Question: do you think whistling skills (in the traditional sense of “just put your lips together and blow” and wolf whistles etc.) help your tin whistling skills develop? I whistle (traditional) ALL the time without noticing, and people tell me I’m good at it. And I do sometimes whistle until my tongue aches. Is that a good sign for the future that I’ll have good breath control or emboucher or anything? That would be nice! 
I think traditional mouth-whistling is underrated in the “real” music world. (Although my favorite composer, Benjamin Britten, did have a small part in his “Spring Symphony” for a whistling chorus).
There is a small group of people in ITM who practice the type of whistling that you refer to and from what I can recall there used to be a category in competitions for this kind of thing.
I know very little about this subject but I have a funny feeling that Peter Laban would have some knowledge of this.
Slan,
D.
My father used to whistle a lot–especially while driving, and my older son does the same now, but it seems to have passed me by.
I find that the hardest thing for me is to get a tune into my head. Once it’s there, playing it is the easy part. (But then I don’t play anything fast, so that might be a bit misleading.) Anyhow, if you can whistle a tune, that’s at least half the battle. If you can work out variations that way, that should be useful, too. I suspect mouth whistling will also help with breath control.
I certainly hope not, as I can’t whistle at all without…well…a whistle.
Redwolf
I hope you don’t mind me having this in common with you …
Does anyone here do any whistling on your hands? You know, cupping them together and forming an embroshure hole with your thumbs? Anyone even know what I’m talking about?
My uncle is really good at that type of whistling. He used it to do loon calls when we were out camping. He tried to teach me how to do it, but I never quite got that good.
Mouth whistling, on the other hand, I do all the time.
A.J.
I can blow on a piece of grass between my thumbs… but that’s all. I wonder why people don’t whistle on their fingers like in the old movies (like Timmy calling Lassie). Actually, it’s probably not very sanitary, especially if Lassie has been licking Timmy’s hands.
My grandfather taught me how to cup my hands together and blow into the hole created by my thumbs. The sound that was produced sounded like a train whistle and the pitch varied depending upon how open or closed the hands were. Is this something like what you’re talking about?
The sounds he made could be pretty loud. I had never heard of anyone else doing that sort of thing.
Will O’Ban
I learned to do that in high school from a kid…but it was a pretty rare skill..no one else seemed to know how to do it. I would use it to mimic morning bird calls.
I can whistle with my mouth, I can be pretty good too, but I only ever feel like whistling after playing my euphonium. I whistle the songs I was playing. I can’t hand whistle though. My Dad can, but he’s not very good at mouth whistling. oh well.
A kid in my band can mimic sparrows without using his hands. He does it all the time though and it gets really annoying
I imagine I annoyed plenty of folks as well 
That was very big in one of the Boy Scout troops that I was in. I can only get three notes out of it, and it’s a struggle, but I had a friend who could get four or five notes with ease. He could actually play little melodies. (This is the same guy I’ve mentioned before who could play just about anything on the clarinet from written music, but could hardly play two notes in a row by ear.)
We used to hold our hands about the same way, but with a blade of grass stretched tight between the thumb joints, serving as a reed. A stiff, wide-bladed grass, like St. Augustine is best. Kentucky bluegrass doesn’t work so well.
With the right kind of plastic sheet or cellophane, I can play simple melodies by blowing against the edge and stretching it to get the notes.
My sister could do the fingers-in-the-corners-of-the-mouth whistle high enough and loud enough to crack your teeth and pop your eyeballs. I’ve never gotten anything resembling a whistle with that one, though she put in quite a bit of time trying to teach me.
When I was about 5, I had a red plastic whistle, shaped like a bird, with the windway in the tail feathers and the blade in its back. You put a little water into it, and it produced a nice burbling sound when you blew it.
Why’s that now?
I know little about this, recently though in the come West Along the Road series there was a bit of old footage from the 70s of the All ireland mouth whistling competitions. It showed a very young Siobhan ni Chonarain , now more welknown as a fluteplayer, in full seventies attire with big glasses and big hair. Which for those who know her was good for a bit of a giggle. She was very good.
I have come across several people who never learned to play an instrument but ‘had the music in their head’ who whistled lovely. The late Martin Rochford was very good at it too if he needed to bring out a tune.
I suppose being able to whistle spot on says something about the musicality of the person doing it, it will develop your ear but will not help your mechanical control of the instrument.
I whistle a lot, more than enough to get on people’s wicks. Luckily I can tone it down so nobody hears me more than a couple of feet away. Whatever tune I last played or heard (or even looked at the sheet music for), you can bet I’ll be whistling it.
As Peter says, It’s half the battle to get a tune into your head, then bring it out on your instrument. I play fiddle so whistling isn’t helping my embouchure any, but it certainly helps cement those tunes.
I get my whistling habit from my father, who is always humming or whistling tunes. Annoyingly he now tends to hum in a bass grumble, especially when driving, so all you get is a growl and no tune. Humph. Another 20 years and I’ll be just the same.
before i even starting whistling with whistles i mouth whistled all sorts of stuff, quite well too. I can do cuts too, and rolls, by flicking my tongue up onto my palate.
Cool. But can you do 50Hz flutter-tonguing? Roger Whittaker, now there’s a man who could whistle!
i know what you mean, roger whitaker, that song he whistled, made him quite famous, i can do it too, that flutter thing, maybe not 50Hz though..
I agree, Roger Whitaker is pretty remarkable. Another guy that was just as remarkable came to my high school to give an assembly on whistling. He was blind, and billed himself as the talent that whistled the Andy Griffith Theme Song for the television show. I don’t remember what tunes they were, but it seems like I remember that he whistled two tunes simultaneously. Amazing stuff.
Will O’Ban