle tutorial I know of, written specifically for the low D.
Barry
I don’t think that tutorial is really worth the money. For one, more than half the tunes are not on the CD, so you’re not really able to hear them played.
It’s humourous and somewhat informative, but you might as well just learn to play by practising and trying out things and attempting to imitate players that you really like.
I have the book, and I haven’t opened it in many many years, and even when I got it, I read through it once and never looked at it again.
Leaving aside for a moment the usefulness of any tutorial at all, I wonder: What is there about a low whistle method specifically that would set it apart from any whistle method? One page to explain piper’s grip, maybe. Then it’s just the same techniques and tunes as any whistle or flute. Or am I missing something?
A sales opportunity?
Well, I’m no low whistle expert, but: I have not yet figured out half-holing on a low whistle. I can do it reasonably well on a regular D whistle (on some notes at least) but for low whistle I wonder whether there might be some technique that has to work differently.
I was sort of hoping that tutorial would explain it. But I never got around to ordering it.
MTGuru posted what I meant to write in my post initially!
It’s a whistle… there’s not that much difference.
As far as half holing, how do you half-hole on the high whistle? Why wouldn’t that work on the low whistle?
I tend to slide up, or curl my finger up, to get the half-hole.
Not a low whistle tutorial, per se, but this is excellent, assuming you want to learn Irish trad.
I have it and apart from showing all the notes with pipers grip
it doesn’t really tell you any more than other tutors.
A second CD would have made it a much better buy for $28.
Nick
No, not really. Of the half-dozen ways to half-hole a note, there’s only one that’s really any different or trickier with pipers’s grip on a low whistle. And that’s the finger curl using the fingertip, that Nico mentioned. Everything else works the same: sliding up/down, rolling up/down, rolling side-to-side, angling up/down from the joint, touching the side or bottom of the hole.
That may be so, but you won’t know the secret handshake unless you buy the book! You know, the one only low whistlers know…it’s using pipers grip, but that’s all I can say…! Besides, there are some neat pictures of young guys (now old) playing low whistle! It has it’s charms and benefits! It only uses illustrations of hands on a low whistle, and pictures of little guys playing big whistles! None of them puny (edit) ahem, measurements challenged, wheestles, ya know!
Barry
You’re right Barry - the book has its place in a whistle players library but not really as an out and out tutorial. The humour that is stitched throughout it must go down well somewhere. It certainly reads a bit better than it sounds on the CD - very stilted and obviosuly being read. Like a beginners ornamentation I think it was ‘used’ too much… This isn’t meant to be a review - and certainly not a bad one!
I wish they had managed to do the second CD and have all the tunes available to listen to. If anybody is listening and you are thinking about the 2nd CD - just gonnae no dae the ‘jokes’ this time or I’ll huv tae switch ma phazer tae ‘malky’. See what I mean about local humour… 
cheers
Stephen
Differences - maybe vibrato is more important on low whistle, and the repetoire tends towards slow airs (at least mine does)…